Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Enabling Zigbee in Bluetooth LE temperature and humidity monitors from Xiaomi and Qingping using Telink TLSR8258 WiSoC

Enabling Zigbee in Bluetooth LE temperature and humidity monitors from Xiaomi and Qingping using Telink TLSR8258 WiSoC

XIaomi temperature humidity monitors Zigbee

Qingping CGDK2 and Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC Bluetooth LE (BLE) temperature and humidity monitors based on Telink TLSR8258 can be switched to Zigbee thanks to a custom firmware flashed over-the-air. Telink TLS8258 is a multi-protocol wireless microcontroller supporting Bluetooth LE 5, Bluetooth Mesh, Zigbee, RF4CE, Thread, 6LoWPAN, HomeKit, ANT, and 2.4GHz proprietary and found in boards such as the LILYGO T-Zigbee and various products. Some products only enable one wireless protocol, for example, Bluetooth LE as in the just-mentioned Qingping and Xiaomi monitors, but “SmartHomeScene” has found out that it was possible to switch from BLE to Zigbee on those by simply updating the firmware. The Telink TLS8258 devices mentioned above will publish data over BLE every 10 minutes (unless humidity or temperature changes, in which case data is transmitted immediately) with the default firmware, but Zigbee can be enabled by using the pvvx custom firmware for the following models: Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC […]

Posted on by Debashis Das - No Comments on Waveshare UGV Rover – A 6-wheel AI robot built around Raspberry Pi 4/5 and ESP32

Waveshare UGV Rover – A 6-wheel AI robot built around Raspberry Pi 4/5 and ESP32

Waveshare Unmanned Ground Vehicle Rover(UGV) for Raspberry Pi 4 and Pi 5

The Waveshare UGV Rover is a 6-wheel robot platform based on Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 as well as an ESP32 module and built for remote exploration, object recognition, and autonomous navigation. Since the source code for the platform will be open-sourced it can also be used for educational purposes, programming, robotics, AI experimentation, and many other applications. This Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) rover features a 2mm thick aluminum body, six 80mm shock-absorbing tires, and a four-wheel drive system controlled by an ESP32 sub-controller. The sub-controller also handles sensors, LiDAR, cameras, and more. The brain or the main controller of the rover is a Raspberry Pi SBC – either a Pi 4B or Pi 5 – which notably handles computer vision and machine learning operations. Since the mounting holes are designed to fit a Raspberry Pi, it is safe to assume that it will fit other SBCs with the same […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Banana Pi BPI-M5 Pro low-profile SBC features Rockchip RK3576 octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 AIoT SoC

Banana Pi BPI-M5 Pro low-profile SBC features Rockchip RK3576 octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 AIoT SoC

Banana Pi BPI-M5 Pro

Banana Pi BPI-M5 Pro, also known as Armsom Sige5, is a low-profile single board computer (SBC) powered by the Rockchip RK3576 octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 SoC for the AIoT market that offers a mid-range offering between Rockchip RK3588 and RK3399 SoCs. The board comes with 16GB LPDDR4X and 128GB eMMC flash by default, offers dual GbE, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, an M.2 2280 PCIe socket for expansion, HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header. Banana Pi BPI-M5 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU 4x Cortex-A72 cores @ 2.2GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores @ 1.8GHz Arm Cortex-M0 MCU at 400MHz GPU – ARM Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.0 and Vulkan 1.1 NPU – 6 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator with support for INT4/INT8/INT16/BF16/TF32 mixed operations. VPU Video Decoder: […]

Posted on by Tomisin Olujinmi - No Comments on Alfa Networks AHST7394S Wi-Fi HaLow module enables low-power, long-range IoT connectivity up to 1km

Alfa Networks AHST7394S Wi-Fi HaLow module enables low-power, long-range IoT connectivity up to 1km

Alfa Networks AHST7394S HaLow

Taiwanese wireless equipment manufacturer, Alfa Networks, and US-based Wi-Fi HaLow semiconductor company, Newracom, have collaborated to develop the AHST7394S Wi-Fi HaLow module. The solder-down module is based on Newracom’s NRC7394 SoC, a low-cost and high-efficiency HaLow SoC chipset providing up to 17dbm output power and capable of connecting to a maximum of 8K devices within a single network. The NRC7394 also supports a standalone mode, which enables the execution of a wide range of IoT applications on the embedded ARM Cortex-M3 CPU. While HaLow is more energy-efficient than other Wi-Fi types, low-power operation modes such as legacy, TWT, and WMM-PS can reduce power consumption further. The AHST7394S Wi-Fi HaLow module supports a data rate of up to 15Mbps, over 600 times faster than LoRaWAN while maintaining a good range (over 1km). The second-generation HaLow module is perfect for building long-range, ultra-low-power networks in sub-1 GHz, license-exempt frequency bands. It is a […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on NXP i.MX 8M Plus powered DIN-Rail IoT gateway takes DIO, RS232, RS485, and ADC expansion modules

