CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 9, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Bluetooth 5.4 adds electronic shelf label (ESL) support

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has just adopted the Bluetooth 5.4 Core Specification with features such as PAwR and EAD designed for Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) systems. The Bluetooth 5.3 Core Specification was adopted in August 2021 with various improvements, and Bluetooth 5.4 now follows with features that appear to be mainly interesting for large-scale Bluetooth networks with support for bi-directional communication with thousands of end nodes from a single access point, as would be the case for Electronic Shelf Label or Shelf Sensor systems. Four new features have been added to Bluetooth 5.4: Periodic Advertising with Responses (PAwR) – PAwR is a new Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) logical transport that provides a way to perform energy-efficient, bi-directional, communication in a large-scale one-to-many topology with up to up to 32,640 devices. Devices can also be allocated to groups allowing them to listen only to their group’s transmissions. An Electronic […]

February 9, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Android 14 developer preview brings enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization

Google has just released the first developer preview of Android 14 with productivity improvements for developers, as well as enhancements to performance, privacy, security, and user customization. Android 14 aims to work better across devices and form factors with improved support for tablets and foldables and adds window size classes, sliding pane layout, Activity embedding, and box with constraints, etc… To help developers, the company also published “Get started with large screens” documentation and released a Cross-device SDK preview. The new version of the mobile operating systems also further streamlines background work to optimize system health and battery life and provide a better end-user experience. This is achieved through updates to JobScheduler and Foreground Services, optimized broadcasts most of which are internal to Android 14, and a new “Exact alarms” permission since it consumes more resources. Android 14 also introduced some user-facing changes with bigger fonts up to 200% with […]

ArmSoM CM5 Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC

February 8, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon X35 modem to bring 5G NR-Light to smartwatches, industrial IoT, XR glasses

Only a few years ago, 5G was only found in premium smartphones, but with the launch of the Snapdragon X35, Qualcomm aims to bring 5G cellular connectivity to wearables, industrial IoT applications, and eXtended Reality (XR) glasses. The Snapdragon X35 specifically supports 5G NR-Light, aka RedCap, which is described as ” a new class of 5G” that “fills the gap in between high-speed mobile broadband devices and extremely low-bandwidth NB-IoT devices” and delivers link rates of up to 220 Mbps. Snapdragon X35 modem key features and specifications: Cellular Technology: 5G NR-Light, FDD, SA (standalone), TDD, sub-6 GHz, HD-FDD, LTE Multi-Mode NR – Sub-6 SA, LTE Cat 4 3GPP Release 17 “RedCap” modem Number of Antennas: 1 Tx antenna, 2 Rx antennas Cellular Modem-RF Specs: 20 MHz bandwidth (sub-6 GHz), 1RX/2RX, 1TX, and Half-Duplex FDD (HD-FDD) Calling Services: VoLTE, VoNR Peak Upload QAM – 64 QAM Peak Upload Speed: 100 Mbps […]

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Raspberry Pi CM4 based 7-inch industrial Panel PC takes IO board with RS232, 12V-24V inputs and outputs

The ComfilePi CPi-C070WR4C is a 7-inch industrial Panel PC powered by a Raspberry Pi CM4 module with GPIO, RS-232, RS-485, and I2C interfaces as well as the ability to add two more RS232 interfaces and several 12V-24V DC inputs and outputs through an I/O board connected to the GPIO port of the panel PC. The new panel PC is an update to the ComfilePi Industrial Touch Panel PC introduced with a Raspberry Pi CM3 module in 2017. Besides upgrading to a more powerful Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, COMFILE also makes use of an RS-485 port that utilizes a full UART interface that does not exhibit the limitations of the mini-UART interface, and also added the CP-IO13-4C I/O board for even more expansion capabilities. ComfilePi CPi-C070WR4C specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with SoC – Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Arm Cortex-A72 processor @ 1.5GHz with VideoCore Vi GPU supporting […]

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Eoxys Xeno+ Nano ML board combines NuMicro M2354 or STM32L4 MCU with Talaria TWO ultra low power WiFi & BLE 5.0 module

