CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 2, 2021November 4, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 184 Comments

Giveaway Week – WisBlock Kit 2 LoRa-based GPS Tracker with Solar Panel

The second prize of CNX Software’s giveaway week does not come directly from me, but instead, RAKwireless accepted to offer a sample to add to the event: Wisblock Kit 2. The kit is a LoRa-based GPS tracker that comes with a sensor to detect location change every set time interval, and ships with a solar panel, although you could also offer it with a set of batteries (not included). Since I’ve never written about this kit, let’s go through the main building blocks: RAK5005-O base board Slots for 1x WisBlock Core MCU module, up to 4x WisBlock Sensor modules, and one WisBlock IO module I2C, UART, GPIO’s and analog input accessible with solder contacts Debugging – USB debug port Misc- 2x user LED’s, reset button Supports 3 different power supply sources 1 slot for WisBlock Core MCU RAK4631 Wisblock Core module WiSoC – Nordic nRF52840 with Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 […]

November 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

10-channel floor heating valve controller supports Tasmota, MQTT, Home Assistant

Voltlog has designed an open-source hardware floor heating valve controller powered by an ESP32 WiFi module making it compatible with Tasmota open-source firmware, and by extension MQTT protocol and Home Assistant automation framework. The board can control up to 10 valves triac controlled outputs and spring connectors for a floor home heating system, and also offers a one-wire srping connector, an I2C header, and safety features with two fuses, although it’s obviously not UL nor TUV certified. Voltlog decided to design his own board instead of buying off-the-shelf solutions because of the high price of such products and the lack of open-source firmware for integration into a home automation server powered by Home Assistant. You can flash firmware to the ESP32 either through a VoltLink USB to Serial converter or you can use your own USB to serial converter module through the on-board JST-SH 1.0mm pitch 6 pin connector. This […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

November 1, 2021November 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W vs Radxa Zero – Features and benchmarks comparison

The just-announced Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is not the first quad-core Arm SBC following Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, and back in 2017, the Banana Pi BPI-M2 Zero was introduced for $15, and the Radxa Zero was unveiled last June with an Amlogic S905Y2 SoC with price starting at $15 as well. With its Allwinner H2+ quad-core Cortex-A7 processor clocked at 1 GHz and a price bumped up to $23, the Banana Pi M2 Zero has mostly become irrelevant, but the Radxa Zero may still be considered by some people with a 1.8 GHz processor, and options for up to 4GB RAM, so let’s see how features compare against Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, followed by some benchmark numbers. Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W vs Raxda Zero – Features If we just look at the comparison table, the Radxa Zero is equivalent or superior in almost every way, except […]

November 1, 2021November 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 295 Comments

Giveaway Week – NanoPi R2S gateway

Here’s the 8th edition of CNX Software giveaway week! I’ll have seven items to give away to readers in the 2021 event with some help from two companies as I was short on available samples this year. We’ll start with NanoPi R2S gateway based on Rockchip RK3328 SoC, and equipped with 1 GB DDR4 RAM as well as two Gigabit Ethernet ports. I reviewed NanoPi R2S gateway at the end of last year with Armbian built Ubuntu 20.04 Focal, and it performed well under load thanks to the metal enclosure and optimized OS. The main downside is having a USB 2.0 port, especially if you intend to use it as external storage, but that’s the cost of having two Gigabit Ethernet ports on Rockchip RK3328 SoC, with one of those using the USB 3.0 interface. The giveaway includes the board and metal enclosure. It is already fully assembled. So you’ll […]

October 31, 2021November 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Status of Zephyr and NuttX RTOS support for ESP32

Espressif has recently announced that both Zephyr and NuttX open-source real-time operating systems had gotten official support for the ESP32 series of WiSoCs. It’s been a long time in the making, and when I first tried the community developer port of Zephyr OS on ESP32 in 2018 it did not work well at all, and I could not even make the blink LED sample work on Wemos Lolin32 board, and the WiFi sample would not even build. But time has passed, Espressif Systems started to officially work on Zephyr in 2020, and now I/Os, WiFi, and some other features work on Zephyr and NuttX RTOSes. Zephyr on ESP32 We first wrote about the Zephyr Project in 2016 describing the OS as follows: Zephyr Project is a lightweight real-time operating system (RTOS) designed for IoT applications and comprised of a microkernel for lower priority tasks, as well as a nanokernel to […]

October 30, 2021December 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Build an open source-hardware Allwinner D1s RISC-V Linux SBC for under $10

We covered Allwinner D1s RISC-V processor with 64MB built-in RAM a few days ago, and we’ve just found out about Xassette-Asterisk, an open-source hardware board based on the processor that runs Linux (OpenWrt) and is said to cost less than $10 to make. This is significantly cheaper than the Allwinner D1 based Nezha RISC-V Linux SBC currently sold for a little over $100, a rather poor value. The cheaper board will not quite have the same applications with just 64 MB RAM and no HDMI, but it could be great for projects requiring a camera and/or a display, audio interfaces, plus some I/Os. Xassette-Asterisk specifications: SoC – Allwinner D1s single-core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 1.008 GHz with 64MB DDR2 Storage – MicroSD card slot, 32 MBit SPI flash (W25Q32 – U2 on the board) Display I/F – 40-pin LCD connector, 6-pin touch panel interface, backlight power Camera I/F – 24-pin […]

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

October 29, 2021November 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Jetson SUB mini PC ships with Xavier NX SoM, 128GB SSD

Jetson SUB is a mini PC powered by NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module and equipped with a 512GB 128GB SSD, a WiFi module, all housed in an aluminum case with a cooling fan. [Update Nov 1, 2021: Seeed Studio informed me the SSD would only have 128 GB capacity] Preloaded with NVIDIA Jetpack, the mini PC is designed for higher-end edge AI and IoT workloads leveraging the 384 NVIDIA CUDA cores, 48 Tensor cores, the hexa-core Carmel 64-bit Arm processor, and the two NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerators (NVDLA) engines from the Xavier NX SoC. Jetson SUB mini PC specifications: NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module CPU – 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARMv8.2 64-bit processor with 6 MB L2 + 4 MB L3 cache GPU – NVIDIA Volta architecture with 384 NVIDIA CUDA cores and 48 Tensor cores Accelerators – 2x NVDLA Engines, 7-Way VLIW Vision Processor Video – Multiple 4Kp60 encode, multiple […]

October 29, 2021November 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W mini review – Benchmarks and thermal performance

The Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board yesterday with the main difference against Raspberry Pi Zero W board being the much faster Raspberry Pi RP3A0 SiP with a Broadcom quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1.0 GHz and overclockable to 1.2 GHz. I received my sample shortly after publishing the announcement, and I had time to test it. Since the main difference is the processor, I’ll focus this review on benchmarks and whether additional cooling is required for the board. Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W kit unboxing If you purchase the board for $15, that’s all you’ll get, but Raspberry Pi Trading sent me a kit with Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W SBC, a USB OTG adapter, a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter, the CSI camera cable, and four rubber pad for the enclosure that comes with three covers: full, hole for 40-pin GPIO header, or […]