NXP i.MX 8M Plus powered DIN-Rail IoT gateway takes DIO, RS232, RS485, and ADC expansion modules

Compulab IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS IoT gateway with IO modules

Compulab IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS is a DIN Rail IoT gateway powered by an NXP i.MX 8M Plus AI SoC that takes various expansion modules with digital inputs and outputs (DIO), RS232, RS485, or ADC. The new model looks to be an evolution of the Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8PLUS Arm Linux IoT gateway introduced in 2022 with many of the same features, except the IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS is designed to be installed in a cabinet or other installation with a DIN Rail, and can easily be connected to additional I/O modules. Compulab IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Plus Quad or Quad-lite CPU Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz Arm Cortex-M7 real-time core @ 800 MHz GPU – Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU VPU – 1080p H.265/H.264 video decoder & encoder DSP HiFi 4 DSP AI accelerator – 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) on i.MX 8M Plus Quad only […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Yocto Project 5.0 “Scarthgap” released with Linux 6.6 and plenty of changes

Yocto Project 5.0 “Scarthgap” released with Linux 6.6 and plenty of changes

Yocto Project 5.0

The Yocto Project 5.0 codenamed “Scarthgap” has just been released with Linux 6.6, glibc 2.39, LLVM 18.1, and over 300 other recipe upgrades. As a result of the release, the developers have made it available for download (bz2 tarball). The Yocto Project, or Yocto for shorts, is a popular framework used to create custom embedded Linux distributions, and we’ve played with it over the year showing how to create a minimal image for the Raspberry Pi, and last year, we used it again when reviewing two industrial development boards, namely the VOIPAC IMX8M and ADLINK i-Pi SMARC 1200. Yocto is quite a powerful framework/build system with plenty of options that make it highly customizable, but the learning curve is fairly steep. Some other changes in Yocto Project 5.0 include: New variables: CVE_DB_INCR_UPDATE_AGE_THRES: Configure the maximum age of the internal CVE database for incremental update (instead of a full redownload). RPMBUILD_EXTRA_PARAMS: […]

AAEON Intel Arc
Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on UP Squared Pro 710H Edge mini PC combines Processor N97 or Core i3-N305 CPU with 26 TOPS Hailo-8 AI accelerator

UP Squared Pro 710H Edge mini PC combines Processor N97 or Core i3-N305 CPU with 26 TOPS Hailo-8 AI accelerator

UP Squared Pro 710H Edge mini PC

AAEON UP Squared Pro 710H Edge is a mini PC with an onboard Hailo-8 edge 26 TOPS AI accelerator and an Intel Processor N97 or Core i3-N305 Alder Lake-N CPU designed for edge AI applications. The fanless Edge AI mini PC comes up to 16GB LPDDR5 soldered-on RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, and offers dual 4K video output through HDMI and DisplayPort connector, dual 2.5GbE, optional WiFi and cellular connectivity, two USB 3.2 ports, an RS232/RS422/RS485 COM port, a 40-pin female GPIO header, and a wide 12 to 36V DC input. UP Squared Pro 710H Edge specifications: Alder Lake N-series SoC (one or the other) Intel Processor N97 quad-core processor up to 3.6 GHz with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD Graphics Gen 12 @ 1.2 GHz; TDP: 12W Intel Core i3-N305 octa-core processor up to 3.8 GHz with 6MB cache, 32EU Intel UHD Graphics Gen 12 @ 1.25 GHz; […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on GEEKOM XT12 Pro review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 on an Intel Core i9-12900H mini PC

GEEKOM XT12 Pro review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 on an Intel Core i9-12900H mini PC

GEEKOM XT12 Pro Ubuntu 24.04 review

We’ve already looked at GEEKOM XT12 Pro specifications and hardware design in the first part of the review and followed up by reviewing the Intel Core i9-12900 mini PC with Windows 11 Pro in the second part. We’ve now had time to review the GEEKOM XT12 Pro mini PC with the just-released Ubuntu 24.04 operating system to evaluate the compatibility and performance in Linux. In this third and final part of the review, we’ll test features in detail, evaluate performance with benchmarks, test storage and network capabilities, check YouTube video playback at 4K and 8K resolution, perform a stress test to check the cooling solution and provide numbers for fan noise and power consumption of the GEEKOM XT12 Pro mini PC. Ubuntu 24.04 installation and system information We’ve resized the Windows 11 by half in order to install Ubuntu 24.04 in dual boot configuration. After that, we inserted a USB […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC