Getting started with VOIPAC IMX8M Industrial development kit (Yocto Linux SDK)

Last month I went through an unboxing of the VOIPAC iMX8M Industrial Development Kit with some specs and a quick try with the pre-loaded Yocto 3.1 Linux image. The kit is quite versatile with plenty of interfaces and headers, and eventually, it will support Android 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. but in the meantime, I played a bit with the Yocto Linux SDK for the NXP i.MX 8M board and will report by experience getting started with VOIPAC IMX8M Industrial development kit. WiFi antennas installation But before checking out Yocto Linux, I will install the two WiFi antennas since I did not do it last time around. We can attach the SMA connectors to the two metal plates on the side of the board securing them with the provided nuts and spacers. The other side of the antenna’s cable comes with a tiny u.FL (or is it MHF4) connector and […]

Tiny solder-down NXP i.MX 93 System-on-Module powers credit card-sized evaluation board

Ka-Ro Electronics’ QS93 is a tiny solder-down NXP i.MX 93 System-on-Module (SoM) running Linux and designed for edge processing. The company also offers a credit card-sized evaluation board that may remind some of the Raspberry Pi with its GPIO header and general layout, but it comes with two Fast Ethernet ports and one USB 2.0 port. We’ve already covered several system-on-modules based on the NXP i.MX 93 Cortex-A55/M33 AI processor including some with high-density board-to-board connectors such as the Compulab UCM-IMX93 and Forlinx FET-MX9352-C, others with a SO-DIMM connector like the VAR-SOM-MX93, and finally some designed to be soldered on the carrier board such as the OSM-L compatible iW-RainboW-G50M, and the QS93 adds to the latter category in a tiny 27×27 mm form factor. Ka-Ro electronics QS93 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 93 with CPU – Up to dual-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz Real-time core – Arm […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

ESP ZeroCode web application creates custom Matter-certifiable firmware for ESP32 targets

Low-code/no-code platforms keep on coming and Espressif Systems ESP ZeroCode adds to the list. It is a web application designed to prepare Matter-certifiable firmware for ESP32 devices as per the user’s requirements. The website is supposed to streamline the product development where the firmware is developed for you (no need for those costly software/firmware engineers!) and future OTA updates are also guaranteed for a period of three years. It’s a bit similar to the Tuya platform, but for ESP32 devkits, modules, and/or rebranded products with Matter-certified firmware. So I went to the website to give it a try in Firefox in Ubuntu. After registration and login, we are given three options: Your products, Create a new product, and Rebrand a Certified Product I went with the second option and named by new product “CNX Software Gizmo”. In the next step, we can select the device type between socket, plug, light, […]

Setting up a private LoRaWAN network with WisGate Connect gateway

In this guide, we’ll explain how to set up a private LoRaWAN network using the Raspberry Pi CM4-based RAKwireless’ WisGate Connect gateway and Docker or Portainer to install NodeRED, InfluxDB, Grafana, and other packages required to configure our gateway. The WisGate Connect is quite a versatile gateway with Gigabit and 2.5Gbps Ethernet plus several optional wireless connectivity options such as LoRaWAN, 4G LTE, 5G, WiFi 6, Zigbee, WiFi HaLoW, and more that can be added through Mini PCIe or M.2 sockets, expansion through WisBlock IO connectors and a 40-pin Raspberry Pi HAT connector. We’ll start by looking at the gateway features in detail, but if you already know all that, you can jump to the private LoRaWAN network configuration section. WisGate Connect unboxing, specifications, and teardown RAKwireless sent us a model with a Raspberry Pi CM4 equipped with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC memory, GPS and […]

StarLite Mk V 2-in-1 Linux hybrid laptop features Processor N200 processor

Just last month, Star Labs introduced the Byte Mk II Intel Processor N200-based mini PC with a choice of Linux distributions that include Ubuntu 22.04, Linux Mint, Manjaro, Zorin OS, and others, as well as Coreboot support. The company has now introduced another Linux hardware platform powered by the Processor N200 Alder-Lake-N CPU with the StarLite Mk V 2-in-1 hybrid laptop with a 12.6-inch tablet and a detachable keyboard available in six different layouts. StarLite Mk V specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N200 quad-core processor @ up to 1.0 GHz / 3.7 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 32EU Intel HD graphics @ 750 MHz; TDP: 6W (PL2 set to 25W) System Memory – 16GB 4800MHz LPDDR5 RAM Storage – 512GB M.2 2242 PCIe Gen3 NVMe SSD (option for 1TB or 2TB); microSD card slot Display 12.6-inch 3K touchscreen IPS display with 2880 x 1920 resolution, LED backlight, 10-point touch Micro […]

Rockchip RK3568 SBC takes up to four AHD cameras, two SATA drives

Boardcon EM3568-AV CAM SBC is powered by a Rockchip RK3568 SoC and comes with four AHD (analog high-definition) camera connectors and two SATA 3.0 ports to store video data on hard drives. The SBC is also equipped with up to 8GB RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, supports MIPI DSI, LVDS, and eDP displays, and features a video composite output, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, WIFi 4 connectivity, an optional 4G LTE module, a few USB ports, and several connectors for expansion. Boardcon EM3568-AV CAM specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1 AI accelerator – 1 TOPS NPU (probably rounded up from 0.8 TOPS) VPU – 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoding, and 1080p60 H.265/H.264 video encoding System Memory – 2GB (up to 8GB) Storage 8GB eMMC flash (up […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

Quansheng multiband radios’ firmware can be flashed and customized from a web browser

We’ve recently written about the Quansheng UV-K5 multiband radio which supports experimental firmware to work in a wider 18 MHz – 1300 MHz frequency range than with the stock firmware so it can be used for amateur radio, air traffic control, Citizens Band (CB) radio, and other fun stuff. But flashing the firmware requires downloading the manufacturer’s Windows-only programming software and customizations are provided through multiple firmware files. But it has now become much easier to flash the firmware for Quansheng devices thanks to the work of whosmatt who developed the UVMOD web interface using WebSerial to flash the firmware and even customize it from Windows or Linux. The interface supports Quansheng UV-K5, UV-K6, UV-K5(8), and UV-5R Plus handheld radios, and you’ll need a web browser that supports the WebSerial API to flash the firmware directly from the web browser directly, which means only the desktop versions of Chrome, Edge, […]

Orbbec Femto Bolt 3D depth and RGB USB-C camera supports Microsoft ToF technology

Orbbec Femto Bolt is a 3D depth and RGB USB-C camera developed in collaboration with Microsoft and integrating the same ToF (Time-of-Flight) technology as found in the Microsoft Azure Kinect camera module and HoloLens 2 mixed reality head-mounted display. The new model follows the launch of the fully integrated Femto Mega featuring an NVIDIA Jetson Nano module introduced in January with the same ToF technology, so the new USB-C camera simply allows a wider selection of hosts. Orbbec has also launched the Femto Mega I variant with an IP65 metal enclosure. Orbbec Femto Bolt specifications: Cameras Depth camera 1 Mega Pixel ToF sensor 850nm wavelength 0.25 to 5.45m range depending on the depth mode Up to 1024×1024 @ 15 fps (WFoV) or 640×579 @ 30 fps (NFoV) FoV Wide – H: 120°; V: 120° Narrow – H: 75°; V: 65° RGB camera 4K resolution up to 3840×2160 @ 25 fps […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC