The RPGA Feather dev board pairs RP2040 chip with a Lattice iCE40 FPGA for sensor fusion projects

rpga feather board

Oak Development Technologies’ RPGA Feather board integrates the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller with the iCE5LP4K FPGA from Lattice Semiconductor into a compact development board in the Adafruit Feather form factor. The iCE5LP4K FPGA is an ultra-low-power chip in the iCE40 Ultra product family designed for mobile applications such as smartphones, tablets, and handhelds, while the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller makes it much easier to program the FPGA using CircuitPython. We have seen Oak Development Technologies’ earlier forays into FPGA Feather-compatible products such as the IcyBlue board (also based on iCE5LP4K FPGA) and the Lattice FeatherWing. RPGA Feather specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ 133 MHz with 264KB SRAM FPGA – Lattice Semiconductor iCE5LP4K FPGA Logic Cells – 3,520 logic cells Memory 80 Kbits of embedded Block RAM (EBR) Distributed RAM: 640 bits 2x hardware I2C blocks and 2x hardware SPI blocks 26 I/Os for customized interfaces […]

$20 Zigbee & Z-Wave mPCIe module targets Home Assistant gateways

Mixtile Zigbee Z Wave mini PCIe module

Mixtile’s “2-in-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave mPCIe module” is a relatively inexpensive way to add Zigbee and Z-Wave connectivity to a Home Assistant server without having USB dongles sticking out of the server and taking some of its spare USB ports. The module is compatible with any computer, gateway, or SBC with a spare mini PCIe socket featuring a USB 2.0 interface such as Rockchip RK3568-powered Mixtile Edge 2 Kit gateway. You’ll also need some way of mounting the antennas after connecting them to the IPEX-1 antenna connectors on the module, the Edge 2 Kit comes with multiple antenna holes. Mixtile 2-in-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave mPCIe module specifications: Wireless MCUs Silabs EFR32MG24 Arm Cortex-M33 @ 78.0 MHz with 256 kB RAM, 1536 kB flash Radio Frequency – 2.4 GHz (802.15.4 radio) TX Power – up to +19.5 dBm RX sensitivity – -105.4 dBm at 250 kbps Protocols – Zigbee, Matter, Thread […]

ArmSoM CM5 - Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC

Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVMe case for Raspberry Pi 5 brings all ports on one side, full-size HDMI ports

Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVMe case

The Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVMe case for the Raspberry Pi 5 is an update to the Argon ONE M.2 case for the Raspberry Pi 4 that brings all ports of the Raspberry Pi 5 on one side and features full-size HDMI ports instead of the micro HDMI ports on the Pi 5 SBC. Debashis has just written about the Waveshare Pi5 Connector Adapter board that connects to the micro HDMI and USB-C ports of the Raspberry Pi 5 to bring them alongside the other ports and features two full-size HDMI ports. It’s a good idea, but it lacks an enclosure. The Argon ONE M.2 NVMe case does something similar with an enclosure and supports for NVMe SSD drives. Argon ONE V3 M.2 NVMe case key features: SBC – Compatible with Raspberry Pi 5 Storage – M.2 NVMe SSD via Key-M socket connected to the Raspberry Pi 5 PCIe connector; […]

Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc debuts on the London Stock Exchange

Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc

You may soon be greeted by a chart when searching for the stock of Raspberry Pi boards simply because Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc is now a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) under the ticker RPI. The Raspberry Pi Foundation was founded in 2008 as a non-profit organization with Eben and Liz Upton (and others) taking a gamble manufacturing a few thousand Raspberry Pi model B boards for $35 apiece for the February 2012 launch. But things got quickly out of hand, and the unexpected success of the board meant Raspberry Pi Trading (then changed to Raspberry Pi Limited) for-profit had to be established to handle sales and retribute most of the profits to the non-profit entity. After having sold over 60  million Raspberry Pi boards, Raspberry Pi Limited is no more, following the listing of Raspberry Pi Holdings Plc. Since the company is now public, there’s […]

