FireBeetle 2 ESP32 C6 IoT Development Board with Wi Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, Solar Powered
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This new ESP32-C6-based IoT development board supports solar battery charging

DFRobot’s FireBeetle 2 ESP32-C6 is an IoT Development Board with 802.11ax (now called Wi-Fi 6), Bluetooth 5, Zigbee 3.0, Thread 1.3, and flexible power options including USB Type-C, 5V DC, and a CN3165 Lithium Ion battery charger for solar-powered systems. This isn’t the first solar-based board we’ve covered. We’ve also explored boards like Conexio Stratus, Wisblock Kit 2, and RAK8211-NB iTracker along with other solar-powered devices such as solar-powered laptops, solar-powered headphones, and even a solar-based power supply. FireBeetle 2 ESP32-C6 IoT Development Board Specifications: Processor – ESP32-C6 RISC-V single-core, 160 MHz Memory SRAM – 512KB ROM – 320KB Flash – 4MB RTC SRAM – 16KB USB – USB 2.0 CDC Wi-Fi Protocols – IEEE 802.11b/g/n, IEEE 802.11ax (20 MHz-only non-AP mode) Bandwidth – Supports 20 MHz and 40 MHz at 2.4 GHz Modes – Station, SoftAP, SoftAP+Station Frequency – 2.4GHz Frame Aggregation – TX/RX A-MPDU, TX/RX A-MSDU Bluetooth Protocol […]

OpenWrt One AP-24.XY
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OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY is an upcoming router board developed by OpenWrt and Banana Pi

OpenWrt developers have started the process to develop the “OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY” router board based on MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) SoC and MediaTek MT7976C dual-band WiFi 6 chipset, and designed in collaboration with Banana Pi that will also handle manufacturing and distribution of the router board. As of the OpenWrt 23.05 release, close to 1,800 routers and other devices are officially supported by the lightweight embedded Linux operating system, and many more claim to be running OpenWrt through a fork of the OS. But none of those are made by OpenWrt developers who have now decided to create their own router board in collaboration with Banana Pi since they’ve done such boards including the BPI-R4 WiFi 7 router SBC. OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY preliminary specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) dual-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.3 GHz System Memory – 1GB DDR4 Storage 128 MB SPI NAND flash for U-boot and Linux 4 […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
ASROCK Industrial 14th gen mini-ITX micro-ATX ATX motherboards
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ASRock Industrial upgrades mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX motherboards for Intel Core 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S Refresh processors

ASRock Industrial has just announced 25 (twenty-five!) industrial motherboards powered by 14th gen Intel Core Raptor Lake-S Refresh hybrid processors with up to 24 cores and 32 threads introduced last October, and supporting up to 96GB DDR5 4800/5600 memory. The thin and high-rise mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX industrial motherboards support up to four 4K displays, PCIe Gen5 interfaces,  up to three 2.5GbE ports (and 10GbE LAN for the IMB-X1316-10G model), and USB 3.2 Gen2x2 (20 Gbps) ports for factory automation, robotics, machine vision, smart retail, kiosks, digital signage, gaming, security, and more. I would usually list the specifications of the motherboards, but since we have 25 different models, I’ll skip that and provide a summary. One reason ASRock Industrial has so many models is that those are existing motherboards with socketed processors and the company offered 12th and 13th gen CPUs so far, and the company simply updated the BIOS […]

UP 7000 Ubuntu 22.04 review
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UP 7000 SBC review – Part 2: Ubuntu 22.04 on a fanless Intel N100 single board computer

The UP 7000 is a credit card-sized Alder Lake-N single board computer that can be used as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5 for industrial applications. AAEON sent me a model with an Intel Processor N100 CPU, 8GB LPDDR5, and a 64GB eMMC flash, and I went through an unboxing in the first part of the review, compared its mechanical design to the earlier UP 4000 and Raspberry Pi 5 SBC , and also installed Ubuntu 22.04 since the UP 7000 board did not come with any OS and would initially boot to the UEFI shell. I’ve now spent more time with the board and I will report my experience with the UP 7000 SBC running Ubuntu 22.04 in this article checking out features, performance, video playback, power consumption, and so on using the UP 4000 review with Ubuntu 22.04 I did last year as a template plus some […]

