Reolink RLC-523WA & RLC-823A Review – Smart security cameras tested with Blue Iris

Reolink RLC-523WA 5MP camera review

Hello, Karl here with a security camera review. I’ll start out by thanking Reolink for sending over two cameras to review: RLC-523WA (WiFi) & RLC-823A (PoE). I already had a couple of cameras from Reolink that my buddy had recommended a long time ago. And had a positive experience so I agreed to review these higher-end models. My setup with Blue Iris, unRAID I have been running unRAID for quite a while now to simplify my server requirements. I was running several small SBC’s and a standalone NAS drive and consolidated them onto my main rig. AMD has pushed desktop core counts with their Ryzen CPUs and I have cores to spare. I started with a 3700x giving 2 cores to applications leaving me with 6 cores for my VM’s but recently upgraded to a 3900x. I now give 3 to applications and 9 cores for my VM’s. I started […]

Beelink U59 Review – Windows 11, Ubuntu on a Jasper Lake mini PC

Beelink U59 review

Coupling a German submarine with a North American lake seems a perfect match in this topsy-turvy supply-constrained COVID-19 broken world we find ourselves in but that’s just what Beelink has figuratively done by launching their new Intel Jasper Lake mini PC, the U59. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 20.04. Beelink U59 Hardware Overview The Beelink U59 physically consists of a 124 x 113 x 42mm (4.88 x 4.45 x 1.65 inches) square plastic case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses Intel’s new 10 nm Jasper Lake N5095 processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz Celeron processor boosting to 2.90 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, dual USB 3.1 ports, a Type-C USB 3.0 port with DisplayPort Alternate Mode, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a reset pin-hole ‘CLR CMOS’. […]

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W mini review – Benchmarks and thermal performance

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Heatsink

The Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board yesterday with the main difference against Raspberry Pi Zero W board being the much faster Raspberry Pi RP3A0 SiP with a Broadcom quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1.0 GHz and overclockable to 1.2 GHz. I received my sample shortly after publishing the announcement, and I had time to test it. Since the main difference is the processor, I’ll focus this review on benchmarks and whether additional cooling is required for the board. Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W kit unboxing If you purchase the board for $15, that’s all you’ll get, but Raspberry Pi Trading sent me a kit with Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W SBC, a USB OTG adapter, a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter, the CSI camera cable, and four rubber pad for the enclosure that comes with three covers: full, hole for 40-pin GPIO header, or […]

My experience installing Libero SoC in Ubuntu and Windows 10

Libero SoC Windows Silver License ACTEL_BASESOC

A few weeks ago, I received Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit with FPGA fabric and hard RISC-V cores capable of handling Linux. I wrote “Getting Started with Yocto Linux BSP” tutorial for the board, and I had initially titled the current post “Getting Started with FPGA development using Libero SoC and Polarfire FPGA SoC”. I assumed I would write one or two paragraphs about the installation process, and then show how to work with Libero SoC Design Suite to create an FPGA bitstream. But instead, I spent countless hours trying to install the development tools. So I’ll report my experience to let readers avoid some of the pitfalls, and hopefully save time. (Failing to) Install Libero SoC v2021.v2 on Ubuntu 20.04 If we go to the download page, we’ll see Libero SoC v2021.2 for Windows and Libero SoC v2021.2 for Linux. Since my computer is running Ubuntu 20.04, I decided […]

Beelink SER3 Review – A good AMD Ryzen 7 mini PC… after tweaks

Beelink SER3 Review

Beelink has just launched a new mini PC called the SER3. It is another ‘new’ mini PC using an older CPU, in this case, an AMD mobile processor. However, the performance is surprisingly good once a few tweaks are made to the stock configuration. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu together with using an eGPU. Hardware Overview The SER3 physically consists of a 126 x 113 x 40mm (4.96 x 4.45 x 1.57 inches) square metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s older 12 nm Zen+ Ryzen 7 3750H Picasso processor which is a quad-core 8-thread 2.3 GHz mobile processor boosting to 4.0 GHz with Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, dual USB 3.0 ports, a Type-C USB 3.0 port with Alternate Mode, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a […]

JGMaker Artist-D Pro Review – An IDEX 3D printer

JGMaker Artist-D Pro Review

Hey, Karl here for a new 3D printer review. Today we are going to look at the JGMaker Artist-D Pro. The Artist-D Pro is the successor to the non-pro version which debuted on Kickstarter and is an IDEX printer. IDEX is short for independent dual extruders and is a fancy way to say it has 2 complete hotend assemblies. From my perspective, the Artist-D was introduced with a lot of fanfare. I had several buddies back the original on Kickstarter and they seemed happy with it. But I didn’t see much value in it. I was thinking this was going to be just another printer that can print 2 different filaments. I have reviewed printers that had similar capabilities with one key difference being that they shared some common components. BUT…I quickly realized one aspect no one is talking about is speed during production runs. Unboxing, build, and calibration The […]

Zidoo M6 preview with Android 11

I’ve now had more time to play with Zidoo M6 Arm mini PC powered by a Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor. I intended to review the device with Ubuntu, but I misunderstood, and Android 11 was pre-installed on the device. I was also told since this model is mainly for industrial control, I might want to focus on performance and connectors rather than how well all functions work. So this will not be a review, but rather a preview of Zidoo M6, since as we’ll see below there’s still more work do to fix all issues. As an industrial platform. some features like Google Services may not be needed or even desirable. First boot and Settings I’ve connected a USB keyboard for screenshots, MINIX NEO A2 Lite air mouse, an HDMI cable to my 4K TV, and the power supply to get started. I also add two AAA batteries to […]

Rockchip RK3566 Benchmarks in Android 11 (Zidoo M6)

Amlogic S905X4 vs Rockchip RK3566

I received Zidoo M6 last month, a mini PC based on Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor. I initially understood it came with Ubuntu Linux, but actually, it came pre-loaded with Android 11, so I’ve decided to run some benchmarks on the RK3566 device to see how it performs compared to other Arm systems Zidoo M6 system info But before running benchmarks, let’s have a look at some system info with CPU-Z CPU-Z has never heard about RK3566, so it detects it as RK3066, but the rest of the information seems correct with a quad-core Cortex-A55 clocked between 400 MHz and 1.8 GHz, an Arm Mali-G52 GPU, 3775KB RAM, and 24.12 GB internal storage from the 32GB flash. The system runs Android 11 on top of Linux 4.19 which will be supported until December 2024. I can set the video output to 4K, but the UI is still limited to 1920×1080 […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case