SONOFF Zigbee Bridge Ultra Review – eWelink app, Matter Bridge, Turbo Mode for extended range, and Home Assistant

SONOFF Zigbee Bridge Ultra Review

We have received two more Zigbee smart home products from ITEAD to review. It appears that SONOFF has strategically introduced a variety of Zigbee devices in the first half of this year. The first one we will be reviewing is the SONOFF Zigbee Bridge Ultra, which we believe will eventually replace the Zigbee Bridge (2020) and Zigbee Bridge Pro (2022) and comes with additional features, such as being a Matter Bridge. The second device we’ve received is the SONOFF Micro Zigbee USB Adapter for which we’ll post a review in the next few days, But first, let’s dive into the SONOFF Zigbee Bridge Ultra review. Overview SONOFF Zigbee Bridge Ultra (Ultra for short and also called SONOFF ZBBridge-U) is a multi-functional device. Compared to its predecessor, the Zigbee Bridge Pro, the Ultra shows big improvements in features and hardware specs. It boasts a much more powerful chip (Rockship RV1109 vs. […]

Purchase GEEKOM Mini Air12 mini PC for just $219 with cnxair12off coupon code (Sponsored)

GEEKOM Mini Air12 Discount Coupon Code

GEEKOM has just launched a promotion for its entry-level Mini Air12 mini PC powered by an Intel Processor N100 quad-core processor with 16GB DDR5 and a  512GB NVMe SSD. The low-power Windows 11 Pro mini PC is now sold for $219 on Amazon instead of $249, or a $30 discount when using the 12% discount coupon code cnxair12off. The mini PC supports up to three 4K displays through HDMI, mini DP, or USB-C ports, gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6 wireless connectivity, and a full-size SD card reader, and is equipped with five USB 3.2/2.0 ports for expansion. As a reminder, here are GEEKOM Mini Air12 specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N quad-core/quad-thread processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory – 16GB DDR5-4800 via SO-DIMM socket Storage 512GB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3 […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

GateMate Integrated Logic Analyzer (ILA) deep dive

Cologne FPGA ILA Gateware Design

CNXSoft: This is a guest article by Dave Fohrn, Embedded Software Engineer at Cologne Chip AG, that goes into detail about the company’s open-source integrated logic analyzer (ILA) for GateMate FPGA chips. A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a highly flexible integrated circuit in which complex logic circuits can be configured. They are often used as custom computing units in digital circuits because of their ability to process data quickly and in parallel using individually configured circuits. The digital circuits designed specifically for FPGAs are usually developed in a hardware description language such as Verilog or VHDL and are known as gateware. The term “gate” refers to the configurable digital logic units in the FPGA on which the individual gate circuits are implemented. An effective design can accelerate the computing process by strategically utilizing the various resources available in the FPGA, processing data in parallel, and intelligent implementing pipelining. A […]

GEEKOM A8 Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 tested on an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS mini PC

GEEKOM A8 mini PC Review Ubuntu 24.04 Linux

We’ve already checked out GEEKOM A8 mini PC hardware with an unboxing and a teardown, before testing the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS mini PC in Windows 11 Pro, and we’ll now report our experience with the GEEKOM A8 running Ubuntu 24.04 to see how it performs in Linux. We tested most features of the GEEKOM A8 mini PC on Ubuntu 24.04, ran several benchmarks to compare it to the similar GEEKOM A7 mini PC, performed storage and networking performance testing, ran stress test to check thermal performance, and measured fan noise and power consumption under various conditions. Installing Ubuntu 24.04 on the GEEKOM A8 mini PC As usual, we resized the Windows 11 partition to install Ubuntu 24.04 alongside Microsoft OS using a bootable USB flash drive created with the Ubuntu ISO. But you’ll notice BitLocker is enabled so the Ubuntu 24.04 installation can’t proceed. The installation wizard will ask […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products