Nokia 1680 phone gets new PCB with MIPS SoC, runs mainline Linux

Reimu NotMoe has designed the “Notkia” PCB based on Ingenic X1000E MIPS processor with 64MB built-in RAM and following the exact same dimensions as the PCB found in Nokia 168x phones (1680, 1681, 1682), and allowing the phone to run mainline Linux. The board also comes with 32MB NOR flash, a 4GB SLC NAND flash, and supports LoRa, 2.4 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth, and GNSS connectivity, but no cellular modem. Combining Nokia 168x phone with Notkia PCBA creates a phone with the following specifications: SoC – Ingenic X1000E single-core XBurst MIPS processor @ 1.0 GHz (2200+ CoreMark) with 64MB RAM Storage – 32MB NOR flash + 4GB SLC NAND flash Display – 2.0-inch 240×320 IPS LCD, 3/4 visible (Replaces the original 128×160 TFT screen in the phone) Camera – 5MP camera with auto focus (only available in the Nokia 1680 case) Audio – Yamaha MA-3 (YMU762) music synthesizer and regular I2S […]

Quartz64 Model B SBC with 4GB RAM is now available for $59.99

While it may be hard to buy a Raspberry Pi these days, there are various alternatives with the Raspberry Pi 3/4 form factor, including Pine64’s Quartz64 Model B SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3566 processor that has just launched for $59.99 with 4GB RAM. The Quartz64 Model B is a smaller version of the Quartz64 Model A launched earlier this year, that comes with HDMI 2.0a and MIPI DSI display interfaces, a MIPI CSI camera interface, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, as well as several USB 2.0/3.0 ports, and of course, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO header. Quartz64 Model B specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor up to 1.8 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 0.8 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage 128 Mbit SPI Flash optional eMMC module from 16GB up to […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Khadas VIM4 SBC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04

Here’s the last part of Khadas VIM4 review with Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish”. You may want to check out our previous parts with the unboxing and first boot, followed by Android 11 if you haven’t already done so. Ubuntu 22.04 installation on Khadas VIM4 I used the same method of installation with OOWOW firmware that can download the image directly from Khadas server, and install it to the eMMC flash. Since I already had Android 11 running on the board, I had to keep pressing the function key (middle), then shortly press the reset button,  before releasing the function key and entering OOWOW interface. From there, I selected Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome, and went ahead with the download. The download was fast with the 758.2MB compressed image downloaded in a couple of minutes, then I simply selected “Install” to go further, and replace Android 11… .. and after rebooting the board […]

RZBoard V2L – A business card-sized Renesas RZ/V2L SBC for AI vision applications

Avnet RZBoard V2L is an Arm Linux SBC for AI vision applications that’s about the size of a business card (or a Raspberry Pi), and powered by a Renesas RZ/V2L Cortex-A55/M33 processor with an on-chip DRP-AI accelerator. The board also comes with 2GB DDR4, 32GB eMMC flash, 16MB QSPI flash, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, multiple USB ports, MIPI DSI/CSI interfaces, as well as a Pi HAT compatible 40-pin GPIO header. RZBoard V2L specifications: SoC – Renesas RZ/V2L with 2x Arm Cortex A55 cores @ up to 1.2 GHz, 1x Arm Cortex M33 real-time core @ 200 MHz, Arm Mali G31 GPU @ 500MHz, DRP-AI accelerator, DRP Simple ISP (full HD), and a H.264 Hardware Video Enc/Dec (full HD) System Memory – 2GB DDR4 (16-bit with ECC) Storage 32GB eMMC flash 16MB QSPI NOR Flash MicroSD card socket Video Output – MIPI DSI and HDMI (selectable) Camera I/F […]

Microchip SAMA7G54 is a single-core Arm Cortex-A7 microprocessor for low power AI camera & audio applications

Microchip has just announced the 1 GHz SAMA7G54 single-core Arm Cortex-A7 microprocessor (MPU) with MIPI CSI-2 and parallel camera interfaces, as well as up to four I2S, one SPDIF transmitter and receiver, and a 4-stereo channel audio sample rate converter. The company specifically launched a single-core processor to offer a lower power solution for AI camera and audio solutions, and the chip is coupled with the MCP16502 power management IC that has been optimized to provide the best power/performance ratio for the SAMA7G54. Microchip SAMA7G54 specifications: CPU – Arm Cortex-A7 based MPU @ up to 1GHz with 256KB L2 cache Memory – DDR2/DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3 up to 533MHz Storage – Quad SPI, Octal SPI, 3x SD/eMMC Camera I/F – MIPI CSI-2 (2-lane up to 1.5 Gbps each) and 12-bit parallel camera Up to 8 Mpixel @ 30 fps Audio – Up to 4x I2S, PDM, SPDIF (Rx/Tx), 4 stereo channel ASRC Networking […]

Linux 5.18 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.18 is out! Linus Torvalds has just announced the release on lkml: No unexpected nasty surprises this last week, so here we go with the 5.18 release right on schedule. That obviously means that the merge window for 5.19 will open tomorrow, and I already have a few pull requests pending. Thank you everybody. I’d still like people to run boring old plain 5.18 just to check, before we start with the excitement of all the new features for the merge window. The full shortlog for the last week is below, and nothing really odd stands out. The diffstat looks a bit funny – unusually we have parsic architecture patches being a big part of it due to some last-minute cache flushing fixes, but that is probably more indicative of everything else being pretty small. So outside of the parisc fixes, there’s random driver updates (mellanox mlx5 stands out, […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

$30 compact multi-sensor board works with any microcontroller with I2C (Crowdfunding)

SENSE is a compact multi-sensor board supporting measurement of air quality, sound, light intensity, temperature, proximity, etc… and designed by Zack Seifert, a seventeen-year-old electronics enthusiast and president of his school’s robotics team. SENSE can work with any microcontroller or processor with I2C (hardware or implemented with bit-banging), including Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards. and an extra Qwiic connector allows for additional sensors. SENSE board specifications: Storage – MicroSD card holder Sensors

$349 AMD Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit takes on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier devkit

AMD Xilinx Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit features the Kria K26 Zynq UltraScale+ XCK26 FPGA MPSoC system-on-module (SoM) introduced last year together with the Kria KV260 Vision AI Starter Kit. Designed as a development platform for robotics and industrial applications, the KR260 is said to deliver nearly 5x productivity gain, up to 8x better performance per watt and 3.5x lower latency compared to Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier or Jetson Nano kits. We’ll have a better look at the details below. Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit specifications: SoM – Kria K26 module with: MPSoC – Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ custom-built XCK26 with quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor  up to 1.5GHz, dual-core Arm Cortex-R5F real-time processor up to 600MHz, Mali-400 MP2 GPU up to 667MHz, 4Kp60 VPU, 26.6Mb On-Chip SRAM, 256K logic cells, 1,248 DSP slices, 144 Block RAM blocks, 64 UltraRAM blocks System Memory – 4GB 64-bit DDR4 (non-ECC) Storage – 512 Mbit […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products