CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 9, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Bee Motion ESP32-S2 PIR motion sensor offers GPIOs, over a year of battery life

Smart Bee Designs’ Bee Motion is an ESP32-S2 board with a PIR motion sensor, some GPIOs for expansion, and promising over a year of battery life under the right circumstances. If the name “Bee Motion” rings a bell, it’s because we covered the Bee Motion Mini board last month with an ESP32-C3 processor and a PIR sensor, but no USB port for programming and no expansion ability. It was just designed to be used as a battery-powered wireless PIR motion sensor. The Bee Motion expands the use cases of the solution, although it only features WiFi connectivity, and loses Bluetooth LE. Bee Motion specifications: Wireless module – Espressif ESP32-S2-MINI-1 module with Espressif ESP32-S2FH4 single-core 32-bit LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz, RISC-V ultra-low-power co-processor, 320 kB SRAM, 128kB ROM, 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 connectivity, 4MB flash, PCB antenna PIR sensor – Passive infrared motion sensor with dome lens, 5-meter […]

May 9, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Android 13 Beta for TV available for Google ADT-3 devkit

Google released the first Android 13 Developer preview in February, and we know quite a lot about Android 13 including virtualization support, as well as security and privacy updates. But the company has now released Android 13 Beta for TV (aka Android 13 for Android TV) for Google ADT-3 developer kit and the Android Emulator for TV in Android Studio. The beta release allows app developers to test their apps and provide feedback on the latest release before it is released to customer devices. Google does not provide any changelog specific to Android 13 for Android TV, but you’ll find the OS image for ADT-3 and installation instructions on the release page. Mishaal Rahman tried it on his ADT-3 box expecting some new features, but he noted that expanded PiP support, low power standby ( which could disable wakelocks and cut off network access to apps in order to preserve […]

May 9, 2022May 9, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

$95 Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro 5-port Gigabit Ethernet router board is powered by Rockchip RK3568 SoC

Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro is an update to the Banana Pi BPI R2 router board that replaces MediaTek MT7623A quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with a much more powerful Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor. The Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro board looks very similar to the first generation R2 board with the same dimensions, 2GB RAM, HDMI & DSI display interfaces, five Gigabit Ethernet ports, one SATA port, two USB 3.0 ports, and one mPCIe socket, but it also adds one M.2 socket, support for MIPI CSI cameras, and extra storage with a 16GB eMMC flash. Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0 GHz with Mali-G52 GPU, 0.8 TOPS NPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 (option for 4GB) Storage – Onboard 16GB eMMC Flash (option for 32 and 64GB), MicroSD card slot, 1x SATA III port, SPI flash for network boot Networking 5x Gigabit Ethernet […]

May 8, 2022May 12, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Canaan K510 CRB RISC-V AI development kit ships with dual-camera module and LCD display

Canaan K510 dual-core RISC-V AI development board

Last summer, Canaan introduced the Kendryte K510 tri-core RISC-V AI processor, now also known as Canaan K510, as an updated version of the Kendryte K210 with a much higher 3 TOPS of performance, but at the time, there were no development board and SDK. But I’ve now just been informed of the availability of the Canaan Kendryte K510 CRB (customer reference platform) AI development kit with camera module and LCD display, as well as a software development kit with U-Boot, Linux, and AI tools which can be used to develop smart audio and computer vision applications. Kendryte K510 CRB-Kit development kit specifications: SoC – Canaan Kendryte K510 dual-core RISC-V64 CPU up to 800MHz and 1x RISC-V DSP up to 800MHz for up to 3 TOPS AI performance, ultra-low-power wake-up VAD, H.264 video encoding up to 2 channels @ 1080p60 System Memory – 512 MB LPDDR3 @ 1600 MHz Storage – […]

May 7, 2022May 29, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Khadas VIM4 Review – Part 2: Android 11 preview and benchmarks

