Geniatech RK3568 Development Board to support Android 11 and Linux

RK3568 development board

RK3566 and RK3568 are the latest AIoT processors from Rockchip equipped with four Arm Cortex-A55 cores, a Mali-G52 GPU, and an impressive range of peripherals that make them suitable for all sorts of applications including AI edge computing and network video recorder (NVR). We already know Pine64 is working on Quartz64 SBC based on Rockchip RK3566, but I’ve just noticed Geniatech’s “RK3568 development board” that should offer even more features since the processor comes with extra I/Os compared to its little brother. Let’s have a look. Geniatech RK3568 development board specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 0.8 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration System Memory – Up to 4 GB LPDDR4 Storage – Up to 128 GB eMMC 5.1 flash, 1x SATA 3.0 port, MicroSD card slot, M.2 socket for NVMe SSD (See […]

IP67 mini PC targets harsh environments and marine applications

IP67 mini PC

We’ve covered plenty of Whiskey Lake-based mini PC‘s and SBC‘s, but most of them are made for the home or the office, except for some designed with a wider temperature range for industrial and factory environments. But Stealth is going further with WPC-905 IP67 waterproof mini PC that’s completely sealed and fanless making it suitable for harsher environments, including marine applications. The rugged computer comes with a choice of Intel Celeron and Core processors and supports variable DC input from  9V to 48V DC via an M12 connector. Stealth WPC-905 IP67 mini PC specifications: SoC (one or the other) – all from the Whisky Lake Embedded family Intel Celeron 4305UE dual-core processor @ 2GHz with Intel UHD Graphics 610; 15W TDP Intel Core i3-8145UE dual-core/quad-thread processor @ 2.2GHz / 3.9GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD Graphics 620; 15W TDP Intel Core i5-8365UE quad-core/octa-thread processor @ 1.6GHz / 4.1GHz (Turbo) with Intel […]

Deutsche Telekom IoT Gateway combines LoRaWAN and LTE-M

LoRaWAN LTE-M IoT Gateway

I’d normally view LoRaWAN and LTE IoT standards such as NB-IoT or LTE Cat-M (aka LTE-M or eMTC) as competitors, but The Things Industries and Deutsche Telekom​ partnered to launch an IoT gateway with both LTE-M and LoRaWAN capabilities together with associated services. We do not have much information about the hardware, but it is a LoRaWAN gateway designed by MikroTik that connects to an LTE-M backhaul and to The Things Industries’ device and data platform. If the picture above does indeed represent the actual gateway it should also be equipped with two PoE capable Ethernet ports, and an RS485 terminal block, plus a USB port and a SIM card slot. The solution would mostly be used for smart buildings at first taking advantage of the superior signal penetration of LTE-M. Sensors would send data to the LoRaWAN gateway which then, would forward it to the cloud over LTE-M. This […]

Ubuntu Core 20 released for secure Linux IoT devices and embedded systems

Ubuntu Core 20 secure Linux IoT

Canonical has just released Ubuntu Core 20, a minimal, containerized version of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for IoT devices and embedded systems. The company highlights several security improvements and features of the new version of the Linux-based operating system with secure boot, full disk encryption, secure device recovery, and secure containers. Ubuntu Core 20 is said to come with all benefits from Ubuntu 20.04 LTS such as regular, automated updates, the ability to manage custom app stores, and offers a longer 10-year support window. Ubuntu Core is available and certified on popular32-bit and 64-bit x86 and Arm single board computers such as Intel NUC or Raspberry Pi 4. Minimum requirements include a single-core processor @ 500 MHz, 256MB RAM, and 512MB storage. Alternatively, it’s also possible to run it in a virtual machine on your PC. Security is further enhanced with apps running in containers, and since only the necessary software […]

LoRa 2.4GHz is now supported by The Things Network

LoRa 2.4 GHz

Semtech brought LoRa to 2.4 GHz through their SX1280 & SX1281 transceivers to enable hardware manufacturers to design region-independent products, rather than region-specific products in the 433, 868, and 915 MHz bands a few years back. Things Industries announced support for LoRa 2.4GHz in The Things Network community network and its open-source stack at The Things Conference 2021 last week. However, switching to 2.4 GHz has a cost since range, one of the key selling points of LoRa, will be reduced compared to sub-GHz frequency, and that makes it most suitable for applications that work in different regions such as maritime and intercontinental logistics applications. Wilhelmsen has partnered with The Things Industries (TTI) and selected Semtech’s LoRa devices as the foundation for its new global 2.4GHz maritime IoT of the Seas platform to deliver an ecosystem of cost-effective, robust and proven IoT solutions and make them available to its diverse […]

FOSDEM 2021 Online February 6-7 – Hardware, Embedded & IoT talks

FOSDEM 2021 Online

FOSDEM is an open-source developer event that takes place on the first week-end of February every year in Brussels, Belgium. Every year except this year, as due to COVID-19 restrictions, FOSDEM 2021 will take place online like most events these days. The schedule has been up for some time, and today I’ll look at some of the interesting talks mostly from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive “virtual devroom” but also other tracks. Saturday, February 6, 2021 13:00 – 14:00 – From Reset Vector to Kernel – Navigating the ARM Matryoshka Long gone are the times of executing the OS in-place from memory-mapped flash upon reset. A modern SoC now comes with complex mask ROM firmware, with driver, filesystem, protocol and crypto support for loading… yet another bootloader. In his talk, Ahmad follows this chain of bootloaders until the kernel is started, stopping along the way for RAM setup, peripherial initialization, […]

SigmaStar SSD201/SSD202 powered 4G LTE industrial gateway made to run mainline Linux

SSD202 gateway board

SigmaStar SSD201 is a dual-core Cortex-A7 processor with 64MB RAM onchip that is designed for smart HD displays. We’ve previously seen it in Industio 7-inch smart display running Linux, but if you want to modify anything you’d need sign an NDA before getting the SDK. Luckily there’s an open-source community named linux-chenxing that aims to bring mainline support to those low-cost SigmaStar processor to mainline, the same way linux-sunxi is working on Allwinner processors. Daniel Palmer noticed MYZR recently launched GW300 4G LTE industrial gateway with specifications that looked familiar. GW300 specifications from manufacturer’s website: Processor – Arm Cortex-A7 dual-core processor @ 1.2GHz Memory – 64MB RAM Storage – 128MByte Flash Connectivity – Ethernet and 4G LTE with high-gain antenna Serial – RS485/ RS232 via 5-pin terminal block Misc – RTC Power Supply – 12V to 24V DC input Dimensions – 127.7 x 87.5 x 30 mm Temperature Range – […]

UniPi Gate RS485 Linux IoT Gateway features 600 MHz Rockchip RK3328 SoC

UniPi Gate RS485 Linux IoT Gateway

Based in the Czech Republic, UniPi Technology design and manufacture programmable logic controllers, gateways, sensors and systems for smart homes, building management systems, industry and automation projects. Their latest product is UniPi Gate G100/G110 Linux IoT gateway with Ethernet and RS485 interfaces. When the company contacted CNX Software about the gateway, they told us the system was based on a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 600 MHz. Since we are not aware of such SoC, we asked, and UniPi told us it was Rockchip RK3328. That processor is normally clocked at 1.5 GHz, and it turns out the company purposely underclocked the processor to 600 MHz to extend the temperature range and reduce the heat emitted by the CPU. UniPi Gate G100 & G110 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 600 MHz System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot Networking – […]