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SBC Case Builder v3.0 can create thousands of cases for popular SBCs and standard motherboards (mini-ITX, Pico-ITX, NUC…)

SBC Case Builder V3.0 case design utility has just been released with the ability to create over 1,000 standard cases – not including customization – for popular SBCs from Raspberry Pi, Hardkernel, Orange Pi, Radxa, and others, as well as standard motherboards following Mini-ITX, Pico-ITX, NUC, Nano-ITX, etc.., and SBC adapters following these standards, meaning you could install a Raspberry Pi 5 into a mini-ITX case if needed. SBC Case Builder started as a command line utility for designing DIY case for SBCs relying on OpenSDAD in April 2022, but Edward Kisiel (hominoids) quickly released version 2 with a GUI in October or the same, and has now further improved the utility with the release of SBC Case Builder v3.0. Version 3.0 comes with many improvements but the main focus was to reuse existing and new PC standard form factor cases by creating SBC adapters and custom I/O Shields since […]

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Axelera Metis PCIe Arm AI evaluation kit combines Firefly ITX-3588J mini-ITX motherboard with 214 TOPS Metis AIPU PCIe card

Axelera has announced the general availability of several Metis PCIe AI Evaluation Kits that combine the company’s 214 TOPS Metis AIPU PCIe card with x86 platforms such as Dell 3460XE workstation and Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Ultra computers, Advantech MIC-770v3 or ARC-3534 industrial PCs, or the Firefly ITX-3588J mini-ITX motherboard powered by a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 SoC. We’ll look into detail about the latter in this post. When Axelera introduced the Metis Axelera M.2 AI accelerator module in January 2023 I was both impressed and doubtful of the performance claims of the company since packing a 214 TOPS Metis AIPU in a power-limited M.2 module seemed like a challenge. But it was hard to check independently since the devkits were not available yet although the company only started their early-access program in August last year. Now, anybody with an 899 Euros and up budget can try out their larger Metis […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Testing Cytron MAKERDISK M.2 NVMe SSDs on Raspberry Pi 5 with GEEKWORM X1001 and Waveshare M.2 PCIe HAT+

Cytron has sent us a few of their MAKERDISK NVMe SSDs preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS so that we can test them on a Raspberry Pi 5 SBC, either with a GEEKWORM X1001 or Waveshare M.2 PCIe HAT+ add-on boards both of which were also provided by the company. Ever since the first M.2 PCIe HATs for the Raspberry Pi 5 were released, we knew Raspberry Pi Limited was working on its own model, and based on some Twitter/X “rumors” (with photos) the launch of the official M.2 HAT+ should be just around the corner. So it’s the perfect timing to test some SSDs on the Raspberry Pi 5 even though I’ve yet to get the official HAT+ Cytron “MAKERDISK” package unboxing The Malaysian company sent me a kit with everything I needed to get started, minus the Raspberry Pi 5 I already owned. This includes 128GB or 256GB NVMe […]

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Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024, upcoming Orange Pi SBCs and products

Orange Pi held a Developer Conference on March 24, 2024, in Shenzhen, China, and while I could not make it, the company provided photos of the event where people discussed upcoming boards and products, as well as software support for the Orange Pi SBCs. So I’ll go through some of the photos to check out what was discussed and what’s coming. While Orange Pi is mostly known for its development boards the company has also been working on consumer products including the Orange Health Watch D Pro and the OrangePi Neo handheld console. The Orange Pi Watch D Pro is said to implement non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, one-click “micro-physical examination” and other functions to to help users monitor their health monitoring. The Watch D Pro uses a technique that emits a green light to measure glucose levels in the blood, and we’re told it’s accurate enough to […]

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Review of Purple Pi OH – A Rockchip RK3566 SBC tested in 2GB/16GB and 4GB/32GB configurations

Hello, I am going to review the Purple Pi OH boards from Wireless-Tag. The Purple Pi OH is a single-board computer (SBC) mechanically compatible with the Raspberry Pi. They are designed for personal mobile Internet devices and AIoT devices, which can be used in various applications, such as tablets, speakers with screens, and lightweight AI applications. The manufacturer sent me two models. The first model is the Purple Pi OH, which is equipped with 2GB of memory and 16GB of storage space and supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The second model is the Purple Pi OH Pro, equipped with 4GB of memory and 32GB of storage space. This board supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. The other components of both devices are almost the same. They are powered by the Rockchip RK3566 chip, which integrates a quad-core Cortex-A55 processor up to 1.8 GHz, a Mali-G52 GPU from Arm for 3D graphics acceleration, […]

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Sipeed MaixBox M4N AI Box with 43.2 TOPS AXera AX650N SoC can decode/encode up to 32 videos

Sipeed MaixBox M4N is an AI box for video analytics and computer vision equipped with an AXera-Pi Pro (AX650N) octa-core Cortex-A55 SoC with a 43.2 TOPS (INT4) or 10.8 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator and an H.265/H2.64 video encoder/decoder supporting up to 32 1080p30 videos. The AI box is based on the Sipeed Maix-IV motherboard, an upgrade to the Maix-III devkit with an AX620A quad-core Cortex-A7 SoC with a 14.4 TOPS AI accelerator (INT4). It comes with 8GB RAM shared for Linux and the AI accelerator, 32GB eMMC flash and an M.2 SATA socket for storage, two HDMI outputs, two gigabit Ethernet ports, optional WiFi or 4G LTE mini PCIe module, a few USB ports, and RS232 and RS485 interfaces. Sipeed MaixBox M4N specifications: SoC – AXera AX650N CPU – Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.7 GHz with NEON support NPU – 43.2 TOPS @ INT4, 10.8 TOPS @ INT8 with support […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Mekotronics D58 embedded computer features 6 HDMI outputs for video walls or mirrored displays

Mekotronics D58 is a Rockchip RK3588 embedded computer running Android or Linux with six HDMI outputs for 4K video walls or multiple mirrored displays that should be mostly useful for digital signage applications. The system comes with up to 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, supports NVMe and SATA storage, comes with two GbE ports, WiFi 6 connectivity, optional 4G LTE and GNSS, one 4K-capable HDMI input port, four USB ports, some DB9 connectors for serial communication (RS232, RS485, TTL), and a terminal block with GPIOs and CAN bus. Mekotronics D58 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with CPU – 4x Cortex‑A76  cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex‑A55 core @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan 1.2 Video decoder – 8Kp60 H.265, VP9, AVS2, 8Kp30 H.264 AVC/MVC, 4Kp60 AV1, 1080p60 MPEG-2/-1, VC-1, VP8 Video encoder – […]

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Linux 6.8 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.8 on the Linux kernel mailing list: So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer, but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any actual real sign of problems. And the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there’s no real reason to delay 6.8. We always have some straggling work, and we’ll end up having some of it pushed to stable rather than hold up the new code. Nothing worrisome enough to keep the regular release schedule from happening. As usual, the shortlog below is just for the last week since rc7, the overall changes in 6.8 are obviously much much bigger. This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was – we seem to […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC