Posted on

$30 Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini is a dual GbE and WiFi 6 router board with optional 4G LTE or 5G cellular connectivity

Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini is an inexpensive WiFi 6 and dual Gigabit Ethernet router board with an M.2 Key-B socket and Nano SIM card slot to add 4G LTE or 5G cellular connectivity. It’s a smaller version of the Banana Pi BPI-WiFi 6 router board based on the Triductor TR6560 dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor and Triductor TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset that follows the form factor of the Banana BPI-R3 Mini low-profile router board based on MediaTek Filogic 830 processor. Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini specifications: SoC – Triductor TR6560 dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor @ 1.2 GHz with LSW (Line-Card Switching) and hardware NAT up to 5 Gbps WiFi chipset – Triductor TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset System Memory – 128MB DDR3 Storage – 128MB SPI NAND flash Networking 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports WiFi WiFi 6 with 2×2 MIMO @ 2.4 GHz, 2×2 MIMO @ 5GHz Antennas – 2.4GHz antenna connector, 2.4GHz/5GHz […]

Posted on

MILK-V Jupiter review – A RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard and PC tested with Ubuntu-based Bianbu OS

In this review or preview of the the Shenzhen Milk-V Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard, I’ll assemble the motherboard into a mini-ITX chassis, before installing the Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic-based Bianbu OS optimized for RISC-V platforms, and testing the device to see how much progress has been done on RISC-V since I tested the StarFive VisionFive 2 SBC with Debian 12 about 18 months ago. In the first part of the review, we checked out the Radxa ROCK 5 ITX (Rockchip RK3588 Arm) and Jupiter (SpacemIT K1 RISC-V) mini-ITX motherboards with specifications and unboxing, and the Auriga 6-Bay NAS mini-ITX chassis used in this review. I planned to start with the Radxa ROCK 5 ITX, but due to logistics and technical issues, I went ahead testing the RISC-V motherboard first. Installing Bianbu OS to the Jupiter RISC-V motherboard The board does not come with storage, so no operating system is installed. So […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
Posted on

VIA launches MediaTek Genio 700 SMARC SoM, Pico-ITX SBC, and fanless Edge AI embedded system

VIA Technologies has launched three new Edge AI solutions based on the MediaTek Genio 700 mid-range Cortex-A78/A55 AI SoC with the SOM-5000 SMARC 2.1.1 system-on-module, VAB-5000 single board computer (SBC), and ARTiGO A5000 fanless embedded system. All three platforms come with 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4 memory, 16GB eMMC flash, gigabit Ethernet, video interfaces, and camera inputs, and are designed for intelligent edge computing across a range of industrial, commercial, and consumer applications. VIA SOM-5000 system-on-module Specifications: SoC – MediaTek Genio 700 (MT8390) CPU – Octa-core processor with 2x Cortex-A78 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz, 6x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL ES 2.2, and Vulkan 1.0/1.1 APIs VPU Encoding up to 4Kp30 with H.265/HEVC or H.264 Decoding up to 4Kp75, AV1, VP9, HEVC, H.264 codecs supported AI accelerator – Mediatek DLA + VP6 with INT8, […]

Posted on

200 MHz Microchip dsPIC33A 32-bit digital signal controller offers double-precision FPU, high speed analog interfaces

Top digital signal controller (DSC) vendor, Microchip Technology Inc., has launched the dsPIC33A series as the newest addition to its portfolio of high-performance DSCs. These digital signal controllers combine the capabilities of a digital signal processor (DSP) with the extensive peripherals of a microcontroller (MCU). The dsPIC33A series is built around a 32-bit architecture and operates at 200MHz – currently the highest clock speed for a dsPIC. The core includes a double-precision floating-point unit (DP FPU) and a DSP instruction set for numerically intensive operations in closed-loop control algorithms. The dsPIC33A architecture offers high-performance, high-precision real-time control and signal processing in various applications. The family of DSCs launching the dsPIC33A series, dsPIC33AK128MC1xx, features up to 128KB of flash memory, and an extensive set of built-in peripherals. It comes in different packages, including SSOP, VQFN, and TQFP, with pin counts ranging from 28 to 64 and sizes starting as small as […]

Posted on

Microchip PIC64GX is a quad-core 64-bit RISC-V microprocessor for real-time processing

Microchip has introduced its first 64-bit RISC-V microprocessor family with the PIC64GX pin-to-pin compatible with the company’s PolarFire SoC FPGA devices and designed for edge designs for the industrial, automotive, communications, IoT, aerospace, and defense segments. The PIC6GX MPU supports asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) to run Linux, real-time operating systems, and bare metal in a single processor cluster with secure boot capabilities. The company further claims the PIC64GX MPU is “the first RISC-V multi-core solution that is AMP capable for mixed-criticality systems”. The first member of the PIC64GX RISC-V family is the PIC64GX1000 microprocessor. Microchip PIC64GX1000 specifications: CPU Quad-core SiFive U54 64-bit five-stage, single-issue, in-order pipeline RISC-V (RV64GC) processor at up to 625 MHz with AMP and deterministic latencies, PMP and MMU units Single-core SiFive E51 64-bit RISC-V (RV64IMAC) monitor processor core at up to 625 MHZ with PMP unit Cache L1 memory subsystem with Single-Error Correct, Double-Error Detect (SECDED) Flexible […]

Posted on

4-inch LF40 square touchscreen display modules are designed for Luckfox Pico Ultra development board

Luckfox LF40-480480-ARK and LF40-720720-ARK are two new 4-inch square touchscreen display modules specially designed for the Luckfox Pico Ultra micro Arm Linux development board. Both displays feature IPS panels with wide viewing angles and capacitive touch input. The display modules connect to the Pico Ultra board via the RGB666 interface ensuring compatibility with the board. Both displays have a brightness of 400cd/m² and an operating temperature range of -20~70°C. The main differences between the two boards are in the resolution, color gamut, and contrast ratio. The LF40-720720-ARK has a resolution of 720×720 pixels with a wider color gamut of 68% NTSC and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. The LF40-480480-ARK on the other hand features a 480×480 pixels display, with an unspecified color gamut and  380:1 contrast ratio. Previously we have written about various products with rounded and semi-rounded displays like the Waveshare RP2040-LCD-0.99-B, the Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.69-inch touch display, the SB-Components […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
Posted on

RAUC open-source OTA update solution for embedded Linux ported to Rock Pi 4 SBC

RAUC open-source OTA update solution enabling A/B updates for embedded Linux images has recently been ported to the Radxa Rock Pi 4 Model B SBC powered by a Rockchip OP1 SoC by the project’s maintainer, Leon Anavi working for Konsulto Group. If you run a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora, packages and OS images are taken care of automatically or by running a few commands. However, software engineers who build custom embedded Linux images with the Yocto Project or Buildroot must handle this themselves. Luckily, there are already open-source OTA firmware update solutions such as Mender, Balena, Torizon, OSTree, Snap, or RAUC, and we’ll look at the latter today. RAUC (Robust Auto-Update Controller) was started by Pengutronix in 2015 and eventually adopted by the community. It’s a lightweight update client that runs on an Embedded Linux device and controls the A/B update procedure when a new firmware revision […]

Posted on

Orange Pi 3B V2.1 SBC has been revamped with better WiFi 5 connectivity, M.2 2280 NVMe/SATA SSD socket

Shenzhen Xunlong Software has introduced the Orange Pi 3B V2.1 SBC with an M.2 socket that supports 2280 NVMe or SATA SSDs, and a new Ampak AP6256 WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5 wireless module replacing the Allwinner AW859A-based CDTech 20U5622 module in the first revision of the board. The Orange Pi 3B SBC was first introduced in August 2023 as a Rockchip RK3566 SBC with Raspberry Pi 3B form factor and support for M.2 2230 and 2242 NVMe or SATA storage. The new Orange Pi 3B V2.1 supports longer M.2 2280 SSDs at the cost of being slightly bigger than a credit card (89×56 mm) and offers better WiFi 5 connectivity. Orange Pi 3B V2.1 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1 NPU – 0.8 TOPS […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products