CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 19, 2021May 19, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Android 12 Beta released with revamped user interface

Google has just announced the release of Android 12 Beta. We already covered the first Android 12 developer preview with changes including support for AVIF image format, trust and safety improvement, and enhanced media transcoding. But with the release of Android 12 Beta, Google also introduced significant changes to the user interface created with a design language called Material You, plus some new features that we’ll explore in this post. The most notable user-facing changes include: Personalization – Your phone can now be personalized with a custom color palette and redesigned widgets. This is done automatically using color extraction from your wallpaper images, and Android 12 applies those colors across the entire OS including the notification shade, the lock screen, the volume controls, new widgets, etc… Fluid motion and animations – Google optimized the system to make animations more fluid by reducing the CPU time needed for core system services […]

May 19, 2021May 19, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 7 Comments

Beelink GKmini Review – An Intel Celeron J4125 mini PC reviewed with Windows 10 Pro, Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink have recently released another small form factor (SFF) design similar to the traditional Intel ‘NUC’ called the GKmini which they have provided for review. Available as a fully configured Windows 10 Pro mini PC means it can be up and running straight out of the box. Hardware Overview The Beelink GKmini physically consists of a 115mm x 102mm x 43mm (4.53 x 4.02 x 1.69 inches) rectangular plastic case. It is an actively cooled mini PC and uses Intel’s 14 nm J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor boosting to 2.70 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics 600. The front panel has a power button, a headphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports, and a ‘CLR CMOS’ pinhole that leads to a button which when pressed clears the CMOS. The rear panel includes the power jack, dual HDMI ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, a further […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

May 19, 2021December 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

去赶潮！CNX Software is now available in Chinese

Short story: CNX Software is now available in Chinese at CNX SOFTWARE中文站—嵌入式开发者的新闻知识库！ thanks to a collaboration with RAKwireless. And now for the longer story. I was born in a small town in the middle of France on the morning of a snowy spring day. Alright, maybe I’ll skip the part about my childhood 🙂 I’ve been writing a lot about Chinese processors, boards, and other electronics products over the years, but my story with China started in November 2002 when I went to Shenzhen to work for a French company spending my time developing hardware and software for CD and DVD players. Eventually, I worked for Hong Kong companies with offices in Guangdong province and Hong Kong for products like VoIP phones, and later IPTV boxes as well as Karaoke systems. But when I moved to Thailand for personal reasons in 2010, CNX Software was already running as a backup […]

May 18, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

DSBOX-NX2 – An NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Industrial Fanless PC

Turkish company Forecr has launched DSBOX-NX2 NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX based industrial fanless PC equipped with the company’s own DSBoard-NX2 carrier board and designed for “multi-stream deep learning edge analytics” and IIoT applications. The compact embedded computer comes with 8GB RAM, up to 2TB SSD storage, as well as HDMI 2.0 output, Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.1 ports for high resolution cameras, serial ports, and some GPIOs among other features. Forecr DSBOX-NX2 specifications: System-on-Module – NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module with hexa-core NVIDIA Carmel ARM v8.2 64-bit processor, NVIDIA Volta GPU with 384 CUDA core & 48 Tensor Cores, 8 GB 128-bit LPDDR4x, 16GB eMMC flash Storage – M.2 Key M SSD slot, MicroSD card slot Video Ouput – 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 3840×2160 at 60 Hz Networking Gigabit Ethernet Wireless – WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G LTE, 5G connectivity by extension sockets USB – 2x USB 3.1 Type-A Expansion 1x […]

May 18, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

OpenMV PureThermal STM32H7 board overlays thermal map on RGB image

We’ve been writing about OpenMV open-source camera boards programmable with MicroPython at least since 2015, with the latest model OpenMV Cam H7 based on STM32H7 Cortex-M7 microcontroller introduced in 2018. But the company has now gone a step further with OpenMV PureThermal board equipped with a more powerful STM32H7 dual-core Arm Cortex-M7/M4microcontroller, and supporting FLIR Lepton 2 to 3.5 thermal imagers, allowing the system to overlay the thermal map on top of the image like an augmented reality app would do. It can do so on the integrated LCD display or on an HDMI display. OpenMV PureThermal features & specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32H7 Arm Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz) and Cortex-M4 @ 240 MHz microcontroller Memory – 64MB SDRAM Storage – 32 MB of QSPI flash for the firmware, a microSD card slot for saving pictures and machine vision assets Display 800×480 touch Screen LCD DVI out for driving an […]

May 18, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

System76 Launch is an open-source hardware, configurable keyboard

System76, the company better known for its Linux laptops, has launched an open-source hardware, configurable keyboard. Meet System76 Launch. The keyboard firmware, schematics, and mechanical files are all open-source. Launch ships with an ANSI US QWERTY layout but can be customized through a configuration program for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and a key puller is included to easily replace/change keycaps as needed. System76 Launch keyboard specifications: Open-source custom PCB Individually addressable RGB LED backlighting N-Key Rollover to detect all keystrokes no matter how many keys are pressed simultaneously Sockets and Switches Kailh MX Hotswap Sockets Kailh Box Jade or Kailh Box Royal Switches Key Caps – PBT plastic, dye sublimated legend, XDA profile Layout – ANSI US QWERTY Integrated USB hub with 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C (Up to 10 Gbps), 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A (Up to 10 Gbps) Open-source milled chassis design with detachable […]

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

May 17, 2021May 17, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect WiFi & Bluetooth board launched for $25.50

Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect without headers

The Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board was announced the day of Raspberry Pi Pico launch as one of the third-party boards featuring Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller. At the time all we had was renders of the board, later on, the company showcased some mass product photos, and then released Arduino Core mbed 2.0 for the board last month. But it’s only today that it has become possible to purchase Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board for $25.50 on Arduino store with headers. Nano RP2040 Connect specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex M0+ microcontroller @ 133 MHz with 264 kB of embedded SRAM Storage – 16MB Flash IC (AT25SF128A) Connectivity – WiFi 4 & Bluetooth LE via Nina W102 uBlox module (Yes, that’s an ESP32 module.) USB – Micro USB port I/Os via 2x 15-pin headers (through and castellated holes) 20x digital I/O pins, 20x PWM pins, 20x […]

May 17, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Why you should request open-source software for your IoT devices

PineTime open-source software Gadgetbridge

I usually think of open-source hardware and/or software are enabling skilled people to more easily fix bugs, improve on the design, get feedback from the community, etc… But in a world where IoT devices become more prevalent, there’s another reason why you should request open-source software: Long term support. What made me think about are two things. The first one if that I own WeLoop Hey 3S smartwatch, which I love and wear since March 2018. That’s quite a feat since most cheap devices I own often only last a few months or a year or so. I’m also used to the watch face and Weloop app interface. So what’s the problem exactly? WeLoop company closed on December 31, 2019, and while the app worked fine for about a year after that, recently I have been unable to login to the app to access my data and/or update settings for […]