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

November 11, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Kode Dot – An easy-to-use, pocket-sized, battery-powered ESP32-S3 devkit (Crowdfunding)

Kode Dot is a pocket-sized ESP32-S3 maker device for prototyping with a built-in 2.13-inch AMOLED, a 500mAh battery, a 9-axis IMU, a microphone and a speaker, an RTC, a few buttons, a GPIO header, and a magnetic connector for expansion. Kode Dot is designed to simplify the prototyping process. Users can still write code using the Arduino IDE, PlatformIO, or ESP-IDF framework and upload it via the kit’s USB-C port, but thanks to kodeOS firmware, each program becomes a standalone app with its own name, icon, and interface, accessible from the graphical user interface. Kode Dot specifications: SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 dual-core microcontroller with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5 LE, ESP-NOW peer-to-peer protocol System Memory – 8 MB octal PSRAM Storage 32 MB octal SPI flash microSD card slot Display – 2.13-inch Color AMOLED with 502 x 410 resolution Audio ICS-43434 MEMS microphone 1W MAX98357A speaker amp USB – […]

November 11, 2025November 11, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Giveaway Week 2025 winners announced!

CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2025 has just ended and we’ve now ready to announce the winners. We offered some of the review samples we tested, and three companies joined us offering new samples, namely Banana Pi with two router boards, VOIPAC with an industrial development kit, and RAKwireless offered two of their IoT development kits for the fifth year running. Besides the aforementioned prize, we also included an ESP32-P4 development kit, a dry switch from SONOFF, a Raspberry Pi CM4-based HMI with a 915MHz LoRa module, a 5-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display, and two USB PD voltage indicators on both CNX Software “International” and CNX Software Thailand. You can see all prizes shown below. Without further ado, here are the seven winners of Giveaway Week 2025 on CNX Software (English): M5Stack M5Tab – Ed, Canada Elecrow Pi Terminal – Tom, Finland Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite router board – Stef, Belgium […]

November 11, 2025November 11, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

$500+ MINISFORUM MS-R1 Arm Linux AI mini PC features CIX CP8180 12-core SoC, up to 64GB LPDDR5x

MINISFORUM MS-R1 is an AI mini PC running Debian 12 Linux that’s powered by a CIX P1 (CP8180) 12-core Arm Cortex-A720/A520 processor with up to 45 TOPS of AI performance. The mini PC supports up to 64GB of soldered-on LPDDR5 memory, M.2 storage, and provides HDMI, USB-C DP, and eDP display interfaces, two 10GbE ports and WiFi 6E, a total of nine USB ports, a PCIe Gen x16 slot for a graphics card, U.2 storage, or networking expansion, a 40-pin internal GPIO header, and more. MINISFORUM MS-R101 specifications: SoC – Cix CP8180 (P1) 12-core DynamIQ processor 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz 4x Cortex‑A720 medium cores 4x Cortex‑A520 LITTLE cores Cache – 12MB shared L3 cache GPU – Arm Immortalis G720 MC10 with hardware ray-tracing support, graphics APIs: Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0 VPU Video Decoder – Up to 8Kp60 AV1, H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8, H.263, […]

November 10, 2025November 10, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

CRA-ready Grinn Genioboard Edge AI SBC features MediaTek Genio 510 or 700 System-on-module

GenioBoard SBC MediaTek Genio 510 700 SoM

Grinn has launched a credit card-sized SBC powered by its MediaTek Genio 510 or Genio 700 Cortex-A78/A55 SoM, and designed for Edge AI applications with support for the Thistle Security Platform via an on-board Infineon OPTIGA Trust M hardware security module to enable compliance with the EU’s Cybersecurity Resilience Act (CRA). With a form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 model B, the Genioboard features 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, a Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, a 40-pin GPIO header, a USB-C debuig port, USB-C PD power, and on the bottom side, two M.2 sockets for AI accelerators and wireless modules. Genioboard specifications: System-on-Module – Grinn GenioSOM-510 or Grinn GenioSOM-700 SoC MediaTek Genio 510 (MT8370) hexa-core Arm Cortex-A78/A55 processor up to 2.2 GHz, Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, 4Kp60 video decoding, 4Kp30 video encoding, up to 3.2 TOPS […]

November 9, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Using the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC as a regular Bluetooth keyboard

Using Raspberry Pi 500+ as a Bluetooth Keyboard

While the Raspberry Pi 500+ is a fully functional Linux keyboard PC, it’s also possible to use it as a regular mechanical Bluetooth keyboard. This week, I had a problem with my regular Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo, so I sent it back to the shop for repair since it was still under warranty. Then somebody forgot the RF dongle for her own combo at home, so long story short, we ended up with one third spare keyboard for two people. Not ideal. But luckily, we just completed the review of the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC, so we had a spare mechanical keyboard, and the btferret project allowed us to use it as a Bluetooth keyboard, which I’m using right now to write this article. We could have used the Pi 500+ as a Linux machine directly, but we would have had to reinstall all the software we […]

November 9, 2025November 11, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 210 Comments

Giveaway Week 2025 – RAKwireless Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit

It turns out we don’t have two, but three companies offering free samples on CNX Software this year. The last one is a regular, and RAKwireless joins us for the fifth year running with a Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit that can be useful for industrial automation and asset-tracking applications. Regular readers may recall that it is the same prize as last year. While I usually prefer getting a new devkit, the company didn’t launch any this year (just some Meshtastic kits). The good news is that if you missed out last time around, you have a chance to give it another go. Here’s what the winner will get as a reminder: RAK4631 WisBlock Core Module based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 64 MHz with 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 protocol stack Semtech SX1262 LoRa Transceiver with LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol stack […]

November 8, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC review with Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie”

Today, we’ll review the Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC using the recently released Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie” based on Debian 13. It’s quite similar to the earlier Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC, but comes with more memory (16GB vs 8GB), a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a proper mechanical keyboard with replaceable caps and RGB LED lighting, so we’ll focus on these aspects during our tests, after going through the usual unboxing and teardown process. Raspberry Pi 500+ unboxing We received an early prototype of the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC with a UK layout, white design in a retail package. The bottom side of the package includes a list of features and confirmation that it’s indeed a UK layout keyboard. Not ideal for Thai users (we usually rely on the US layout), but that was probably the only layout available when Raspberry Pi sent us a sample in mid-September. […]

November 8, 2025November 10, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 227 Comments

Giveaway Week 2025 – VOIPAC iMX93 Pro industrial development kit

The sixth prize of this year’s Giveaway Week is a VOIPAC iMX93 Pro industrial development kit with an NXP i.MX 93 Cortex-A55/M33 Edge AI SoC, 2GB LPDDR4, and 16GB eMMC flash. The development kit offers dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, HDMI, DisplayPort, and HDMI display interfaces, three audio jacks, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, various USB ports, M.2 sockets, and more. It targets artificial intelligence, machine learning, human-machine interface (HMI) solutions, and more. I reviewed the VOIPAC IMX8M industrial development kit and subsequently gave it away in 2023, but I haven’t done a review of the iMX93 development kit. Instead, one lucky winner will get it directly from VOIPAC. Alternatively, they can offer the new iMX91 industrial development kit, if you prefer. You can also write your preferred kit in the comments (optional). The company provides Linux built with Yocto Project 5.0 Scarthgap for the […]