CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Yahboom DOFBOT 6 DoF AI Vision robotic arm for Jetson Nano sells for $289 and up

Robotic arms can be expensive especially if you want one with AI Vision support, but Yahboom DOFBOT robotic arm designed for NVIDIA Jetson Nano offers a lower cost alternative as the 6 DoF robot arm sells for about $289 with a VGA camera, or $481 with the Jetson Nano SBC included. We previously published a review of the myCobot 280 Pi robotic arm from Elephant Robotics, and while it’s working well, supports computer vision through the Raspberry Pi, and is nicely packaged, it sells for around $800 and up depending on the accessories, and one reader complained the “price tag is still way too high for exploration“. The DOFBOT robotic arm is looking more like a DIY build, but its price may make it more suitable for education and hobbyists. DOFBOT robotic arm main components and specifications: SBC – NVIDIA Jetson Nano B01 developer kit recommended, but Raspberry Pi, Arduino, […]

July 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Polos CH32Vxx 32-bit RISC-V MCU boards starts at $1.99

XPU Labs, a subsidiary of AnalogLamb, has designed three inexpensive “Polos” development boards based on WCH CH32VXX RISC-V microcontrollers with pricing starting at just $1.99. The three development/breakout boards have the same form factor and only differ in the specific RISC-V MCU used with three parts selected: the 48 MHz CH32V003F4U6 microcontroller, the 144 MHz CH32V203F8P6 MCU, and the CH32V305FBP6 that’s similar to the former but add more memory (32KB) and flash (128KB). You can see also three boards side-by-side in the photo below along with the Amnos LinkE CH32Vxx debugger & programmer board. Polos CH32V003 Breakout Alef specifications: MCU – WCH CH32V003F4U6 QingKe 32-bit RISC-V2A microcontroller up to 48MHz with 2KB SRAM, 16KB Flash (QFN20 Package) USB – 1x Micro USB port I/Os – 2x 12-pin headers with Up to 18 GPIOs with external interrupt support 1x USART, 1x I2C, 1x SPI 10-bit ADC Debugging – 1-wire serial debug […]

July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

ESP32-S3 based Arduino Nano ESP32 board supports Arduino and MicroPython programming

The Arduino Nano ESP32 is an ESP32-S3-based WiFi and Bluetooth microcontroller board designed for IoT applications for hobbyists and enterprise use cases. The new Nano board comes with 8 MB PSRAM and 16 MB flash storage and can be programmed with either the Arduino or MicroPython languages. It’s not the first ESP32 board from Arduino, as the Nano RP2040 Connect pairs a Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU with an ESP32 module from u-Blox and the just-released Arduino UNO R4 WiFi marries a Renesas RA4M1 Arm Cortex-M33 MCU with an ESP32-S3-MINI-1 module. But the Arduino Nano ESP32 is different since it’s the first ESP32 board from Arduino where the Espressif chip is the only microcontroller onboard and handles both wireless connectivity and GPIOs. Arduino Nano ESP32 specifications: Wireless module – u-Blox NORA-W106-10B with MCU – ESP32-S3 dual-core Xtensa LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz with vector extensions, 512KB SRAM, 384KB ROM, […]

July 17, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Espressif ESP-SR enables on-device speech recognition framework on ESP32-S3 and ESP32 WiSoCs

ESP SR ESP32 on device speech recognition AFE

Espressif ESP-SR is a speech recognition framework enabling on-device speech recognition on ESP32 and ESP32-S3 wireless microcontrollers with the latter being recommended due to its vector extension for AI acceleration and larger, high-speech octal SPI PSRAM. The ESP-SR framework was first released on December 17, 2021 with version 1.0, before the v1.20 update was introduced in March of this year, but I only found out about ESP-SR offline speech recognition solution through a tweet by John Lee showing an ESP-SR demo video by @ThatProject. Comrades of the world, liberate your hands from the chains of typing and touching germy switches! Embrace the revolutionary power of speech recognition with ESP32-S3 + ESP-SR. Let your words flow freely, for the proletariat shall not be silenced by keyboards or bourgeois input… pic.twitter.com/bm3udteB3o — John Lee (@EspressifSystem) July 15, 2023 I initially was confused since ESP32 boards have supported speech recognition for years using […]

