CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

End-of-life notice for Samsung/Nexell S5P4418 processor

Samsung/Nexell S5P4418 SoC is being phased out, according to a somewhat recent post by EmbSoM/Graperain stating that the SoC was discontinued by the original manufacturer. Most people will likely not care about an old quad-core Cortex-A9 SoC being discontinued, but the S5P4418 was found in several interesting hardware platforms we’ve covered here, mostly from FriendlyELEC, previously FriendlyArm. This includes the FriendlyELEC Core4418, NanoPi2 and Fire2A SBCs, Samsung Artik 530 modules, and several others. Graperain provides more details about the end-of-life notice, notably the key dates for their products: Last Time Buy (LTB) – 2026-03-31 Last Shipment Date – 2026-09-30 This impacts the company’s S5P4418 system-on-module and the S5P4418 single board computer. The Samsung Artik family has been discontinued for several years, and if I look at the FriendlyELEC store, they only sell the Fire2A and Smart4418 CPU board without an end-of-life notice, but they should probably be subject to a similar […]

February 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Cincoze CV-221C 21.5-inch modular slim Panel PC supports up to Intel Core Ultra 3/5/7 Meteor Lake-PS SoC

Cincoze CV-211C is a family of 21.5-inch modular slim panel PCs powered by Intel Core Ultra 3/5/7 Meteor Lake-PS SoC (P2302 Series), Core i3-1215UE or Core-i5-1245UE Alder Lake processor (P2202 Series), Core i3-8145UE or Core i5-8365UE Whiskey Lake SoC (P2102 Series), or Core i3-6100U or Core i5-6300U Skylake processor (P2002 Series). All are advertised as new models, despite some being powered by Skylake processors released in 2015. They share similar key features such as up to a 21.5-inch TFT panel with 1920×1080 resolution, VGA output, dual Ethernet, three to four USB 3.2 ports, and more. We’ll focus on the Cincoze CV-211C P2302 Series in this article. Cincoze CV-221C P2302 Series specifications: CV-221C panel Display – 21.5-inch 16.7M color LCD with 1920×1080 resolution Brightness – 300 cd/m2 Contrast Ratio – 5000:1 Pixel Pitch (mm) – 0.24825 (H) x 0.24825 (V) Viewing Angle (H-V) – 178° / 178° Backlight LED Life Time […]

February 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

AOMedia AV2 video codec draft specification release, and a quick try at the reference implementation

After 5 years of work and over 2700 commits against the reference software, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has recently released the AV2 specification. This next-generation open video codec provides up to 40% bandwidth reduction over AV1 at equivalent quality. The document entitled “AV2 Bitstream & Decoding Process Specification” specifies the Alliance for Open Media Video 2 (AV2) bitstream syntax, semantics, parsing process, and decoding process. AV2 builds upon the foundation of AV1 and has been engineered to provide higher compression efficiency and high-quality video delivery at lower bitrates. The Alliance for Open Media also highlights that it provides better “support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range”. The AOMedia Video Model (AVM) serves as the official reference software, and tools and source code can be found on GitLab. Note that reference […]

February 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

TrustTunnel is an open-source, high-performance VPN protocol that’s harder to detect and block

How TrustTunnerl AdGuard VPN protocol works

Adguard VPN is a commercial VPN solution, but the company has decided to open-source the VPN protocol and named it TrustTunnel. It’s described as a modern, secure, mobile-optimized VPN protocol. Since there are plenty of VPN protocols, including WireGuard and OpenVPN, it felt redundant at first. But AdGuard explains that those are easy to detect and block at the network level, and methods to conceal VPN traffic, such as wrapping VPN data in a TCP connection, often reduce speed. TrustTunnel relies on a different method and blends in with regular HTTPS traffic through TLS-based encryption, and HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 transport. Each connection runs on its own dedicated stream, which combines packets for more efficient transmission. The diagrams above and below illustrate this by showing that four hops are required for a standard concealed VPN, and only two hops with TrustTunnel. The company also says it is optimized for mobile platforms […]

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

PicoIDE – An open-source hardware IDE/ATAPI drive emulator for vintage computers (Crowdfunding)

PicoIDE is an open-source hardware IDE/ATAPI drive emulator based on a Raspberry Pi RP2350 board and designed to replace hard drives and CD-ROM drives in vintage computers with microSD card storage. Users don’t need to burn optical discs or deal with old IDE hard drives with bad blocks, and instead, they can simply put their disk images on a microSD card and swap between them as needed. Two versions are offered, namely the PicoIDE Base featuring full IDE/ATAPI emulation in a standard 3.5-inch enclosure with a microSD card slot, and CD audio output, and the PicoIDE Deluxe, adding an ESP32-C3-based front panel with WiFi connectivity, an OLED, and navigation buttons. PicoIDE specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller CPU 2x Arm Cortex-M33 cores @ 150 MHz 2x Hazard3 RISC-V cores @ 150 MHz Up to two cores can be used at any time (configured at boot) Memory – 520KB SRAM […]

February 2, 2026February 1, 2026 by Debashis Das - No Comments

DSTIKE AI Home Security Sidekick – ESP32-S3 hacking tool with Wi-Fi, display, camera, and voice interaction

DSTIKE AI Home Security Sidekick, nicknamed “Eve,” is an ESP32-S3-based AI-powered hacking tool with a display, camera, audio interaction, USB, and a built-in battery for portable use. The device is designed by Travis Lin, well known for his deauther watches like the Deauther Watch V4S and the Deauther Watch X, but now they have designed a Home Security Sidekick with a 2.0-inch LCD, a 2MP camera for basic computer-vision tasks, and an onboard microphone and speaker for voice interaction. It supports real-time Wi-Fi deauthentication attack detection through 802.11 management frame analysis, includes a USB Type-C port for charging and firmware flashing, and integrates a physical wake/function button, all housed in a transparent acrylic enclosure for home network monitoring, desktop diagnostics, and educational applications. DSTIKE AI Home Security Sidekick specifications Core module – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 SoC – ESP32-S3 CPU – Dual-core LX7 processor with up to 240MHz Memory – 512KB SRAM, […]

February 1, 2026February 1, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Fusion HAT+ Review – Adding AI voice and servo/motor control to Raspberry Pi for robotics, Smart Home, or education

Fusion HAT+ review LLM servo control camera

SunFounder has sent me a review sample of the Fusion HAT+ Raspberry Pi expansion board designed for motor and servo control using audio interactions with its built-in microphone and speaker, as well as LLM models. It can be used as an AI-enabled robot controller, a smart home hub, a voice assistant, or an interactive learning platform. In this review, after an unboxing and going through the installation of the Fusion HAT+ on a Raspberry Pi 5 2GB, I’ll mainly focus on the voice interaction part using text-to-speech (TTS), speech-to-text (STT), and local and cloud-based LLMs and VLMs, and also quickly test servo control to wave a flag using voice commands. SunFounder Fusion HAT+ unboxing I received the sample in the retail package reading “SunFounder Fusion HAT+ for Raspberry Pi” and detailing the key features, namely rechargeable battery, 12x PWM, onboard speaker and microphone, 4x 12-bit ADC, safe shutdown, 4x DC […]

January 31, 2026January 31, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

M5Stack AI-8850 LLM Accelerator M.2 Kit offers an alternative to Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2

M5Stack has launched the “AI-88502 LLM Accelerator M.2 Kit 8GB Version” based on its LLM-8850 M.2 card with a 24 TOPS Axera AX8850 SoC, and offering an alternative to the Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2, supporting both LLM and AI vision workloads. The kit is comprised of the M.2 card and a Raspberry Pi-HAT 8850 board with USB PD power input for the card and Raspberry Pi 5, a 16-pin PCIe connector and 40-pin GPIO header for connection to the SBC, as well as accessories. M5Stack AI-8850 LLM accelerator M.2 kit specifications: M5Stack LLM‑8850 M.2 card SoC – Axera AX8850 CPU – Octa-core Cortex‑A55 processor at 1.7 GHz NPU – 24 TOPS @ INT8 VPU Video Encoder – 8K @ 30 fps H.264/H.265 encoding, supports scaling / cropping Video Decoder – 8K @ 60 fps H.264/H.265 decoding, supports 16 channels 1080p parallel decoding, supports scaling / cropping Memory (two options) 8GB 64‑bit LPDDR4x @ 4266 Mbps 4GB 64-bit LPDDR4x, 4266 Mbps (not […]