In the first part of Khadas VIM4 review, I showed off the Amlogic A311D2 SBC and some accessories such as the DIY case and M2X expansion board to add M.2 SSD and modem and tried out OOWOW cloud services to install Ubuntu 20.04 server. I’ve now just gotten Fiber Internet at home, so it’s much more practical to test the system, and in the second part of the review, I’ve installed Android 11 on the VIM4 board, checked out settings and system info, and ran some benchmarks. It will be more like a preview since Android 11 is not a consumer-friendly system at this time, and is more designed for people wanting to build their own applications. Installing Android 11 on Khadas VIM4 with OOWOW system Last time around, I used OOWOW system install in the SPI flash on the board to download and install Ubuntu 20.04 server to the […]

May 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

T-Dongle ESP32-S2 WiFi development board comes with two USB OTG ports

LilyGO has been very busy in recent weeks, and their latest product is the “T-Dongle ESP32-S2” development board that looks very much like Espressif ESP32-S3-USB-OTG board development board but is equipped with the single-core WiFi-only ESP32-S2 processor instead of the dual-core ESP32-S3 SoC with WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0. The T-Dongle ESP32-S2 board is designed for the development of USB applications and comes with USB OTG female and male ports, as well as the same 1.14-inch color display found on T-Display RP2040/ESP32 and T-PicoC3 boards. T-Dongle ESP32-S2 development board specifications: Wireless SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S2 single-core Xtensa LX7 processor @ up to 240 MHz with 320 kB SRAM, 128 kB ROM, WiFi 4 connectivity Antennas – 3D antenna, IPEX antenna connector Storage – MicroSD card socket Display – 1.14-inch full-color IPS LCD Display (ST7789V SPI controller) with 240 x 135 resolution USB 1x USB OTG female port to connect […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

May 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

AMD Ryzen 5000 C-Series processors target Chrome OS devices for work

AMD has just introduced the 15W Ryzen 5000 C-Series “Zen 3” processors for premium Chrome OS devices designed for work and collaboration. The processors can with up to eight cores and sixteen threads and are said to offer all-day battery life. AMD Ryzen 5000 C-Series processors for Chrome OS are expected to offer up to 67% faster responsiveness and up to 85% better graphics performance when comparing a Chromebook based on AMD Ryzen 7 5825C against an earlier model based on AMD Ryzen 7 3700C introduced in 2020 using respectively WebXPRT 3 and Motion Mark 1.2 benchmarks. Multitasking performance comparison using Geekbench 5 shows a 107% improvement that is probably mostly due to the doubling of the number of cores. The AMD Ryzen 5000 C-Series “”Barcelo” family is currently comprised of four parts. We can look at the Ryzen 7 5825C other features for more details: Cache – 512KB L1 […]

May 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Allwinner V853 Arm Cortex-A7 + RISC-V SoC comes with 1 TOPS NPU for AI Vision applications

Allwinner V853 SoC combines an Arm Cortex-A7 core with a Xuantie E907 RISC-V core, and a 1 TOPS NPU for cost-sensitive AI Vision applications such as smart door locks, smart access control, AI webcams, tachographs, and smart desk lamps. Manufactured with a 22nm process, the SoC comes with an ISP image processor and Allwinner Smart video engine capable of up to 5M @ 30fps H.265/H.264 encoding and 5M @ 25fps H.264 decoding, offers parallel CSI and MIPI CSI camera interfaces, and well as MIPI DSI and RGB display interfaces. Allwinner V853 specifications: CPU Arm Cortex-A7 CPU core @ 1 GHz with 32 KB I-cache, 32 KB D-cache, and 128 KB L2 cache Alibaba Xuantie E907 RISC-V core with 16 KB I-cache and 16 KB D-cache NPU (Neural network Processing Unit) – Up to 1 TOPS for V853 and 0.8 TOPS for V853S, embedded 128KB internal buffer, support for TensorFlow, Caffe, […]