CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 13, 2021December 29, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

DIY Raspberry Pi 4 mini server includes UPS and OLED information display

While the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC has greater multimedia capabilities, it can also be used for headless projects like mini servers or networked access storage (NAS). Michael Klements’ DIY Raspberry Pi 4 mini server is especially interesting as it’s cute, and includes a UPS to handle power failures, plus an OLED display to show information. Here’s the final result. Ideally, you’d need a laser cutter and a 3D printer like the Ender 3 Pro to make the case, but most of the parts are off-the-shelf components including: A Raspberry Pi 4 SBC together with a 32GB MicroSD card for the operating system 52Pi/GeeekPi UPS Plus module (about $25) plus one or two 18650 Lithium-Ion Cells A Low Profile Ice Tower for cooling, but you could probably switch to your own (passive) cooling solution and make the device slightly more compact A 128×64 I2C OLED Display A 5V/3A Power Supply Accessories […]

July 13, 2021July 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Station M2 business-card sized Android 11 mini PC, also supports Ubuntu & Buildroot

After introducing Station P2 Rockchip RK3568 mini PC in March of this year, Firefly has now launched another, cheaper model with the ultra-thin Station M2 computer based on the company’s ROC-RK3566-PC single board computer equipped with Rockchip RK3566 SoC. Station M2 is only slightly larger than a business card, but packs up to 8GB RAM, M.2 SSD storage, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.0/2.0 ports. Station M2 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 with a quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 1.8GHz. 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 AI accelerator, 4K H.265/H.265/VP9 video decoder, 1080p100 H.265/H.264 video encoder. System Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 (8GB optional) Storage – 32GB or 64GB (128GB eMMC optional), M.2 PCIe 2.0 socket for 2242 NVMe SSD, MicroSD card socket Video Output – 1x HDMI port up to 4Kp60 Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

July 13, 2021July 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

DIY Linux e-Reader – postmarketOS now runs on Kobo Clara HD

postmarketOS is a Linux operating system designed for phones, notably the PinePhone, and based on Alpine Linux. But now it’s possible to install the Linux distribution on Kobo Clara HD e-Reader (about $115), so you could have your own Linux e-Reader in a way that’s more versatile than with commercial solutions. The image can either be based on the vendor kernel or the mainline kernel. The latter works without modification to the X server, and the framebuffer can be used directly with either kernel, but most free e-reader programs such as koreader, plato, and inkbox are developed for the slightly different framebuffer API used in the vendor kernel. The demo below relies on Sxmo UI optimized for the PinePhone, and Martijn Braam notes that it can be pretty hard notably because only one hardware button is present on the Kobo device while the interface requires 3 hardware input buttons. But […]

July 12, 2021July 14, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

NodeMCU ESP32-C3 WiFi & BLE IoT boards show up for about $4

ESP32-C3 RISC-V IoT processor with 2.4 WiFI and Bluetooth LE 5.0 was unveiled in December 2020, and Espressif Systems’ own ESP32-C3-DevKitM-1 board has been available in limited quantities as an “engineering sample”. But now I’ve noticed third-party NodeMCU ESP32-C3 boards are being sold on Aliexpress for around $4 with ESP32-C3S_Kit and ESP-C3-01M-Kit both based on AI Thinker ESP32-C3 modules announced a few months ago. NodeMCU ESP32-C3S_KIt Specifications: Wireless module – AI Thinker ESP32-C3S (footprint compatible with ESP32-S / ESP32-WROOM-32D) with ESP32-C3 RISC-V processor @ 160 MHz, 2.4 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, 4MB flash, on-board PCB antenna, and IPEX connector (which may be soldered or not). USB – Micro USB port for power and programming via CH340C USB to TTL chip Expansion – 2x 15-pin headers with GPIO, SPI, UART, ADC, I2S, 3.3V, GND Misc – RGB LED, Reset key, user-programmable key Dimensions – 49 x 26 mm ESP32-C3S_Kit is […]

July 12, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

PiSugar S and PiSugar S Pro – Lower cost batteries for Raspberry Pi

PiSugar battery for the Raspberry Pi Zero was introduced around two years ago, followed the next year with a 5,000mAh PiSugar 2 battery for Raspberry Pi 3/4 which is currently sold for $49.99. But the company has now designed lower-cost versions of the batteries with PiSugar S for Raspberry Pi Zero board, and PiSugar S Pro for Raspberry Pi 3/4 single board computers. PiSugar S Pro – Battery for Raspberry Pi 3/4 PiSugar S Pro offers a 5,000 mAh battery capacity with up to 3A output current for a typical battery life of 8 to 10 hours. A micro USB port and a USB Type-C port can be used for charging. The board also adds a GPIO button to turn on and off the Raspberry Pi board cleanly, or alternatively can be used as a custom button when the board is running. The battery module also supports the UPS function […]

July 11, 2021July 12, 2021 by Karl Johnson - 2 Comments

Laser focusing on Laser Master 2 Pro and optimal line spacing

Karl Here. I am going to break up the review process for the Ortur Laser Master 2 Pro (LM2Pro) into smaller bite-size bits instead of one long review. I can get into more details and share what I learned. You can check out the initial unboxing and initial impressions in Ortur Laser Master 2 Pro laser engraver – First impressions. Let’s start first with focusing the laser. Focusing the laser I have a problem, I don’t feel like I can reliably focus the same way every time so I created a little focusing contraption. I got inspiration from my CNC machine and Z probe. It is just a simple jig that completes a circuit when the lens touches the end of the M3 screw to illuminate the led. I feel like I can have better repeatability. I’ll step through my process of calibrating it. First, I focused the laser with […]

July 10, 2021July 10, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Intel Alder Lake hybrid mobile processor family to range from 5W to 55W TDP (leak)

Intel Alder Lake Mobile Hybrid Processors

Intel’s first foray into hybrid processors using Foveros 3D stacking technology did not end well with the company just announcing the end of the life for Lakefield hybrid processors. But the company is not giving up on hybrid technology, and a recent leak shows the Intel Alder Lake family comprised of more powerful mobile hybrid processors will be offered for a wide range of applications from tablets with 5-7W M5 processors and up to “muscle laptops” or mobile workstations (MWS) with H55 processor at 45-55W TDP. Alder Lake hybrid processors will be comprised of high-performance CPU “Golden Cove” cores and energy-efficient Atom-based “Gracemont” CPU cores, in a way that’s similar to Arm’s Cortex-A7x big cores and Cortex-A5x LITTLE cores with big.LITTLE or DynamIQ processing with the goal of optimizing power consumption. The Intel Alder Lake Mobile SKU stack includes processors for 6 market segments including three “new” segments/TDP ranges according […]

July 9, 2021July 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Nokia E63 phone converted into LoRa messenger for secure, off-the-grid communication

While LoRa radios are mostly designed to transmit data from sensors and to actuators, there have been attempts to leverage LoRa for messaging in the past with, for instance, the Meshtastic Mesh Networking Project to help hikers exchanged their GPS coordinates or other short messages, the Raspberry Pi Pico powered PICOmputer with QWERTY keyboard, display, and a LoRa module, and Pine64 is also working on developing LoRa hardware for messaging. Trevor Attema decided to repurpose his Nokia E63 Blackberry-like phone with a custom STM32H7 board with a LoRa radio while keeping the enclosure, display, backlighting, keyboard, and speaker which he calls the Off The Grid Messenger, or OTG Messenger for shorts. The custom board also adds Microchip ATECC608 crypto authentication chip for encrypted messages, and the LoRa Messenger would allow a theoretical transmission range of 16 kilometers in line of sight which would allow a small group of people to […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications