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Nordic Semi Unveils nRF52840 Bluetooth 5 Ready SoC and Development Kit

Nordic Semiconductor nRF52xx Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz solutions are very often found in development kits and low power devices such as wearables, and it’s no surprise that the company introduced a new nRF52840 SoC supporting Bluetooth 5, the new standard promising twice the range, and four times the speed of BLE 4.x, as well as ANT, 802.15.4, 2.4GHz proprietary, and NFC connectivity. Nordic Semi nRF52840 key features and specifications: MCU – 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 @ 64 MHz with with FPU Memory & Storage – 256 KB RAM, 1MB Flash Connectivity Bluetooth 5-ready multiprotocol radio Bluetooth 5 data rate support: 2 Mbps, 1 Mbps, 500 kbps, 125 kbps 104 dB link budget for Bluetooth low energy -96 dBm sensitivity for Bluetooth low energy Programmable output power from +8 dBm to -20 dBm NFC-A tag on chip Single-ended antenna output (on-chip balun) I/Os USB – Full-speed 12 Mbps USB controller SPI up […]

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First Intel Apollo Lake J3455/J4205 Processor Benchmarks & Video Tests

Many products powered by Intel Apollo Lake processors have already been announced, but few are actually shipping, and I have yet to get one here. However, AndroidPC.es got hold of ASRock J4205-ITX and J3455-ITX motherboards powered by respectively a Pentium J4205 quad core processor and a Celeron J3455 quad core processor, run a few benchmarks, and tested videos in Windows 10 on the motherboards with Kodi 17 and MPC-HC.   Let’s have a look at some of the benchmarks to better understand of what we can expect from Apollo Lake desktop processors. First there’s not that much of a difference between Celeron J3455 (1,771 points) and Pentium 4205 (1,830 points) in PCMark Home Convetional benchmark, however you should clearly feel a boost in performance compared to systems with Intel Cherry Trail x5-Z8300 processor (1,141), and the score is getting fairly close to a mini PC with an Intel Core i3-5005U […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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How to Build and Flash ESPurna Open Source Firmware to Sonoff POW Wireless Switch

ITEAD Studio Sonoff family is comprised of various inexpensive ESP8266 WiFi power switch, and the company sent me two of their latest CE certified models with Sonoff TH16 + external temperature & humidity probe, and Sonoff POW to measure power consumption. I checked the hardware is the first part of the review, and used Sonoff TH16 to control a water pump with the stock firmware and Ewelink Android app in the second part. It works reasonably well, but it relies on the cloud, so if you lose your Internet connection or the service closed, you can’t control the relay manually anymore. Luckily, the UART pins are exposed on Sonoff switches so you can solder a 4-pin header and connect a USB to TTL to flash your own firmware. Please don’t connect Sonoff devices to the mains when programming them, it’s very dangerous, instead the USB to TTL board will power […]

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Hack Autonomous Driving into Your Car with Open Source Hardware Comma Neo and Open Pilot Software

George Hotz setup Comma.ai company and worked on a commercial project called Comma One to add autonomous driving to some car models, but then the US highway authorities started to ask questions and promised ever increasing fines if he could not comply with some specific safety regulations/requirements, and eventually he decided to cancel the project due to the regulatory burden. A few weeks passed since the cancellation, and he has now released Open Pilot auto-pilot software and Comma NEO a work-in-progress open source hardware platform connecting to Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 powered OnePlus 3 smartphone to run the software. The system is said to implement “Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) for Hondas and Acuras”, and performs about the same as “Tesla Autopilot at launch, and better than all other manufacturers”. Open Pilot currently only supports the Acura ILX 2016 with AcuraWatch Plus and the Honda Civic […]

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reMarkable 10.3″ Digital Notepad and e-Reader is Designed to Feel Like Paper

If you like to take notes with pen and paper, but would prefer a digital solution to store your note, there are already some solutions like Boogie Board and Rocketbook, but reMarkable offers much more that the other two with a 10.3″ E-Ink touchscreen display and pressure sensitive pen capable of detecting 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, it allows to read books as any e-readers, and also write your own notes on a blank piece of “paper” or existing digital documents, drawing sketches, and save & share the results. The whole user experience is supposed to feel as if you were reading and writing on paper. reMarkable tablet specifications: SoC – ARM Cortex A9 processor @ 1 GHz (Likely NXP i.MX6 series processor since they support EPD interfaces) System Memory – 512 MB DDR3L Storage – 8GB internal storage good for around 100,000 pages Display – 10.3″ monochrome digital paper […]

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Theobroma Announces Rockchip RK3368 and RK3399 Qseven System-on-Modules

Theobroma Systems, an embedded system company based in Austria, has designed several Allwinner systems-on-module compliant with μQseven & Qseven standards in the past. The company has now started to work with Rockchip and reached “an advanced design stage” for the development of μQseven and QSeven systems-on-module powered by RK3368 and RK3399 processors. RK3368-uQ7 module specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3368 octa-Core ARM Cortex-A53 processor up to 1.2GHz with Imagination Technologies PowerVR G6110 GPU System Memory – up to 4GB DDR3-1600 SDRAM on-module (512MB, 1GB, 2GB (default) and 4GB configuration available) Storage – Up to 128GB eMMC flash on-module (8GB default), 16 Mbit to 128 Mbit SPI NOR flash on-module Video Capabilities –  H.264 decoding up to 2160p30, H.265 decoding up to 2160p60, video encoding up to 1080p30 Connectivity – GbE PHY on-module CAN – On-module communication offload controller for CAN 230-pin MXM edge connector with: 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet USB – 1x […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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Getting Started with Pine64 PADI IoT Stamp – Part 2: Serial Console, GCC SDK, Flashing & Debugging Code

PADI IoT Stamp module powered by Realtek RTL8710AF ARM Cortex M3 WiFi SoC is a potential competitor to Espressif ESP8266 modules.  Pine64, the manufacturer of the module, sent me their kit with a $2 IoT stamp, a breakout board, a USB to TTL debug board and a J-Link debug board. In the first part of the review I’ve shown the hardware and how to assemble PADI IoT stamp kit. In the second part I’m going to write a tutorial / getting start guide showing how to control the board with AT commands, build the firmware with GCC SDK, and finally demonstrate how to flash and debug the firmware with the J-Link debugger. The Quick Start Guide indicates you need to connect the USB to TTL debug board to UART2 instead of UART1 as I did on the very similar B&T RTL-00 RTL8710AF module, and set connection settings to 38400 8N1. […]

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Intel Apollo Lake Compute Sticks Coming in Q2 2017

Apollo Lake processors have been announced in mini PCs, laptops, development boards, systems-on-module, as well as in Intel’s own NUCs. A new leaked roadmap has now revealed that Intel plans to two Apollo Lake “Michigan City” compute sticks sometimes around Q2 2017. There will be two yet-to-be-named models: Windows OS – 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash No OS – 4GB RAM, 64 GB eMMC flash Both devices will come with 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and an HDMI port with CEC support, as well as a 1- year warranty. That’s all we know from the leaked roadmap. Price should probably be only slightly higher than to the one of Atom Cherry Trail HDMI TV sticks, considering UP2 Board is selling for 89 Euros (Celeron N3350 dual core version) and 169 Euros (Pentium N4200 quad core version) , and […]

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