CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

September 14, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Arduino IDE 2.0 is now officially released

The first stable release of Arduino IDE 2.0 is now out. Based on the Eclipse Theia framework, the new IDE provides a more modern and user-friendly user interface, faster compilation time, and more features we’ll discuss in this post. Arduino initially introduced the Arduino IDE 2.0 beta in March 2021 with a live debugger with breakpoints support, a revamped user interface with features such as autocompletion of variables and functions. After 18 months of debugging with the help of members of the community such as Paul Stoffregen (the maker of the Teensy boards), the Arduino IDE 2.0 is not an experimental software anymore, and it’s the first version you’d see in the download page. The Arduino IDE 2.0 is available for Windows 10 64-bit and newer, Linux X86-64, and macOS 10.14 “Mojave” or newer. If you’ve already installed Arduino 1.x, it will inform you of updates for your installed libraries […]

September 14, 2022October 21, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Mini-ITX motherboard combines AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 SoC with two InferX X1 AI accelerators

InferX Hawk Mini-ITX motherboard AMD AI accelerators

Flex Logix has just announced the InferX Hawk mini-ITX motherboard equipped with an AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 SoC and two InferX X1 AI accelerators from the company in order to help customers customize, build and deploy edge and embedded AI systems easily and quickly. The motherboard features up to 32GB RAM, supports SATA and M.2 MVMe/SATA storage, provides dual Gigabit Ethernet and optional WiFi/4F LTE connectivity, plus the usual USB 3.2, DisplayPort, and serial interfaces, and is meant to compete directly against solutions based on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier. InferX Hawk specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 quad-core processor @ 2.1/3.5 GHz (Turbo) with hexa-core Radeon Vega graphics; TDP: 12 to 35W AI accelerators – 2x InferX X1 accelerators System Memory – 2x DDR4 SO-DIMM up to 32GB capacity Storage M.2 M Key socket for NVMe or SATA SSD SATA 3.0 connector Video Output – 2x DisplayPort Networking […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

September 14, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Silicon Labs FG25 Arm Cortex-M33 SoC targets Wi-SUN FAN networks

Silicon Labs FG25 Wi SUN microcontroller

Silicon Labs announced various new products at its annual Works With Developer Conference including the FG25 Arm Cortex-M33 SoC designed for sub-GHz Wi-SUN FAN networks for Smart Cities and applications such as smart metering, street lighting, electricity distribution automation, municipal infrastructure, and more. The microcontroller runs at up to 97.5 MHz, features 512KB RAM and up to 1920 KB flash, operates at up to 125°C, consumes as little as 2.6 μA in deep sleep mode, and can offer a range of up to 3 km when used in combination with the new EFF01x front-end module delivering up to +30 dBm output power. Silicon Labs FG25 (EFR32FG25) specifications: CPU core – Arm Cortex-M33 core @ 97.5 MHz with DSP instruction and floating-point unit for signal processing Memory – Up to 512 kB RAM data memory Storage – Up to 1920 kB flash program memory Radio Sub-GHz radio operation TX power up […]

September 13, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Picamera2 Python camera library for Raspberry Pi leverages libcamera open-source framework

Raspberry Pi Trading released a new version of Raspberry Pi OS last week with the highlight being the Picamera2 Python library for Raspberry Pi cameras, along with small changes such as the ability to search menu items, a new audio input control, The new Picamera2 library was first announced in mid February 2022 with a preview release, and it’s the first time the Python library is included by default in Raspberry Pi OS. It is now based on the libcamera open-source framework instead of the proprietary and closed camera APIs from Broadcom found in the original Picamera library. Some of the key features of the Picamera2 library include: The preview windows use OpenGL acceleration for hardware-assisted rendering or DRM/KMS for efficient rendering when X Windows is not running Picamera2 commands can be typed into a Python interpreter or scripts Support for embedding Picamera2 widgets into Qt applications NumPy integration provides […]

September 13, 2022September 13, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

ESP-Hosted simplifies adding WiFi connectivity to legacy Linux or MCU-based products

Most of the ESP8266 and ESP32 projects and products we cover here use the Espressif microcontroller as the main chip, but ESP8266 started as a WiFi module meant to be controlled with AT commands from a host device. But there are still “legacy” products that may benefit from connecting to the cloud, and Espressif introduced the ESP-Hosted for that purpose in 2020, and recently released a next-generation ESP-Hosted solution (ESP-Hosted-NG) specifically for Linux hosts. The solution is available in two variants: ESP-Hosted-FG (First generation) exposing an Ethernet interface to the host and suitable for microcontrollers and Linux hosts, and the ESP-Hosted-NG presenting an 802.11 network interface and designed for Linux hosts only. Both solutions include ESP32 firmware and a host driver running on the legacy system. Espressif Systems recommends using ESP-Hosted-FG on an MCU host, and ESP-Hosted-NG on a Linux host in order to benefit from Linux user space applications/services […]

September 13, 2022October 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 39 Comments

Khadas Edge2 ultra thin SBC is powered by Rockchip RK3588S processor

As noted in the Khadas VIM1S announcement, the company is also preparing to launch the Khadas Edge2 single board computer with a Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor and a thickness of just 5.7mm (before a low-profile heatsink is installed). The new board follows a similar form factor as the original Khadas Edge board powered by a Rockchip RK3399 processor, except the edge connector is gone, so it can’t be used as a system-on-module anymore, but remains the thinnest and one of the most powerful Arm SBCs so far. Khadas Edge2 Basic/Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with four Cortex-A76 cores @ 2.25 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali G610MC4 GPU AI accelerator – 6TOPS NPU VPU 8Kp60 10-bit H.265 decoder, 4Kp60 AV1 video decoder 8Kp30 H.264/H.265 video encoder MCU – STMicro STM32G031K6 Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ 64 Mhz for power management […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025

September 12, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Geniatech DB982 – An 8K TV motherboard with Amlogic T982 CPU, ATSC 3.0 TV tuner

Geniatech DB982 is a development board/motherboard powered by an Amlogic T982 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor designed for 8K televisions and equipped with an ATSC 3.0 TV tuner. The board ships with up to 4 GB RAM and up to 128 GB eMMC flash, and also includes three 4K HDMI inputs, LVDS and ultra-high-definition VX1 LCD screen interfaces, as well as Fast Ethernet and WiFI 5 connectivity. Geniatech DB982 specifications: SoC – Amlogic T982 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor up to 1.8GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP2 (2EE) GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1 and OpenCL 2.0 APIs AI accelerators – 2x NNA accelerators with INT8 inference performance up to 2.6 TOPS Manufacturing process – 12nm System Memory – 2GB (4GB optional) Storage – 16GB eMMC flash (8 to 128GB optional) Video Output 1x VX1 up to 8K resolution (CNXSoft: I suppose it stands for V-By-One interface) 1x 30-pin […]

September 12, 2022September 12, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Ztachip open-source RISC-V AI accelerator performs up to 50 times faster

Ztachip is an open-source RISC-V accelerator for vision and AI edge applications running on low-end FPGA devices or custom ASIC that is said to perform 20 to 50 times faster than on non-accelerated RISC-V implementations, and is also better than RISC-V cores with vector extensions (no numbers were provided here). Ztachip, pronounced zeta-chip, is not tied to a particular architecture, but the example code features a RISC-V core based on the VexRiscv implementation and can accelerate common computer vision tasks such as edge detection, optical flow, motion detection, color conversion, as well as TensorFlow AI models without retraining. The open-source AI accelerator has been tested on Digilent ArtyA7-100T FPGA board in combination with a PMOD VGA module to connect to a display and an OV7670 VGA camera module. You can then build the sample found on Github with the Xilinx Vivado Webpack free edition and flash it to the board […]