PicoUART6 Raspberry Pi 5 UART USB bridge
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PicoUART6 6x UART to USB bridge supports up to 6 Raspberry Pi 5 boards

PicoUART6 is a small USB to UART bridge board that takes a Raspberry Pi Pico board and exposes six UART ports to connect up to six Raspberry Pi 5 SBC’s over the new 3-pin UART connector. The Raspberry Pi 5 has created a lot of buzz since its announcement in September 2023, and people most talked about its higher performance compared to a Raspberry Pi 4 and its new (non-standard) FCP PCIe connector,  but the new Raspberry Pi SBC also features a 3-pin JST UART connector that was not used in earlier and frees 3-pin on the 40-pin GPIO header. The PicoUART6 board makes use of this new connector to interface multiple Raspberry Pi 5 over UART and control them through the USB board of the Pico board. PicoUART6 specifications: Footprint for Raspberry Pi Pico board Serial – 6x 3-pin JST UART connectors Expansion – STEMMA QT/Qwiic I2C connector Debugging […]

Arduino Portenta Hat Carrier
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The Portenta Hat Carrier board adds Raspberry Pi HAT support to the Portenta X8 SBC

The Arduino Portenta Hat Carrier board aims to interface the Linux-capable Portenta X8 board with the vast ecosystem of Raspberry Pi HAT (Hardware on Top) expansion boards. Introduced last year, the Arduino Portenta X8 is the first Arduino Pro hardware that can run Linux thanks to its NXP i.MX 8M Mini Arm Cortex-A53 quad-core processor. But it comes in a tiny 66.04 x 25.4 mm form factor which may be great for integration into products, but for prototyping or design of products such as IoT gateways, the company has now launched the Portenta Hat Carrier that enables the board to easily connect with the Raspberry Pi HATs available today. Portenta Hat Carrier specifications: Compatible with the Portenta X8 board and future Portenta with the same high-density connectors Storage – MicroSD card slot Camera I/F – MIPI CSI camera connector (CNXSoft: Arduino does not explicitly say whether it’s compatible with the […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
ESP32-S3 Ethernet Board
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LILYGO T-ETH-Lite – An ESP32-S3 board with Ethernet, optional PoE support

LILYGO T-ETH-Lite ESP32-S3 is a new ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth development board with a low-profile Ethernet RJ45 connector using a WIZnet W5500 Ethernet controller, supporting PoE with an extra shield, and also equipped with a microSD card socket and expansion I/Os. ESP32-based development boards with Ethernet have been around for years including LILYGO’s own “TTGO T-Lite W5500“, but so far we haven’t many based on the more recent ESP32-S3 microcontroller except for the SB Components’ ESPi board that we covered last April. But LILYGO T-ETH-Lite ESP32-S3 adds another cost-effective board with Ethernet. LILYGO T-ETH-Lite ESP32-S3 specifications: Wireless module ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 MCU – ESP32-S3 dual-core LX7 microprocessor @ up to 240 MHz with Vector extension for machine learning Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 16MB SPI flash Connectivity – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5 with LE/Mesh PCB antenna Storage – MicroSD card slot Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 150 Mbps and […]

RISC-V cluster board
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Lichee Cluster 4A mini-ITX RISC-V cluster board launched for $929 and up

As expected, Sipeed has now launched their Lichee Cluster 4A mini-ITX cluster board and box taking up to seven RISC-V modules with prices starting at $929 on Aliexpress. All kits on offer are fitted with seven Sipeed LM4A system-on-modules based on the T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor in either 8GB/32GB or 16GB/128GB memory and storage configuration. Lichee Cluster 4A specifications: SoM – 7x Sipeed LM4A modules with Alibaba T-Head TH1520 processor (4x C910 @ 1.85GHz) and a total of either 56 or 112GB LPDDR4X, and 224GB or 869GB eMMC flash Storage – 7x microSD card slots, one per slot Video Output – 1x HDMI port connected to slot 1 Networking 1x Gigabit Ethernet port for the cluster 1x Gigabit Ethernet port for slot 1 only 1x Ethernet for BMC control USB 7x USB 3.0 ports, one per slot 1x USB 2.0 port for BMC Power Supply – 12V DC input […]

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