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Reverse engineering the SDK for BL602 RISC-V WiFi & BLE microcontroller

Bouffalo Lab BL602, and its big brother BL604 with extra GPIOs, are RISC-V microcontrollers with WiFi and Bluetooth LE that offer an alternative to Espressif Systems ESP32 Xtensa based WiSoC, although Espressif has also designed its own RISC-V solution: ESP32-C3. Soon after the “announcement” in October 2020, we found out the SDK and a relatively cheap BL602 board, but the SDK has many closed-source binaries. Soon after Sipeed and Pine64 expressed their interest in developing an open-source toolchain and even an open-source WiFi (and BLE) stack. Time has passed and even got a Pinecone board in January, but did not do anything with it, especially seeing the status of the software. The same cannot be said for Lup Yuen Lee (aka MrTechBlog) who spent a lot of time doing interesting with Pine64 BL602 module and board including playing and thoroughly documenting his work with Tensorflow Lite, connecting the board to […]

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Linux 5.13 Release – Notable changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.13: So we had quite the calm week since rc7, and I see no reason to delay 5.13. The shortlog for the week is tiny, with just 88 non-merge commits (and a few of those are just reverts). It’s a fairly random mix of fixes, and being so small I’d just suggest people scan the appended shortlog for what happened. Of course, if the last week was small and calm, 5.13 overall is actually fairly large. In fact, it’s one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16k commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2k developers. But it’s a “big all over” kind of thing, not something particular that stands out as particularly unusual. Some of the extra size might just be because 5.12 had that extra rc week. And with 5.13 out the door, that obviously means […]

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Rockchip RK835 & RK837 fast charger chips support USB PD 3.0, QC4+, and VOOC

Rockchip is better known for its application processors for TV boxes (RK3328), Chromebooks and other higher-end hardware (RK3399), AIoT applications (RK3566), and more, but the company has recently introduced the RK83x family with RK835 and RK837 chips designed for fast chargers compatible with USB PD 3.0 and/or Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ and BBK Electronics’ VOOC. RK835 Specifications MCU sub-system – Arm Cortex-M0 with 60KB flash, 1KB RAM USB PD 2.0/3.0 and PSS with TID number 4325 USB Type-C and Vconn power source Supports proprietary protocols 8-channel 10-bit, 500Hz converter speed ADC sensing voltage and 1-channel 10-bit current ADC All GPIOs can be configured as ADC input or edge triggering input DP/DM pins can be configured as UART, BC 1.2, or GPIO mode High-voltage endurance DP/DM and CC1/2 pins I2C interface with slave and master modes Low-power RC oscillator, 3 timers, one watchdog Discharge N-MOSFETs for VCC and VBUS Power – […]

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KloudNote 10.3-inch E-reader supports WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular connectivity

Geniatech used to be better known for their Amlogic TV boxes, before expanding their business to development boards and systems-on-modules. But the company has now introduced KloudNote, a 10.3-inch E-reader running Android 8.1 on a quad-core Cortex-A35 processor. The device is equipped with 2GB of RAM and a 16GB eMMC flash, supports WiFi 5 and Bluetooth, as well as optional 2G/3G/4G LTE cellular connectivity, and comes with a USB-C port and a headphone jack. KloudNote (sometimes written Kloud Note) specifications: SoC – Unnamed quad-core Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.2 GHz System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 16GB or 32GB eMMC flash Display – 10.3-inch E-Ink flexible screen with cover-lens, 1872×1404 resolution, capacitive touch and electromagnetic touch with support for a stylus with 4096-level of pressure sensitivity Connectivity 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi 5, Bluetooth 4.2 Optional 2G/3G/4G Audio – Earphone jack, built-in speaker & microphone USB – 1x USB-C port for charging Documents […]

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Rock Pi 4 Plus SBC gets Rockchip OP1 processor, eMMC flash pre-loaded with Twister OS Armbian

The low-cost Rock Pi 4 SBC was unveiled in 2018 with a Rockchip RK3399 processor, up to 4GB RAM, and Raspberry Pi 3 form factor. Rock Pi 4 Plus builds on the relatively popular single board computer with an upgrade to Rockchip OP1 processor, which is a higher performance RK3399 SoC typically used in Chromebooks and ASUS Tinker Board 2. The new board also adds 16 to 128 GB eMMC flash, instead of relying on an optional eMMC module, and will come pre-loaded with Twister OS Armbian lightweight desktop OS based upon Armbian Focal 20.04.1 LTS (aarch64) for Rockchip RK3399-based SBCs. Four variants of Rock Pi 4 Plus share most of the same specifications: SoC – Rockchip OP1 big.LITTLE hexa-core processor with  2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.0 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.4 GHz, a Mali-T864 GPU with support OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC, and […]

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ROC-RK3566-PC single board computer supports up to 8GB RAM, M.2 NVMe SSD’s

Firefly has now launched a Rockchip RK3566 single board computer named ROC-RK3566-PC, following the launch of Station P2 RK3568 mini PC on Indiegogo last March, and the completion of the campaign a few days ago. The quad-core Cortex-A55 SBC supports up to 8GB ECC memory, up to 128GB flash, M.2 2242 MVMe SSD’s, HDMI 2.0 and MIPI DSI video interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet, and more. ROC-RK3566-PC specifications: SoC – RockChip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.8GHz with Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2. OpenCL 2.0. Vulkan 1.1, 0.8 TOPS NPU, 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoder System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4 RAM with support for “all-data-link ECC” (TBC: Because the info I have so far is that ECC is supported on RK3568, not on RK3566) Storage 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash M.2 PCIe 2.0 socket for M.2 2242 NVMe SSD MicroSD card slot Video […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Huawei Qingyun L410 Linux laptop is powered by Kirin 990 Arm processor

While it’s already possible to purchase an Arm Linux laptop like PineBook Pro, the Rockchip RK3399 processor, and 4GB RAM may be limiting to some, especially when wanting to multitask. But most likely out of necessity, Huawei has unveiled a more powerful Arm Linux laptop with Huawei Qingyun L410 powered by a 7nm Kirin 990 octa-core Cortex A76/A55 processor, coupled with 8GB RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and a 14-inch display. Huawei Qingyun L410(L410 KLVU-WDU0) preliminary specifications: SoC – Hisilicon Kirin 990 octa-core processor with 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.86GHz, 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.09GHz, 4x Cortex A55 @ 1.86GHz, Arm Mali-G76MP16 @ 700 MHz, DaVinci NPU System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4-4266 Storage – Up to 512 UFS of storage (SSD or UFS 3.0 TBC) Display – 14-inch 2K display with a 3:2 aspect ratio Camera – “hidden camera” Video – 4K 60fps video support Misc – Fingerprint sensor Dimensions – […]

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19-inch rackmounts support up to 16 front-removable Raspberry Pi SBC’s

We previously covered Myelectronics’ 19-inch rackmount taking up to 12 Raspberry Pi boards. The solution is nice to keep a bunch of Raspberry Pi 4 in a small space and expose the HDMI ports as full HDMI ports. But what happens if you need to replace a Raspberry Pi board, or simply change the MicroSD card? Yes, you’d typically need to turn off all boards, remove the rack mount, replace the board/install the MicroSD card, and reconnect everything. That’s probably why the company has now launched two new 19-inch 2U and 3U rack mounts respectively supporting up to 16 front-removable Raspberry Pi (model B) single board computers. That works a bit with a typical NAS, where you insert or remove a hard drive by pulling it out and back. The 2U rackmount pictured above comes with front-removable brackets where you can install the Raspberry Pi, as well as mounting screws, […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products