CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 24, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ButtonBoard is a 3cm round WiFi IoT board with BME280 and IMU sensors (Crowdfunding)

ButtonBoard round shap ESP8285 WiFi IoT board

ButtonBoard is a tiny round-shaped board based on the ESP-01F WiFi IoT module (ESP8285), equipped with a BME280 air pressure, humidity, and temperature sensor, an IMU sensor, and designed for wearables electronics projects. ButtonBoard specifications: Wireless module – ESP-01F module with ESP8285 Tensilica L106 microcontroller @ 80/160 MHz with 2.4GHz WiFi connectivity, PCB antenna; package: 11 x 10 mm USB – Micro USB port Sensors Bosch Sensortec BME280 pressure, temperature, and humidity sensor, and altimeter. IMU sensor Expansion – Through holes for up to 10x GPIOs, I2C, SPI, USART Misc – Reset button Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port; onboard power management Dimensions – About 3cm diameter The ButtonBoard can be programmed with the Arduino IDE via USB or WiFi, MicroPython, Lua, and Scratch, and they also mention support for ChatGPT through the current API, but I could not find any code samples at this time. They do […]

July 24, 2023July 25, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Feature-rich, low-profile Rockchip RK3588 SBC is made for digital signage displays, industrial PCs, NVR, and more

Shenzhen Runwelltec RWA027-RK3588 is a low-profile SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3588 and equipped with plenty of connectors and ports. Those make the 11mm thin RK3588 board suitable for network video recorders (NVR), smart digital signage displays, industrial PCs, face recognition solutions, etc… The ultrathin board comes with up to 16GB RAM and up to 256GB eMMC flash, supports NVMe and SATA storage, provides HDMI 2.1 video output and five other LCD interfaces with optional USB/I2C touchscreen support, as well as two 4K-capable HDMI input ports, offers Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, up to nine USB interfaces, six UART, and so on. RWA027-RK3588 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan1.1 AI Accelerator – 6 TOPS NPU VPU […]

ArmSoM CM5 - Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC

July 23, 2023January 7, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

CZUR ET24 Pro book scanner review with Ubuntu 22.04 Linux

CZUR ET24 Pro book scanner Ubuntu review

The CZUR ET24 Pro is a professional book scanner that works with Windows, macOS, and Linux, so I decided to review it in Ubuntu 22.04 since we are fans of hardware that can interface with Linux at CNX Software.

If you haven’t already, I strongly recommended reading the unboxing part of the CZUR ET24 Pro review, as we go through the specifications, show the various interfaces of the scanner, showcase the various accessories, and also try it out with the HDMI interface in presentation/preview mode. It will help you better understand the second part of the review, where we’ll connect the CZUR ET24 Pro scanner to a Ubuntu 22.04 laptop using the provided USB cable.

July 22, 2023August 26, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Khadas Mind Raptor Lake portable mini PC supports desktop dock, laptop dock, and external GPU dock

Khadas Mind “portable workstation” is an ultrathin mini PC powered by an Intel Core i7-1360P 12-core Raptor Lake processor, with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, and a “Mind Link” connector with a PCIe 5.0 interface designed for docking to a desktop dock, a laptop shell, an external GPU for gaming, and so on. The mini PC itself has a limited number of ports with two USB-C ports, an HDMI 2.0 video output, and two USB 3.0 ports, but that’s sufficient when traveling, and the Mind Dock can add extra ports at home for multiple display setups and 2.5GbE networking, while the Mind xPlay battery-powered portable display can convert it into a 2-in-1 laptop, and the Mind Graphics eGPU into a high-end gaming station. Khadas Mind specifications: SoC – Intel Core i7-1360P 12-core/16-core Raptor Lake processor with 4 performance cores @ up to 5.0 GHz, 8 efficiency cores @ up to […]

July 21, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-KVM – A KVM over IP solution based on Rockchip RK3568 SoC

Banana Pi has started working on the BPI-KVM box based on a Rockchip RK3568 SoC, but it’s not a mini PC, and instead, it is a KVM over IP solution designed to remotely control another computer or device as if you were on-site with, for example, the ability to turn on and off the connected device, access the BIOS, and so on. Commercial KVM over IP solutions used to be expensive, but people have started to use Raspberry Pi SBCs with an expansion board such as the PiKVM v3, and more recently Raspberry Pi CM4-based KVM over IP solutions have been launched for under well $200. Seeing the popularity of these solutions, Banana Pi has decided to join the fray with its own BPI-KVM powered by an IO-rich Rockchip RK3568 processor that provides all interfaces needed for this type of application. Banana Pi BPI-KVM (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 […]

July 21, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

SolidWAN CN9131 is a compact SD-WAN appliance powered by a Marvell OCTEON CN9131 SoC

SolidRun has just introduced the SolidWAN CN9131 SD-WAN appliance powered by a Marvell OCTEON CN9131 quad-core Cortex-A72 processor and with a compact form factor and features that makes it suitable for small offices. The Linux-based Software Defined-WAN appliance comes with 4GB to 8GB RAM, 8GB to 64GB eMMC flash storage, plus M.2 SATA and NVMe sockets, and offers four GIgabit Ethernet ports and two 10GbE SFP+ cages for networking connectivity, as well as two USB 3.0 ports. SolidWAN CN9131 specifications: System-on-Module – CN9130 SOM with SoC – Marvell OCTEON CN9131 quad-core Arm Cortex A72 clocked at up to 2.2GHz System Memory – 4GB – 8GB (4GB default) 64-bit DDR4 @ 2400MT/s Storage – 8GB eMMC flash with options up to 64GB, 8MB SPI NOR flash Storage M.2 SATA and/or NVMe SSD (See Expansion section) MicroSD card slot accessible from the outside Networking 2x 10GbE SFP+ cages 4x Gigabit Ethenret RJ45 […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Arm: “Panfrost is now the GPU driver for the Linux community”

Arm is now saying that “in effect, Panfrost is now the GPU driver for the Linux community” after having extended and expanded the collaboration with Collabora for the development of the open-source Panfrost driver for Arm Mali GPUs, following their first official collaboration in the fall of 2020. Arm goes even as far as to claim that “through the Arm and Collabora partnership, device manufacturers can confidently choose SoCs containing a Mali GPU regardless of the software operating system (OS) and graphics middleware… delivering a high-quality open-source Linux implementation which can be used in their products”. Collabora confirmed the new partnership saying Arm will be instrumental in getting Vulkan support in Panfrost alongside the existing OpenGL and OpenGL ES implementations. Going forward that means SBC vendors will have no excuse for not getting 3D graphics acceleration working on Linux with Panfrost when using an Arm SoC with a recent Mali […]

July 20, 2023August 14, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Industrial Mini-ITX motherboard features Intel Processor N50 dual-core Alder Lake-N processor

AAEON MIX-ALND1 is an industrial mini-ITX motherboard based on the entry-level Intel Processor N50 dual-core Alder Lake-N SoC with multiple video output options (HDMI, DP, eDP, LVDS), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and plenty of serial headers for RS232, RS422, or RS485 communication. The motherboard supports up to 32GB DDR5 memory, one SATA drive, and one M.2 NVMe or SATA SSD drive. It implements a hardware monitor for voltage, temperature, and fans, features such as PXE and WoL, and takes 12V power via a 4-pin connector or a lockable DC jack. MIX-ALND1 mini-ITX motherboard specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N50 dual-core processor up to 3.40 GHz with 6 MB cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory – Up to 32GB single-channel DDR5 4800MHz via SODIMM socket Storage 1x SATA III with power connector 1x M.2 2280 M-Key for NVMe or SATA SSD 256Mbit flash for […]

Boardcon Rockchip RK3588S SBC with 8K, WiFI 6, 4G LTE, NVME SSD, HDMI 2.1...