Orange Pi RK3399 Board Gets 4GB RAM for $100

Orange Pi RK3399 4GB RAM

Orange Pi RK3399 development board launched last year, further crowding the RK3399 space. The board did not target the lower end of the market with a $109 price tag, but still came with only 2GB of RAM. Shenzhen Xunlong has now introduced a 4GB RAM version of the board for $99.96, with the 2GB version now selling for $89.38. Both boards can be purchased on Aliexpress. Apart from the RAM capacity, Orange Pi RK3399 “4G” specifications have not changed: SoC – Rockchip K3399 hexa-core big.LITTLE processor with two ARM Cortex A72 cores up to 2.0 GHz, four Cortex A53 cores, and an ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL 1.1 to 3.1 support, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, and DX 11 System Memory – 4 GB DDR3 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash, micro SD card, mPCIe (for mSATA/LTE), and SATA interface Video Output/Input & Display Interfaces 1x HDMI 2.0 up to […]

STMicro Introduces STEVAL-FKI001V1 Dual-Radio Bluetooth/LPWAN IoT Development Kit

STEVAL-FKI001V1

STMicro has just launched a new development kit – STEVAL-FKI001V1 – that integrates two radios, one at 2.4 GHz for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and another sub-GHz radio for LPWAN IoT standards such as Sigfox. The devkit targets the development of IoT devices such as smart sensors, finders, and trackers for smart-home or smart-building scenarios, asset-tracking, energy-management, smart-farming and industrial monitoring, and control use cases. STEVAL-FKI001V1 devkit key features & specifications: Jorjin WS2118-00 Sigfox & BLE module Embedded BlueNRG-132 Bluetooth LE Arm Cortex-M0 SoC with up to +8 dBm BLE RF output power, receiver sensitivity of -88 dBm Embedded S2-LPQTR ultra-low power sub-1 GHz transceiver tuned for 826-958 MHz frequency bands Up to +16 dBm sub-1GHz RF output power, receiver sensitivity down to -130 dBm Modulation schemes: 2-(G)FSK, 4-(G)FSK, OOK, and ASK Air data rate from 0.1 to 500 kbps Ultra-low power consumption: 7 mA RX, 10 mA TX @ +10 dBm; low duty cycle RX/TX operation mode, […]

Tiny Giant Board Runs Linux, Follows Adafruit Feather Form Factor

Giant Board

If you want a tiny single board computer that runs Linux on Arm Cortex-A processor, some options include Raspberry Pi Zero (W), PocketBeagle, or FriendlyElec NanoPi Duo with the latter being smaller and more powerful than RPi Zero although it lacks video output. Another potential option that may become available soon is the Giant Board, which as its name clearly does not imply, is a really tiny board powered by Microchip Atmel SAMA5 Cortex-A5 processor, and leveraging Adafruit Feather form factor. Giant board preliminary specifications: SiP – ATSAMA5D27C-D1G with Microchip SAMA5D2 Arm Cortex-A5 Processor 500MHz, 128MB DDR2 RAM Storage – Micro SD slot for OS and storage Peripherals & I/Os 6x 12-Bit ADC with 3.3V Reference 4x 16-Bit PWM ADC external trigger PWM external trigger 1x I2C, 1x SPI, 1x UART Misc- Power button Power Supply 5V via micro USB port 3.7V LIPO support for portable projects The Microchip / […]

tinyWiFi-5G is a NanoPi NEO Air Clone with 5 GHz WiFi

tinywifi-5G

NanoPi NEO Air is a tiny Allwinner H3 board with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi connectivity that launched in 2016 for $17.99 and is now available as NanoPi NEO Air-LTS (Long Term Support) for $28 and up. A company – or group of software developers – called tinyDebian decided to create a clone based on NanoPi NEO Air design, but replacing the 2.4 GHz Ampak AP6212 802.11n WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0 LE module by a dual-band Realtek RTL8821CS module that supports 802.11 b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.2 LE. Meet tinyWiFi-5G. NanoPi NEO Air comes with two different storage configuration (8GB or 32GB flash), but tinyDebian did not provide the full specifications of the board, so tinyWiFi-5G board specifications below are preliminary: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad-core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash + micro SD card slot Connectivity […]

Edu-C Arduino Compatible Board Targets Education & Game Development

Edu-C Arduino Board Game Development

Sometimes learning can be boring, and a potentially good way to get kids more engaged is to learn by playing. Edu-C Arduino compatible board is designed to teach game development to kids old and young, so they have a lasting reward once they complete programming of the board, or they may decide to customize the game further. Edu-C hardware specifications: MCU – Microchip Atmel AVR328 microcontroller Display – 28×64 pixel OLED display + 1-digita 7-segment display Game Inputs – Left and right potentiometers Misc – 8x LEDs, left & right LEDs, RGB LED, on/off power switch, reset button, buzzer USB – 1x micro USB connector for programming (CH340) and power Power Supply – 5V via USB; LiPo battery support The board ships with a 200 mAh Lipo battery, and a charger. Educational materials are also provided, but only in French right now, except for some documents which are in English. There […]

Radxa Rock Pi 4 Review – Part 1: A First Look at RockPi 4B Performance Set

Rock Pi 4

Hey, Karl here with another RK3399 board. This one is by Radxa and is called the Rock Pi 4. There are 2 main variants to this board and I was shipped the B version “performance set” which includes a power supply, heatsink, and acrylic case. Also shipped was 16gb eMMC 5.1 module, eMMC flashing board, and USB-TTL debug cable. It looks like the difference is the B version has AC wifi and GbE LAN with PoE support with a hat. The A version only has GbE. Rock Pi 4B Performance Set Unboxing Some of the more notable specs eMMC module support M.2 NVME SSD support (SATA not supported) HDMI 2.0 4k@60htz MIPI DSI 2 lanes via FPC connector 3.5mm audio jack MIPI CSI 2 lanes via FPC connector, support up to 8MP camera 802.11 ac wifi Bluetooth 5.0 40-pin expansion header :  1 x UART 2x SPI bus 2x I2C […]

ClearFog CX LX2K Networking Board is Powered by NXP LX2160A 16-core Processor

ClearFog CX LX2K

SolidRun started their ClearFog family of networking boards back in 2015 with Marvell ARMADA based ClearFog Pro board exposing 7 Gigabit Ethernet ports, an SFP cage, mPCIe/mSATA sockets, and more. Since then the company has launched several other ClearFog boards with small variation in the name with the latest being ClearFog CX 8K equipped with a COM Express module based on Marvell ARMADA A8040 quad-core Arm Cortex A72 processor. Today I was made aware that the company leveraged of the flexibility of having a COM Express module by offering a more powerful version of the board – ClearFog CX LX2K – powered by NXP LX2160A networking processor with 16 Arm Cortex-A72 cores, 100GbE support, 24x PCIe Gen4 lanes, and more. The rest of the specifications are pretty much the same since the COM Express carrier board – pictured above – remains the same: COM Module – CEx7 LX2K module with […]

A Look at a Small NanoPi NEO4 Build Farm

NANOPI NEO4 Build Farm

FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO4 is currently the cheapest and smallest SBC powered by Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor which packs two Cortex A72 “fast” 64-bit cores, and four Cortex-A53 “efficiency” cores, so it should be an obvious candidate if you plan on building an Arm build farm costs to its low cost, small form factor, and relatively good performance. As part of his work on HAProxy load balancer, Willy Tarreau often has to run time-consuming builds for Arm targets, and to speed up the builds he’s put together several Arm based build farms powered by low cost development boards / SBCs. Up to now he had a build farm powered by five MIQI boards featuring Rockchip RK3288 processor with four Cortex-A17 “fast” 32-bit processor, and controlled with a ClearFog Pro networking board. He’s now decided to build another similar build farm but with NanoPi NEO4 boards instead. Willy goes through the hardware […]