Exen Proto Arduino Compatible Board is based on Microchip SAMD21 MCU (Crowdfunding)

Nerdonic launched Exen Mini last year as the world’s smallest 32-bit Arduino compatible board, and getting the smallest board possible is very good for some projects, but so not much for other as Exen Mini is limited to just 8 I/O pins. So the company made another larger board called Exen Proto based on the same Microchip SAMD21 Cortex M0+ microcontroller, but offering more I/Os. Exen Proto specifications with difference against Exen Mini highlighted in bold: MCU – Microchip SAMD21 Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 256KB flash, 32KB SRAM I/Os via 2x 12-pin 2.54mm pitch headers Up to 20x digital I/O Up to 19x PWM Up to 11x analog (ADC) up to 12-bit resolution 2x UART Up to 5x I2C 1x reset Limits – 3.3V, 7mA USB – 1x micro USB port Programming – Via micro USB port or SWD header Misc – Power LED, user LED, button […]

Amlogic A311D Media Processor Features Cortex A73/A53 Cores, an Arm Mali-G52 MP4 GPU

As far as processors are concerned, it’s been pretty quiet in the TV box space in this year with for example, devices based on Amlogic S922 yet to launch, and new TV boxes are normally launched with processors such as Amlogic S905X/Z/W or S912, as well as Rockchip RK3328 or RK3229. But this morning,  I’ve been informed that Amlogic is working on a more powerful media processor based on info from buildroot release notes  Amlogic A311D is an hexa-core processor featuring four Arm Cortex A73 cores, two Cortex A53 cores, and an Arm Mali-G52-MP4 GPU. Amlogic A311D specifications known so far: CPU – 4x Arm Cortex A73 @ TBD GHz, 2x Arm Cortex A53 GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP4 Memory I/F – DDR3/4; LPDDR3/4 Storage I/F – eMMC, SD/SDHC/SDXC Video Output – HDMI Tx up to 4K2K @ 60 Hz with CEC & HDR support, CVBS Video Processing Unit (VPU) […]

Banana Pi BPI-P2 Zero Board Combines PoE, Camera Interface, and Allwinner H2+ Processor

Banana Pi BPI-P2 Zero

Allwinner H2+ quad core Cortex A7 processor has enabled some of the cheapest Arm Linux boards on the market with products such as NanoPi Duo or Orange Pi Zero with the latter now selling for about $9 and up. SinoVoIP also had their own inexpensive – and Raspberry Pi Zero compatible – Allwinner H2+ board with Banana Pi M2 Zero, and the company has now been working on another model dubbed BPI-P2 Zero which includes support for PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) as well as a CSI camera interface. Banana Pi BPI-P2 Zero specifications: SoC – Allwinner H2+ quad core Arm Cortex A7 processor with Mali-400MP GPU. System Memory – 512MB DDR3 SDRAM. Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot Video Output – mini HDMI port Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet with PoE support WiFi & Bluetooth via AP6212 module Camera I/F – CSI camera interface USB – 1x USB OTG port Expansion […]

GAPUINO GAP8 is a $229 RISC-V MCU Developer Kit for A.I. Applications

GAPuino Board

GreenWaves GAP8 is a low power RISC-V “MCU class” processor with eight compute cores optimized for artificial intelligence applications, and its main selling point is the ability to do tasks like computer vision or audio processing at very low power, even good enough to run on batteries. When we first covered GAP8 RISC-V processor at the beginning of the year, the company also mentioned a development kit comprised of GAPDUINO Arduino compatible board, a sensor board, and a QVGA camera module to experiment with the solution.  The board and development kit are now easier to purchase as the devkit is sold on SeeedStudio for $229. GAPuino board specifications: SoC – GAP8 IoT Application Processor with 8x RISC-V  compute cores, 1x RISC-V fabric controller core delivering up to 200 MOPS at 1mW and  >8 GOPS at a few tens of mW Memory / Storage –  HyperBus combo DRAM/Flash with 512 Mbit […]

Congatec conga-SMX8 is a SMARC 2.0 Module Based on NXP i.MX8 Processor

We’ve already seen some SMARC 2.0 SoM based on NXP i.MX8 processor with for instance, i.MX 8M based SECO SM-C12. We now have at more choice thanks to Congatec which just announced  conga-SMX8, the company’s first SMARC 2.0 Computer-on-Module based on the NXP i.MX8 Arm Cortex-A53/A72 processor. conga-SMX8 SoM specifications: SoC (one or the other) NXP i.MX8 Quad Max with 2x Arm Cortex-A72, 4x Arm Cortex-A53, 2x Arm Cortex-M4F, 2x Vivante GC7000XSVX GPU NXP i.MX8 QuadPlus with 1x Arm Cortex-A72, 4x Arm Cortex-A53, 2x Arm Cortex-M4F, 2x Vivante GC7000Lite/XSVX GPU NXP i.MX8 DualMax with 2x Arm Cortex-A72, 2x Arm Cortex-M4F, 2x Vivante GC7000Lite/XSVX GPU System Memory – Up to 8 GB LPDDR4 memory | 3200 MT/s Storage – Up to 64GB eMMC flash, micro SD 3.0 card socket Other On-Module Chips 2x Gigabit Ethernet transceiver Optional M.2 1216 WiFi module (soldered down) USB hub 314-pin MXM Edge connector with Storage […]

Banana Pi BPI-R64 Router Board is Powered by Mediatek MT7622, Supports 802.11ac WiFi, Optional PoE Module

Banana Pi BPI-R64

SinoVoIP launched several Banana Pi router boards in the past starting with Allwinner A20 based Banana Pi BPI-R1 in 2014, and followed by Banana Pi BPI-R2 board powered by a Mediatek MT7623 processor last year. Such boards normally include multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports, as well as at least one SATA connector, and in some cases an mPCIe connector for WiFi or LTE cards. THe company also launched Banana Pi BPI-W2 board a few months ago, but that model is more geared towards multimedia router use cases. The company has now unveiled Banana Pi BPI-R64 router board based on Mediatek MT7622 dual core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, five Gigabit Ethernet port, on-board 802.11ac WiFi, one “laptop” SATA port, as well as an optional PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) add-on board.Banana PI RPI-R64 board specifications provided by the company – which has not always shown to be accurate -: SoC – MediaTek MT7622 dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 […]

Google Unveils Edge TPU Low Power Machine Learning Chip, AIY Edge TPU Development Board and Accelerator

AIY Edge TPU Dev Board

Google introduced artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts to hundreds of thousands of people with their AIY projects kit such as the AIY Voice Kit with voice recognition and the AIY Vision Kit for computer vision applications. The company has now gone further by unveiling Edge TPU, its own  purpose-built ASIC chip designed to run TensorFlow Lite ML models at the edge, as well as corresponding AIY Edge TPU development board, and AIY Edge TPU accelerator USB stick to add to any USB compatible hardware. Google Edge TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) & Cloud IoT Edge Software Edge TPU is a tiny chip for machine learning (ML) optimized for performance-per-watt and performance-per-dollar.  It can either accelerate ML inferencing on device, or can pair with Google Cloud to create a full cloud-to-edge ML stack. In either case, local processing reduces latency, remove the needs for a persistent network connection, increases privacy, and […]

Olimex Unveils ESP32-POE Board with… PoE Support

ESP32 POE

One of the differences between ESP8266 and ESP32 is the latter adds an Ethernet MAC, and as a results we have seen a few ESP32 boards with an Ethernet jack offering 10/100M connectivity, including Olimex ESP32-GATEWAY, Olimex ESP32-EVB, or ESP32 Monster Board. ESP32 Ethernet enabled boards are definitely in the minority however, and what’s even more difficult to find is an ESP32 board with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) support. The good news is that if you’re looking for such type of board, Olimex is working on one based on requirements from their customers. Olimex ESP32-POE board specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROOM-32 module with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth LE External Storage – micro SD card socket Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet with PoE power management based on Si3402 IEEE 802.3at Type 1-compliant chip Expansion UEXT connector for Olimex modules 2x GPIOs stripes spaced at 1″ on 0.1″ step Debugging/Programming – micro USB port […]

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