July 17, 2023July 17, 2023 by Sponsored Post - No Comments

Selecting Raptor Lake COM-HPC or COM Express modules for your application (Sponsored)

COM Express vs COM HPC Raptor Lake modules

ADLINK Technology introduced the COM-HPC-cRLS (Raptor Lake-S) COM-HPC size C module and Express-RLP Raptor Lake-P COM Express Type 6 module at the beginning of the year, and while we covered the specifications for both in detail at the time of the announcement, we’ll compare the advantages and benefits of the two types of 13th generation Raptor Lake modules in this post and compare 12th gen Alder Lake-S and 13th Gen Raptor Lake-S processor performance to help potential buyers select the right one for their applications. Raptor Lake COM-HPC vs COM Express vs modules The table above provides a high-level comparison between the COM-HPC-cRLS (Raptor Lake-S) and the Express-RLP (Raptor Lake-P) modules. The Raptor Lake-S socketed processor family found in the COM-HPC provides more processing power, supports up to 128GB DDR5, and the COM-HPC standard adds support for PCIe Gen5 which is not possible with the COM Express standard. The Raptor […]

July 17, 2023August 26, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

GEEKOM Mini IT11 (Core i7-11390H) review with Ubuntu 22.04 Linux (Part 3)

GEEKOM Mini IT11 (Core i7-11390H) Ubuntu 22.04 review

We’ve already reviewed GEEKOM Mini IT11 (Core i7-11390H) mini PC with Windows 11 Pro, so in the final part of the review, we’ve switched to Ubuntu 22.04 Linux operating system installed alongside Windows 11 on the Intel Core i7-11390H Tiger Lake mini PC. We’ll go through the software overview and test hardware features, run some benchmarks to evaluate the performance of the system, and report our findings with regard to power consumption and thermal performance. We’ve resized the partition in Windows 11 in the Disk Management program in order to install Ubuntu 22.04 from a USB flash drive on the Mini IT11 computer, and the installation went smoothly, and surprisingly fast according to the reviewer. Ubuntu 22.04 system information The About section in Ubuntu 22.04 Settings shows the Mini IT11 mini PC comes with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11390H CPU with eight threads clocked at 3.4 GHz and Intel […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

July 16, 2023July 16, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Monitor One – A customizable cellular IoT gateway for industrial equipment monitoring

Particle’s Monitor One Developer Edition is a customizable cellular IoT gateway for monitoring industrial equipment packaged in an IP67 rugged enclosure with reference firmware, and suitable for rapid prototyping with support for a range of I/Os and sensors, and even a prototyping area for to solder your own circuitry. Like the company’s earlier Tracker One asset tracker, the Monitor One is based on the Tracker SoM with a Nordic Semi nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4 wireless SoC for Bluetooth connectivity, a Quectel LTE Cat M1 (North America) or Cat 1 with 3G and 2G fallback (EMEA), u-blox Neo-M8U GNSS module, and an ESP32 for WiFi location support. The new customizable cellular IoT gateway still integrates with the Particle IoT PaaS (Platform as a Service), and the company also provides developer tools. The Monitor One Developer Edition is comprised of the following items: Monitor One base model fitted with a Particle Tracker SoM […]

July 15, 2023July 5, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Review of SunFounder Raspberry Pi UPS Power Supply

SunFounder’s Raspberry Pi UPS Power Supply is a complete UPS kit for the Raspberry Pi 3/4 Model B/B+ with a PiPower board, a 2,000 mAh battery, and all accessories requires for the assembly. It also works with other Raspberry Pi-sized boards that support 5V DC input such as Banana Pi BPI-M5, Libre Computer ROC-RK3328-CC, and other similar SBCs. Many years ago, I bought a Raspberry Pi battery pack for review hoping that it would also work as a UPS, but it was not perfect as the board would sometime reboot during power failure simulations. Since then, there have been many UPS kits launched to the market, but I didn’t try any so far, so when SunFounder contacted CNX Software to review their “Raspberry Pi UPS Power Supply”, I took the opportunity, and I will report my finding in this review. Raspberry Pi UPS Power Supply key features UPS module output […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products