Eoxys Xeno+ Nano ML is a wireless machine learning (ML) board with either Nuvoton NuMicro M2354 or STMicro STM32L4 microcontroller, InnoPhase IoT’s Talaria TWO ultra-low power Wi-Fi and BLE 5.0 module, and the Syntiant Core 2 NDP120 neural decision processor we first noticed in the Arduino Nicla Voice module a few weeks ago. The boards/modules are designed for intelligent and secure IoT devices for smart home, industrial, and medical automation applications, and the company claims it can be used in Wi-Fi IoT sensors with up to 10+ years thanks to the low-power chips and circuitry used in the design. Eoxys Xeno+ Nano ML specifications: General purpose MCU (one or the other) STMicro STM32L4 Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller at 80MHz with 1MB flash, 128KB/352KB SRAM Nuvoton NuMicro M2354 Arm Cortex-M23 microcontroller at 96MHz with 1MB flash, 128KB SRAM. Wireless module Innophase Talaria TWO ultra-low-power 2.4GHz 802.11b/n/g WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5.0 […]

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

ASRock introduces 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 mini PCs with AMD Ryzen 7000U-Series APU

ASRock Industrial has just launched the 4X4 BOX 7000/D5 Series mini PCs powered by AMD Ryzen 7000U-Series laptop APUs offering up to eight Zen3+ cores clocked at up to 4.75GHz. The mini PC supports up to 64GB dual-channel DDR5 4800MHz memory and SATA 3.0 plus M.2 NVMe storage, offers four display outputs with one 8K capable HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, five USB ports including two USB4 ports, as well as 2.5GbE and Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. Two models are currently available, 4X4 BOX-7735U/D5 and 4X4 BOX-7535U/D5, with the following specifications: SoC (one or the other) 4X4 BOX-7535U/D5 – AMD Ryzen 5 7535U hexa-core/12-thread processor up to 4.55GHz with 6-core AMD Radeon 660M @ 1900 MHz; TDP: 28W 4X4 BOX-7735U/D5 – AMD Ryzen 7 7735U octa-core/16-thread processor up to 4.75GHz with 12-core AMD Radeon 680M @ 2200 MHz; TDP: 28W System Memory – […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs abd SoMs

February 7, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

VAR-SOM-AM62 System-on-Module features TI AM625x Cortex-A53/M4 SoC

Texas Instruments AM625x development board

Variscite VAR-SOM-AM62 is a System-on-Module (SoM) powered by a Texas Instruments Ti AM625x quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.4 GHz with a 400MHz Cortex-M4F cores and 333MHz PRU real-time co-processors to control I/Os. The module also supports up to 4GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, features a single or dual-band WiFi + BT/BLE5.2 module, and offers up to 3x CAN Bus, dual GbE, audio, camera in, and dual USB, among other interfaces. It is designed for industrial applications with a -40 to 85°C operating temperature range. VAR-SOM-AM62 specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM62x (AM6252 or AM6254) with Up to 4x Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.4 GHz 1x Ar, Cortex M4F up to @ 400 MHz 1x PRUSS up to @ 333 MHz (only in industrial-grade modules) GPUs – 3D GPU with OpenGL ES 3.1 & Vulkan1.2, 2D graphics engine System Memory – 512MB to 4GB DDR4-3200 RAM @ 800MHz […]

February 7, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

The Wi-R protocol relies on body for data communication, consumes up to 100x less than Bluetooth

The Wi-R protocol is a non-radiative near-field communication technology that uses Electro-Quasistatic (EQS) fields for communication enabling the body to be used as a conductor and that consumes up to 100x less energy per bit compared to Bluetooth. In a sense, Wi-R combines wireless and wired communication. Wi-R itself only has a wireless range of 5 to 10cm, but since it also uses the body to which the Wi-R device is attached, the range on the conductor is up to 5 meters. While traditional wireless solutions like Bluetooth create a 5 to 10-meter field around a person, the Wi-R protocol creates a body area network (BAN) that could be used to connect a smartphone to a pacemaker, smartwatch, and/or headphones with higher security/privacy and longer battery life. One of the first Wi-R chips is Ixana YR11 with up to 1Mbps data rate, and they are working on a YR21 […]

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