Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software

December 13, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

HUNSN RJ42 and RJ43 Intel N150 fanless network appliances and mini PCs come with four 2.5GbE ports, four video outputs

We’ve previously seen the new Intel N150 “Twin Lake” processor in mini PCs such as Beelink EQ14 and ASUS NUC 14 Essential among others, but the new quad-core CPU is now also found in HUNSN RJ42 and RJ43 fanless network appliances with four 2.5GbE RJ45 ports. They also double as mini PCs with multiple video outputs and USB ports. The mini PCs ship with up to 32GB RAM and 512GB of storage, support four independent displays through HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C interfaces, and offer five USB Type-A ports for expansion. The HUNSN RJ42 and RJ43 offer a similar set of features as previous Intel N100 network appliances with 2.5GbE ports such as the iKOOLCORE R2 and INCTEL N100, but with a slightly faster Intel N150 “Alder Lake-N Refresh” or “Twin Lake” processor thanks to higher clock speeds, and extra interfaces. HUNSN RJ42/RJ43 specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N150 quad-core “Twin […]

December 13, 2024December 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit – An Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” mini PC for developers

Khadas recently announced the Mind 2 mini PC with an Intel Core 5 or 7 “Meteor Lake” mini PC. But the company is prepping the launch of another similar device called the “Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Dev Workstation” or “Intel Core Ultra Processor (Series 2) AI PC Dev Kit” with a 15th Gen Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” processor offering up to 115 TOPS of AI performance. I’ll just call it “Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit” for shorts. The system ships with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, and Khadas says the new system is designed specifically for developers working on AI PC applications, but apart from the faster SoC, it comes with similar features as the Mind 2. This includes HDMI 2.0 video output, two 40Gbps USB4 ports, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, as well as two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports […]

December 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Lattice unveils Nexus 2 small FPGA platform, Lattice Avant 30 and Avant 50 mid-range devices, updated Lattice design software tools

Lattice Semiconductors announced several new FPGAs and software tools at the Lattice Developers Conference 2024 which took place on December 10-11. First, the company unveiled the Nexus 2 small FPGA platform starting with the Certus-N2 general-purpose FPGAs offering significant efficiency and performance improvements in this category of devices. The Lattice Avant 30 and Avant 50 were also introduced as mid-range FPGA devices with new capacity options to enable edge-optimized and advanced connectivity applications. Finally, the company releases new versions of Lattice design software tools and application-specific solution stacks to help accelerate customer time-to-market such for edge AI, embedded vision, factory automation, and automotive designs with Lattice Drive. Let’s have a look at the highlights of each announcement. Lattice Nexus 2 small FPGA platform and Certus-N2 FPGA Highlights and benefits of the Lattice Nexus 2 small FPGA platform: Power Efficiency against similar class competitive devices Up to 3x lower power Up […]

December 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

15 Euros Olimex RP2040pc Raspberry Pi RP2040 computer board supports Apple and Oric Atmos emulation

Olimex RP2040pc is an inexpensive “all-in-one” computer board based on a Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU with support for Apple //e, Apple ][+, and Oric Atmos emulation through the Reload emulator. The board features an HDMI port, stereo audio, four USB ports, and two UEXT expansion connectors. It’s not quite the first RP2040 retrocomputing board from Olimex, as they introduced the RP2040-PICO-PC in 2021 with an HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card slot before launching the Olimex NEO6502, which combines a MOS6502 MCU for Apple II, Oric, and Commodore 64 emulators with an RP2040 for HDMI/DVI video output and a few other things. The RP2040pc is similar to the latter, but with more ports and features, and everything is handled by the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. Olimex RP2040pc specifications: Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 133 MHz with 264 KB SRAM Storage – 16MB […]

December 12, 2024December 13, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Sfera Labs Strato Pi Max DIN rail industrial controllers now support the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5

Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 industrial controllers

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) was launched at the end of last month, and we are starting to see companies slowly announce upgraded CM4 designs. Yesterday, we wrote about EDATEC ED-IPC3100 DIN-Rail mountable industrial computers, and today, we’ll cover Sfera Labs’ addition of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 to their Strato Pi Max DIN rail industrial controllers. The controllers still feature a gigabit Ethernet port, a 10/100M Ethernet port, two USB 2.0 ports, a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller for power management and boot sequence control, and support expansion modules for up to sixteen RS-485 or RS-422 ports, four CAN V2.0B ports, digital and analog I/O, and more. Strato Pi Max specifications (as of December 2024): Base Module Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Zymbit SCM options. Microcontroller – Raspberry RP2040 dual ARM Cortex-M0+ at 133 MHz. Storage – eMMC, microSD (dual for XL), M.2 PCIe […]

December 11, 2024December 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

EDATEC ED-IPC3100 Raspberry Pi CM5-based industrial computers offers RS232/RS485, dual Ethernet, 4G LTE, and more

EDATEC ED-IPC3100 is a range of four DIN-Rail mountable industrial computers based on the new Raspberry Pi CM5 (Compute Module 5) with two Ethernet ports, and various RS232 or RS485 COM port options depending on the selected model. The ED-IPC3100 computers are offered with the CM5 with up to 16GB LPDDR5, 64GB eMMC flash, and optional WiFI 5 and Bluetooth 5. All also feature one HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, 9V to 36V DC input, and the EDC-IPC3120 model also adds a 3.5mm audio jack and internal connectors for a speaker, MIPI DSI and HDMI video output interfaces, and a MIPI CSI camera. EDATEC ED-IPC3100 specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi CM5 SoC – Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor @ 2.4GHz with VideoCore VII GPU System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB LPDDR4-4267 SDRAM Storage – Options for 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB eMMC flash Wireless – Optional dual-band WiFi […]

December 11, 2024December 10, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

MeLE QuieterDL – An ultrathin fanless Intel N100 mini PC with dual 2.5 GbE, HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C video outputs

MeLE QuieterDL is a fanless mini PC with an ultrathin design similar to the MeLE Quieter4C, albeit larger, and featuring two 2.5GbE RJ45 ports and supporting triple display setups via HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C connectors. The computer also comes with up to 16GB LPDDR4 RAM, 512GB storage, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, three USB 3.2 ports, one USB 2.0 port, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless connectivity, and Kensington lock slot for theft prevention. MeLE QuieterDL specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N100 CPU – Quad-core Alder Lake-N processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) GPU – 24EU Intel HD graphics @ 750 MHz Cache – 6MB cache TDP: 6W System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB LPDDR4X Storage Up to 512GB storage; support up to 4GB (unclear where it’s an eMCM flash + SSD configuration, or SSD only) MicroSD card reader Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0 port […]

December 10, 2024December 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Arduino Core for Zephyr beta released – Let’s give it a try!

Last July, Arduino announced plans to switch from the soon-to-be deprecated Arm Mbed to Zephyr RTOS, and the company has now outed the first beta release of “Arduino Core for Zephyr OS” for a range of boards. From the user’s perspective, this should not change anything. However, there are massive changes under the hood and Arduino sketches are built and executed differently with the Arduino Core for Zephyr. Some highlights of the new Zephyr-based Arduino core implementation include: Dynamic sketch loading – Sketches are compiled as ELF files and dynamically loaded by a precompiled Zephyr-based firmware. Zephyr subsystems support threading, inter-process communication, and real-time scheduling. Fast compiling and smaller binaries since a thin layer of user code and libraries are compiled, while the rest of the ZephyrOS is already binary. You can get started straightaway with the code and instructions on GitHub. You’ll need Arduino 2.x.x for this to work. […]