Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024, upcoming Orange Pi SBCs and products

Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024

Orange Pi held a Developer Conference on March 24, 2024, in Shenzhen, China, and while I could not make it, the company provided photos of the event where people discussed upcoming boards and products, as well as software support for the Orange Pi SBCs. So I’ll go through some of the photos to check out what was discussed and what’s coming. While Orange Pi is mostly known for its development boards the company has also been working on consumer products including the Orange Health Watch D Pro and the OrangePi Neo handheld console. The Orange Pi Watch D Pro is said to implement non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, one-click “micro-physical examination” and other functions to to help users monitor their health monitoring. The Watch D Pro uses a technique that emits a green light to measure glucose levels in the blood, and we’re told it’s accurate enough to […]

Orange Pi AIPro SBC features a 20 TOPS Huawei Ascend AI SoC

Orange Pi Huawei Ascent SBC

Orange Pi AIPro is a new single board computer for AI applications that features a new (and unnamed) Huawei Ascend AI quad-core 64-bit processor delivering up to 20 TOPS (INT8) or 8 TOPS (FP16) of AI inference performance. The SBC comes with up to 16GB LPDDR4X and a 512Mbit SPI flash but also supports other storage options such as a microSD card, an eMMC flash module, and/or an M.2 NVMe or SATA SSD. The board also features two HDMI 2.0 ports, one MIPI DSI connector, and an AV port for video output, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 5 connectivity, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. Orange Pi AIPro specifications: SoC – Huawei Ascend quad-core 64-bit (I’d assume RISC-V) processor delivering up to 20 TOPS (INT8) or 8TOPS (FP16) AI performance and equipped with an unnamed 3D GPU System Memory – 8GB […]

Link Pi ENC5 v2 video encoder supports up to 5 4Kp30 HDMI inputs

Link Pi ENC5 v2

The Link Pi ENC5 v2 is a video encoder with five HDMI inputs up to 4Kp30, one HDMI output, two audio jacks, Gigabit Ethernet, and a USB 3.0 port that supports RTSP, ONVIF, SRT, and NDI streaming protocols. The system appears to be based on the Hisilicon Hi3531DV200 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and features 8GB eMMC flash for the OS, plus 4GB RAM. The USB port can be used to record videos to an external hard drive or flash drive or add WiFi or 4G/5G cellular connectivity. Link Pi ENC5 v2 specifications: SoC – Unnamed, but some of the specs are matching the Hisilicon Hi3531DV200 SoC CPU – Arm Cortex A53 quad-core processor @ 1.2GHz with 32KB l-Cache, 32KB D-Cache VPU Decode – H264, H264, MJPEG Encode – Up to 4Kp30 / 1080p60 H.264 Main/Baseline/High/ profiles, H.265 Main profile, MJPEG/JPEG Max Bitrate – 20Mbps Bit rate control – CBR, VBR, AVBR, […]

AAEON ARES-500AI embedded box PC features 22 TOPS Huawei Atlas 200 AI accelerator module

AAEON ARES-500AI embedded PC Huawei Atlas 200 AI module

ARES-500AI is another embedded box PC from AAEON, but instead of the usual Intel or NVIDIA Jetson accelerators, it integrates a Huawei Atlas 200 AI accelerator module based on the Ascent 310 chip delivering up to 22 TOPS of AI performance and is designed for the Chinese market. The Linux computer supports up to 8GB RAM, SSD and MicroSD storage, and is equipped with four Gigabit Ethernet ports, some USB 3.0 ports, but somehow no video output port. Designed for industrial computer vision applications, the system supports a wide 9V to 36V power input.   ARES-500AI Specifications: AI module –  Huawei Atlas 200 based on Ascend 310 with 22/16/8 TOPS INT8, 11/8/4 TFLOPS FP16 System Memory – 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4X Storage – SSD and microSD card sockets Video decoding H.265 & H.264 up to 16 channels @ 1080p30, up to 2 channels @ 4Kp60 JPEG decoding up to 1080p […]

OpenHarmony development board borrows BBC Micro:bit edge connector

OpenHarmony development board BBC micro bit

HopeRun’s HiHope development board features a HiSilicon Hi3861V100 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller compatible with OpenHarmony OS and looks very much like the BBC Micro:bit educational board notably with its edge connector. The board is also designed for youth education (in China) and comes with similar sensors, but there are some differences such as a 0.96-inch OLED instead of an LED matrix and support for offline voice recognition. There’s no wireless connectivity apart from NFC support. HiHope board specifications: MCU – HiSilicon Hi3861 32-bit microcontroller @ up to 160 MHz with 352 KB SRAM and 288 KB ROM, 2 MB flash memory Display – 0.96-inch OLED display with 128×64 resolution (SSD1306) Connectivity – NFC with R/W mode, card emulation,  and bidirectional mode USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming Sensors – Temperature & humidity sensor, light sensor, microphone, 6-axis motion sensor Expansion – Edge connector with 5x rings (3x […]

Ai-Thinker Hi-series WiFi modules support HarmonyOS (Sponsored)

Ai-Thinker Hi-12F

Ai-Thinker Hi-series WiFi modules feature Hisilicon Hi3861/Hi3861L 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller with 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and support for HarmonyOS for IoT projects. The new Hi-12F module even got certification for HarmonyOS “S identification” meaning the Hi-12F module supports HarmonyOS Connect for the Smart Home which used to be called “Works With HUAWEI HiLink” or “Powered by HarmonyOS”. Some of the highlights for Ai-Thinker Hi-series WiFi module include: Integrated high-performance 32-bit RISC-V microprocessor (Hi3861V100/Hi3861LV100) with 352KB SRAM, 288KB ROM, and 2MB Flash IEEE 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 72.2Mbps @ HT20 MCS7 with STA and AP modes (Up to 6 clients in AP mode). Baseband and RF circuits with power amplifier PA, low noise amplifier LNA, RF balun, antenna switch, power supply management Multiple Security Capabilities with a built-in eFUSE, support for secure storage, and hardware ID Rich peripheral interfaces with  UART, SPI, I2C, GPIO, ADC, PWM, I2S, SDIO, etc… […]

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

cnx software happy new year 2022

As per tradition, we’ll look back at what happened during the year in the last post, and see what 2022 may have in store, plus the usual statistics from CNX Software website. The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and  Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards. We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it’s getting really […]

HiSilicon Hi3731V110 32-bit RISC-V processor is made for Full HD televisions

HiSilicon Hi3731V110

We’ve previously covered Hisilicon Hi3861V100 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller, but HiSilicon Hi3731V110 32-bit RISC-V processor designed for Full HD televisions, the company has gone up the scale with its RISC-V offerings. The processor is equipped with an M-LVDS interface for TCON panels, CVBS output, YPbPr, VGA, and multiple HDMI 1.4 video inputs. The processor also comes with a 1080p30 VPU supporting H.265, H.264, MPEG4, MPEG2, and other codecs. HiSilicon Hi3731V110 key specifications: 32-bit single-core RISC GPU – 2D graphics accelerator Memory – Integrated 512-Mbit DDR SDRAM Storage I/F – SPI flash support Video I/F 3x HDMI inputs with CEC, HDCP 1.4, up to 1080p60. Once supports ARC (See Audio) YPbPr/RGB interface CVBS output Video Decoding – 1080p30 H.265, H.264, H.263. MPEG2, MPEG4, VC1 Image Decoding – JPEG hardware decoding up to 64 megapixels Analog TV IF Demodulation for – All analog TV standards, including M/N, B/G/H, D/K, I, L, and L’ […]