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Bluetooth 6.0 features accurate two-way ranging using Channel Sounding, latency reduction, improved scanning efficiency, and more

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has just announced the release of the Bluetooth 6.0 Core Specification with features and feature enhancements that include Bluetooth Channel Sounding for two-way ranging between BLE devices, decision-based advertising filtering and monitoring advertisers to improve device scanning efficiency, an enhancement to the Isochronous Adaptation Layer (ISOAL) for lower latency and higher reliability, the LL extended feature set, and a frame space update for throughput optimization. Bluetooth 5.4 was released as a minor update mostly adding electronic shelf label (ESL) support in February 2023, or about 18 months ago, but Bluetooth 6.0 is a major update with the most notable feature being Bluetooth Channel Sounding to enable two-way ranging between two Bluetooth LE devices. It’s not the first time we’ve heard about “Bluetooth Channel Sounding” for distance measurements as it was implemented in WiFi 7/6 and Bluetooth 5.4 chipsets such as Synaptics SYN4382 and Broadcom […]

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Banana Pi BPI-M6 SBC features SenaryTech SN3680 quad-core Cortex-A73 AI processor

Banana Pi BPI-M6 is a credit-card single board computer based on SenaryTech SN3680 SoC comprised of a quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor, an Arm Cortex-M3 real-time core, an Imagination GE9920 GPU, and an NPU delivering up to 6.75 TOPS. The board ships with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and 16GB eMMC flash. Its layout is fairly similar to the one of the Raspberry Pi 4 with four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a 40-pin GPIO header, a USB Type-C port for power, and two micro HDMI ports. However, only one of those is for HDMI output, as the second is for HDMI input, and there’s also an M.2 Key-E socket for expansion. Banana Pi BPI-M6 specifications: SoC – SenaryTech SN3680 (also known as Synaptics VS680) with CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor up to 2.1GHz MCU – Arm Cortex-M3 real-time security core @ 250MHz GPU – Imagination PowerVR Series9XE GE9920 GPU VPU – 4Kp60 […]

ArmSoM CM5 - Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC
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u-blox MAYA-W3 industrial wireless module supports WiFi 6/6E and Bluetooth 5.4 with LE Audio

We’ve also covered two IoT-focused WiFi 6 and Bluetooth LE chips in the last week with Synaptics SYN43711 chipset and Gigadevice GD32VW553 RISC-V WiSoC, but there’s more and u-blox has recently introduced the MAYA-W3 WiFi 6/6E and Bluetooth 5.4 module with LE Audio support and designed for industrial applications. The MAYA-W3 module offers some flexibility as it’s designed on the upcoming Infineon AIROC CYW5551x WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 chip family supporting 2.4 GHz only (CYW55511), 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz (CYW55512), and a 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz with the tri-band CYW55512 chipset. u-blox also provides three antenna options for each model with two U.FL connectors, two antenna pin connectors, or an embedded PCB antenna. u-Blox MAYA-W3 specifications: Chipset – Infineon AIROC CYW5551x CYW55511 for 2.4 GHz WiFi 6 CYW55512 for 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi 6 CYW55513 for 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz WiFi 6E Wireless […]

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USB4 docking station supports up to five 4K displays with 120 Hz refresh rate

Action Star Technology, a Taiwanese OEM/ODM of USB productivity solutions part of Qisda (BenQ group), has unveiled its USB4 penta-4K120 docking station at Computex 2023 with support for up to five 4K displays at a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. The docking station is based on Synaptics chips, and besides support for up to five 4K displays, it can also handle up to three 8K displays at 60+ Hz, and offers Ethernet, audio, and 10 Gbps USB 3.2 interfaces. USB4 Penta-4K120 docking station specifications: USB4 docking station backward compatible with USB-C/USB 3.x Based on Synaptics VMM9430 DisplayPort 2.1 (DP 2.1) multi-stream transport (MST) hub and DisplayLink DL-7400 universal display docking solution. See the separate (January 2023) press release about the chips Display Support up to 5x 4K/120Hz video outputs 1x native DisplayPort up to 8K/85Hz using DSC (8K/75Hz for HDR) 4x DisplayLink outputs up to quad 4K/120Hz or […]

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Linux 4.20 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

After Greg K-H handling Linux 4.19 release, Linus Torvalds is back at the helm, and released Linux 4.20 just before Christmas: Let’s face it, last week wasn’t quite as quiet as I would have hoped for, but there really doesn’t seem to be any point to delay 4.20 because everybody is already taking a break. And it’s not like there are any known issues, it’s just that the shortlog below is a bit longer than I would have wished for. Nothing screams “oh, that’s scary”, though. And as part of the “everybody is already taking a break”, I can happily report that I already have quite a few early pull requests in my inbox. I encouraged people to get it over and done with, so that people can just relax over the year-end holidays. In fact, I probably won’t start pulling for a couple of days, but otherwise let’s just […]

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Amlogic A113X1 6-Mic Far-Field Devkit is Designed for Amazon Alexa

Allwinner unveiled their SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Development Kit for Amazon AVS last week, but they are now joined by another low cost silicon vendor as Amlogic has just launched their own A113X1 far-field dev kit officially support for Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS). The development kit is powered by Amlogic A113X SoC designed for such applications with “an audio pipeline that supports high fidelity audio with soft DSP algorithms for both frontend and backend processing”.   Amlogic A113X1 far-field devkit specifications: Mainboard SoC – Amlogic A113X quad core Cortex A53 processor System Memory – 512MB DDR3 Storage – 512 MB NAND flash Connectivity – SDIO WiFi/BT (AP6356S) Audio SPDIF_IN jack LINE_IN/LINE_OUT jacks 2x Audio headers (MIC_Connector & SPK_Connector) USB – 1x micro USB 2.0 OTG port Expansion – SPI header Misc – 6x ADC Keys, IR_IN/IR_OUT, UART Interface (RS232), LEDs Power Supply – 12V/2A Microphone board 6x digital microphones in […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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$129 Allwinner R18 based 3-Mic Far Field Amazon AVS Development Kit in the Works

Several companies are already offering development kits for Amazon AVS (Alexa Voice Service), but as we’ve seen in the past, those are rather expensive with far-field kits such starting at $349 with kits such as Synaptics AudioSmart 4-Mic Development Kit, or Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit, and hands-free kits being barely cheaper at $299 and up. But there will soon be a cheaper solution, as Allwinner and SinoVoIP (aka Banana Pi) are working on “SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit for Amazon AVS” that includes 3 microphones, and works without special DSP, relying instead on Allwinner R18 processor’s audio codec and capabilities. Allwinner SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit for Amazon AVS (aka R18-AVS-EVK) specifications: SoC – Allwinner R18 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.15GHz with Mali400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI Audio – 6x Microphones, 2x AEC, AUX and headphone output; GMEMS voice […]

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Installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in Acer Aspire One D255E Netbook

I previously installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my Acer Aspire One D255E network (Atom N455 with GMA3150 GPU), and there were quite a few issues to solve with Ethernet, Wifi and the SD Card but eventually, everything worked fine. I have now upgraded it to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, using the instructions I posted yesterday. The good news is that WiFi and the SD card worked right after the installation, but Ethernet would not work and there were 2 new issues: The system was very slow The touchpad would not work It might be possible that the touchpad and Ethernet issues do not occur by doing a fresh installation with Ubuntu 12.04 ISO, but I haven’t tried. Improving Ubuntu 12.04 Performance I noticed that if you just moved the mouse over the launcher, compiz (composting window manager handling 3D acceleration via OpenGL) would use 100% CPU. I ran glxinfo to verify […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products