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The Epi C3 is a tiny ESP32-C3 development board with USB-C and an onboard antenna

The Epi C3 is a small development board based on the Espressif ESP32-C3 microcontroller with a USB-C connector for power and programming and an onboard ceramic antenna for wireless applications. We have previously covered several tiny ESP32-C3 development boards such as the Microflex series, ESP32-C3-0.42LCD, the XIAO ESP32C3, and LOLIN’s C3 Mini and C3 Pico. The Epi C3 claims the title of the “smallest ESP32 dev board with USB-C and an onboard antenna.”  It uses a Johanson ceramic antenna with a “surprising range for its size” and the USB-C port is sunk into the board to reduce footprint. The ESP32-C3 microcontroller on the Epi C3 board is much more powerful than the 8-bit AVR chip on its predecessor, the Epi 32U4. The Epi C3, however, retains many of the older board’s protective features, including TVS diodes on the USB data lines and power input, a 500mA on the USB power […]

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MSI MS-CF13 is a fanless mini-ITX motherboard powered by Intel N97, Core i3-N305, or Atom x7425E Alder Lake-N SoC

MSI MS-CF13 is a low-profile, low-power, fanless mini-ITX motherboard offered with a choice of Alder Lake-N processors namely Intel Processor N97, Intel Core i3-N305, or Intel Atom x7425E SoC. The motherboard supports up to 16GB DDR5 SO-DIMM memory and SATA III storage, features dual 2.5GbE, six internal COM ports, six USB interfaces, M.2 Key-B and Key-E sockets for wireless expansion, and supports up to three independent display through up to two DisplayPort, one HDMI, LVDS/eDP display interfaces, MSI MS-CF13 specifications: Alder Lake N-series SoC (one or the other) Intel Atom x7425E quad-core processor up to 3.4 GHz with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD Graphics @ 1.00 GHz; TDP: 12W Intel Processor N97 quad-core processor up to 3.6 GHz with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD Graphics @ 1.20 GHz; TDP: 12W Intel Core i3-N305 octa-core processor up to 3.8 GHz with 6MB cache, 32EU Intel UHD Graphics @ 1.25 GHz; TDP: […]

ArmSoM CM5 Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC
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Mayhem v2 expansion for Flipper Zero adds Wi-Fi, BLE, camera, microSD card slot, and NRF24 or CC1101 radio support

Erwin Ried‘s Mayhem v2 is an all-in-one ESP32 and NRF24L01-based expansion board designed for Flipper Zero. This board adds Bluetooth and Wi-Fi through an ESP32-S module, features 2MP camera with flashlight, a microSD card slot, and support for either an NRF24L01 module (for sniffing and mousejacking) or a CC1101 module (for external radio communication). These features make this Flipper Zero add-on board useful for WiFi and Bluetooth penetration testing, motion detection, QR code reading, and as a nanny cam with remote access. Previously we have written about similar expansion boards like the Flipper Zero ESP8266 Deauther which adds de-authentication capabilities and the Flipper Add-On CANBus which can be used to sniff, send, and log CAN bus packets directly from the Flipper Zero. Feel free to check those out if you are interested in those tools. Mayhem v2 Flipper Zero add-on board specification Wireless Module – ESP32-S WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + […]

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Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro – A Rockchip RK3576-powered Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with up to 16GB RAM, 128GB flash, a 6 TOPS NPU

Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro, also called ArmSoM-CM5, is a Rockchip RK3576 system-on-module electrically and mechanically compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4 while offering up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB eMMC flash, and a 6 TOPS AI accelerator embedded into the RK3576 SoC. It comes with a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless module, a PMIC for power management, and two 100-pin connectors mostly compatible with the pinout of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. ArmSoM also provides a CM5-IO carrier board to make use of the extra USB 3.0 and PCIe interfaces, and the company told CNX Software they tested the module successfully with the official Raspberry Pi CM4 IO board. Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU – 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.0, […]

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Android 15 runs on Linaro development boards based on Qualcomm and HiSilicon chips

Android 15 source code was just pushed to AOSP last week, and Linaro has already ported it to four reference development boards based on Qualcomm and HiSilicon/Huawei chips namely Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devboard (SM8550-HDK), Qualcomm Robotics Board RB5, Qualcomm Dragonboard 845c (DB845c, aka RB3) and HiSilicon Hikey960. Recent Google Pixel phones can already get Android 15 beta, but that makes the aforementioned development boards some of the first hardware platforms running Android 15 which could be useful to app developers and people wanting to customize Android 15 OS for their target product(s). Android 15 worked on the same day as the release to AOSP thanks to a collaboration between Linaro and Google to make sure reference boards get support as soon as possible, and in this case, we had a “0-day boot” as Linaro puts it. This collaboration started in 2022 with Qualcomm Robotics RB3 and RB5 platforms getting […]

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ECS ADLN-IE1S – A 3.5-inch Alder Lake-N industrial motherboard with solid capacitors and 15µ gold contact

ECS Industrial Computer has recently launched the ECS ADLN-IE1S 3.5-inch industrial motherboard built around the Intel Alder Lake-N SoC family. Other than that, the motherboard supports DDR5 memory, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, and triple display capabilities via a dual HDMI port, and an LVDS port. It also features multiple expansion slots for SSDs and WiFi modules including various I/O options including USB 3.2, serial ports, GPIO, and more. The motherboard is designed for industrial applications, so it has a wide operating temperature range making it suitable for applications including automation, control systems, digital signage, and kiosks. Previously we have written about motherboards designed for industrial applications like the DFI RPS310, the ASRock  NUC Ultra 100 motherboards, the Kontron K3931-N mITX, and many others. The main difference is that this new ESC ADLN-IE1S motherboard comes in a 3.5-inch form factor whereas the other comes in a MINI-ITX or MICRO-ATX form factor. ECS ADLN-IE1S […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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LicheePi 3A – A SpacemIT K1 RISC-V development board with SoM and carrier board

Sipeed LicheePi 3A is a development board comprised of the LM3A system-on-module based on SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V SoC and the same baseboard as found in the earlier LicheePi 4A equipped with a T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V “LM4A” system-on-module instead. The LicheePi 3A is currently offered with a 32GB eMMC flash and 8GB or 16GB LPDDR4x memory. The carrier board provides a microSD card, two M.2 PCIe sockets for storage or other expansion, two gigabit Ethernet ports, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module, HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, four USB 3.0 ports, and a 20-pin GPIO header for expansion. Sipeed LicheePi 3A specifications: Sipeed LM3A SoM SoC – SpacemiT K1 CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.2, OpenCL 3.0; 20 GFLOPS VPU – H.265 and H.264 1080p60 decoding/encoding NPU […]

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How to recover a “bricked” Raspberry Pi Pico 2 or other RP2350 board

In theory, it’s close to impossible to brick your Raspberry Pi Pico 2 or other RP2350 boards because the bootrom code (source code) is stored in the 32KB ROM of the microcontroller and is by definition “read-only memory”.  But I managed to “brick” my Raspberry Pi Pico 2 the other day, and even a blinky sample would not run on the board. So I’ll explain a simple method to recover/perform a factory reset of sorts. First, let me explain what happened. My board became unusable after I ran the following command while building RISC-V Linux for RP2035 and my Pico 2 was connected to the build machine:

At some point, it will copy a UF2 firmware binary designed for boards with PSRAM which the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 lacks:

After that, I could still see the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board as an “RP2350” drive on my computer, […]

Boardcon EM3562 Rockchip RK3562 SBC with 8 analog camera inputs