LattePanda Sigma – An Intel Core i5-1340P Raptor Lake SBC with ATmega32U4 MCU for Arduino support

LattePanda Sigma is a 3.5-inch single board computer (SBC) with an Intel Core i5-1340P Raptor Lake-P processor and a Microchip ATmega32U4 microcontroller to control I/Os with Arduino programming. The board comes with 16GB soldered-on LPDDR5 RAM, supports M.2 NVMe/SATA SSDs and SATA drives for storage, offers HDMI 2.1, eDP, and USB-C DisplayPort video outputs, dual 2.5GbE networking, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and three M.2 sockets for expansion sich as WiFi or  4G/5G modules. LattePanda Sigma specification SoC – Intel Core i5-1340P 12-core (4P+8E)/16-thread Raptor Lake hybrid processor @ up to 4.6 GHz (Performance cores), 3.4GHz (Efficient cores), 12MB L2 Cache, 80EU Intel Iris Xe Graphics @ up to 1.45 GHz; PBP: 28 W MCU – Microchip ATmega32U4-MU 8-bit AVR microcontroller with 32 KB flash, 2.5 KB SRAM, 1 KB EEPROM System Memory – 16GB dual-channel LPDDR5-6400 Storage – M.2 SSD (NVMe/SATA) socket, SATA III port Display I/F HDMI 2.1 up […]

Makeblock Ultimate 2.0 review – A multi-function 10-in-1 educational robot kit

Makeblock Ultimate 2.0 is an educational robot kit that can be used to easily create up to 10 different types of robots. An Arduino-compatible Mega 2560 MCU board serves as the main controller and there are over 550 mechanical parts and electronic modules. The robot can drive up to 4 encoder and stepping motors, control up to 10 servo motors to work simultaneously, and can also be connected to Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards for more complex projects. The review/tutorial is fairly long, so if you are short on time, you can jump to different sections by clicking on some of the links below: MegaPi control board and main modules description mBlock 5 visual-programming IDE installation Programming of DC Encoder motors, Ultrasonic sensor, Line follower module, motion sensor, RJ25 adapter, and shutter module mBlock mobile app Building the ten models for the Makeblock Ultimate 2.0 robot kit (as shown in […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Offline voice recognition module supports Arduino programming, custom voice commands

We’ve already covered inexpensive offline voice recognition modules based on US516P6 or TW-ASR ONE microcontrollers that allow people to add smarts to their projects without a network connection for improved privacy and lower latency. Those are great in theory, but at the time (April 2022) documentation was lacking or only in Chinese, and they were fairly hard to use based on some of the comments in my earlier posts. But today, I’ve noticed DFRobot is now selling the “Gravity: Offline Voice Recognition Sensor – I2C & UART” module with support for Arduino programming, and it looks fairly easy to customize as we’ll see further below. Gravity Voice Recognition DF2301QG module specifications: Voice recognition module – WS-2520-TR module with MCU – TBD 121 commonly used fixed voice commands, one-fixed wake word Support for 1 learned wake-word, 17 user-defined commands Audio Output – Built-in speaker and external speaker interface Input – Dual […]

EVerest is an open-source software stack for car charging stations

EVerest is a software project initiated by PIONIX GmbH, but now part of the Linux Foundation’s LFEnergy initiative, whose primary goal is to develop and maintain an open-source software stack for EV charging infrastructure. EVerest supports multiple standards and it will run on any device from AC home chargers to public DC charging stations. I noticed the EVerest project in an upcoming talk at the Embedded Open Source Summit 2023 entitled ” EVerest: Electric Vehicle Chargers With Open Hardware and Software” and whose abstract reads in part: You will learn how to build your own electric vehicle charger using open hardware designs in combination with the EVerest open-source software stack for EV charging infrastructure. Following a quick introduction to EV charging technology, with explanations of the standards, protocols, and complexities involved, the talk will go into a deep dive into how you can build your own AC charging station. Reference […]

Sony IMX500-based smart camera works with AITRIOS software

Raspberry Pi recently received a strategic investment from Sony (Semiconductor Solutions Corporation) in order to provide a development platform for the company’s edge AI devices leveraging the AITRIOS platform. We don’t have many details about the upcoming Raspberry Pi / Sony device, so instead, I decided to look into the AITRIOS platform, and currently, there’s a single hardware platform, LUCID Vision Labs SENSAiZ SZP123S-001 smart camera based on Sony IMX500 intelligent vision sensor, designed to work with Sony AITRIOS software. LUCID SENSAiZ Smart camera SENSAiZ SZP123S-001 specifications: Imaging  sensor – 12.33MP Sony IMX500 progressive scan CMOS sensor with rolling shutter, built-in DSP and dedicated on-chip SRAM to enable high-speed edge AI processing. Focal Length  – 4.35 mm Camera Sensor Format – 1/2.3″ Pixels (H x V) – 4,056 x 3,040 Pixel Size, H x V – 1.55 x 1.55 μm Networking – 10/100M RJ45 port Power Supply – PoE+ via […]

Indiedroid Nova is a Rockchip RK3588S SBC with full-body heatsink, fan, and a swappable eMMC flash

Indiedroid Nova is another Rockchip RK3588S SBC with Raspberry Pi 4 form factor, up to 16GB RAM, with a heatsink that serves as a protective cover, fitted with a fan (if needed), and an optional swappable flash module up to 64GB capacity. The Nova board has basically the same port layout as the Raspberry Pi 4, except for one of the micro HDMI ports being replaced by a USB Type-C port with support for DisplayPort, so you’ll still get a Gigabit Ethernet port, WiFi 5 & Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity,  two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, MIPI CSI and DSI connectors, etc… Indiedroid Nova specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.2-2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU –  Arm Mali-G610 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support VPU – 8Kp60 video […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

Embedded Open Source Summit 2023 schedule – Zephyr OS, Security, IoT, Embedded Linux, and more

The Linux Foundation has just announced the full schedule for the Embedded Open Source Summit, which will take place on June 27-30, 2023 in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as virtually starting on June 26. Over 175 sessions, birds of a feather (BoF) tracks, and workshops related to embedded and open-source innovation will be presented at the event itself comprised of six micro conferences: Automotive Linux Summit Europe, Embedded IoT Summit, Embedded Linux Conference, LF Energy Embedded Summit, Safety-Critical Software Summit, and Zephyr Project Developer Summit. Even though I’m not going to attend personally, I’ve gone through the schedule to create my own little virtual schedule with some sessions relevant that should be interesting to me and hopefully to CNX Software readers. Monday, June 26 (Virtual sessions) The first day of the event will have a Yocto Dev training in the morning, and a bunch of virtual sessions that are […]

Challenger RP2040 board gets DWM3000 UWB module for indoor positioning, up to 10 Mbps data transfers

The Challenger RP2040 UWB board features a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller combined with a DWM300 UWB (Ultra-Wide Band) module in the Adafruit Feather form factor and is designed for indoor positioning and ranging applications with an up to 10-centimeter accuracy, and data transfers up to 10 Mbps. The first Challenger RP2040 board was introduced in 2021 with an ESP8285 WiFi chip, iLabs (Invector Labs) shortly followed up with the Challenger RP2040 LoRa with an RFM95W LoRa module, and they also made models with NFC and cellular connectivity. The Swedish company has now just introduced their latest Challenger board with the Challenger RP2040 UWB leveraging UWB technology. Challenger RP2040 LoRa board preliminary specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 133MHz with 264KB SRAM Storage – 8MB flash Wireless module – Qorvo DWM3000 UWB module connected via SPI Chip – Qorvo DW3110 ultra-wideband (UWB) transceiver IC, compliant with IEEE […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products