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

July 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

WisMesh Station Review – Telemetry, MQTT, and Grafana tested on a Raspberry Pi 4-based Meshtastic gateway

RAKwireless has sent us a sample of the WisMesh Station, a Meshtastic gateway and base station based on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, a WisMesh Pi HAT RAK6421 expansion board, a LoRa module, a GNSS module, all housed in a compact metal enclosure. It comes with meshtasticd preinstalled, making it ready to use right out of the box. Just unbox it, plug it in, and start using Meshtastic immediately. We’ll also use software packages for communication, data storage, and visualization, such as MQTT, Node-RED, InfluxDB, and Grafana, mostly following RAKwireless’s user guide WisMesh Station is available in 2 models according to transmit power: the standard RAK8622 model that uses the RAK13300 LoRa module (Semtech SX1262 with 22 dBm transmit power), suitable for urban networks where nodes are close to each other, and the high-power RAK8623 (HP) model that uses the RAK13302 module (SX1262 + SKY66122 amplifier circuit with 30 […]

July 12, 2026July 12, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Beelink EQi review – Part 2: An Intel Core 3 304 “Wildcat Lake” mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake Core 3 304 Windows 11 mini PC review

We’ve already checked out the specifications and hardware of the Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake mini PC in the first part of the review, with an unboxing and a teardown, before booting the mini PC into the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro for a first quick look. We’ve now had time to test the Intel Core 3 304 mini PC in more detail on Windows 11 Pro, so we’ll report our experience. The review includes feature testing, benchmark results, 4K and 8K YouTube video playback, 10GbE, 2.5GbE, and WiFi network performance evaluation, cooling performance, and measurement of fan noise and power consumption. Software Overview and Feature Testing After fully updating Windows 11 Pro and drivers to the latest version (excluding previews), I went to System > About window again. We still have a 1.50 GHz (base frequency) Intel Core 3 304 processor with 16GB 6400MT/s memory, and 834GB of storage from the […]

July 11, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Lua-programmable ELM11-Feather board puts Gowin GW1NR FPGA into Feather form factor (Crowdfunding)

BrisbaneSilicon ELM11-Feather is a “microcontroller” board based on a Gowin GW1NR FPGA that is natively programmable in Lua, C, SystemVerilog, and VHDL. Compatible with the Adafruit Feather form factor, the board features GPIO headers, a built-in debugger, a USB-C port for power and programming, and a 2-pin header for a LiPo battery. The company calls it a microcontroller board because the FPGA runs a PicoRV32 MCU softcore at up to 75 MHz with 1MB RAM and 8MB flash, programmable with Lua, and the user can also customize hardware layers with RTL code using the remaining FPGA fabric. ELM11-Feather specifications: FPGA – Gowin GW1NR-LV9 FPGA from the GW1NR-9 family 8K LUTs 8,640 logical units (LUTs) 6,480 flip-flop 17,280 bits shadow SRAM (SSRAM) 486 Kbit block SRAM (BSRAM) 64 Mbit (8MB) PSRAM 608 Kbit user flash 2x PLL Up to 276x user I/O USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and […]

July 10, 2026July 10, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

M5Stack Stamp-C5 – A Tiny ESP32-C5 USB-C board/module with up to 19 GPIO, 3.7V battery support

M5Stack Stamp-C5, also known as the M5Stamp-C5, is a tiny wireless IoT USB-C board based on the Espressif ESP32-C5 RISC-V microcontroller with dual-band WiFi 6, Bluetooth LE, and 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread) connectivity. Despite its small size (19.1 x 17.6mm), the module exposes up to nineteen GPIO pins, eleven on standard 2.54mm pitch headers and castellated holes, and eight on an FPC extension connector. The board also supports battery charging and ships with an external IPEX antenna for wireless connectivity, since there’s no built-in antenna. M5Stack Stamp-C5 specifications: Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-C5HF4 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ 48 MHz acting as the main processor for power-sensitive applications Memory – 384 KB SRAM on-chip Storage – 320 KB ROM, 4MB SPI flash Wireless Dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) 802.11ax WiFi 6, 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 backward compatibility WiFi modes: Station mode, SoftAP mode, SoftAP + […]

July 10, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Open Book Touch – A DRM-free, WiFi-connected 4.26-inch open-source hardware e-reader (Crowdfunding)

Oddly Specific Objects has launched a crowdfunding campaign for the Open Book Touch, an ESP32-S3-based e-reader with a 4.26-inch e-paper display with 480 x 800 resolution and a capacitive touch screen. The open-source hardware device comes with 16 MB flash, 8MB PSRAM, a frontlight with warm and cool LEDs, a microSD card for storage, and an 800 mAh user-replaceable LiPo battery with everything housed in a 3D printed enclosure. Open Book Touch specifications: SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 dual-core MCU with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE connectivity Memory – 8 MB octal SPI PSRAM Storage 16 MB quad SPI flash MicroSD card slot Display 4.26-inch, 480 × 800 e-paper; 1-bit and 2-bit grayscale with dithering Capacitive touchscreen based on FT6336 low-power controller Frontlight – five warm + five cool LEDs, independently dimmable USB – USB Type-C for power/charging and programming Misc – 3D-printed plastic enclosure; snap-fit, with 3D-printable CAD for custom shells; […]

July 9, 2026July 8, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Norik Systems introduces nRF9151-based USB Dongle for DECT NR+ deployments

Norik Systems has developed a compact USB dongle based on Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF9151 SiP, mostly designed to work as a DECT NR+ child node or a USB-powered gateway. As a reminder, DECT NR+ is a non-cellular 5G standard for long-range low-power applications that works at 1.9 GHz and supports up to one million nodes through mesh, star, and point-to-point topologies. The Norik USB dongle enables developers to easily add DECT NR+ to gateways or child modes. Norik Systems DECT NR+ USB dongle specifications: Wireless System-in-Package – Nordic Semi nRF9151 CPU – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 64 MHz Memory – 256KB RAM Storage – 1MB flash Connectivity Multimode LTE-M/NB-IoT/NB-NTN modem with DECT NR+ support and GNSS. 700-2200 MHz LTE band support. Power Class 5 20 dBm Power Class 3 23 dBm 1.9 GHz and 915 MHz DECT NR+ band support (1, 2, 9, 22) Security – Arm TrustZone + Arm CryptoCell 310. […]

July 8, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Rikomagic DS04 – An Android 14 4K digital signage player powered by Rockchip RK3576 SoC

Rikomagic DS04 4K digital signage player

Rikomagic DS04 is a new 4K digital signage player running Android 14 on a Rockchip RK3576 octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 processor paired with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It looks to be a cost-down version of the Rockchip RK3588-powered Rikomagic DS08 8K digital signage player with many of the same ports and features, including two 4K-capable HDMI 2.1 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 jack, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, optional 4G LTE, and a few USB ports. Rikomagic DS04 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.3GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.2GHz 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 – H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1, and AVS2 up to 8Kp30 or […]

July 7, 2026July 7, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ESP32-C5 devkit offers 2.8-inch capacitive touch display, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 LE, LiPo battery support

Last week, I wrote about the ESP32-C5-LCD-1.47 as one of the first ESP32-C5 devkits with a built-in display enabling dual-band WiFi 6 connectivity for IoT and HMI projects. However, one reader lamented the lack of touch-capable screens, at which point kwchow pointed to the ESP32-C5-Touch-LCD-2.8 model offering just that by pairing an ESP32-C5 with a 2.8-inch IPS display with capacitive touch and 320×480 resolution. The new board also features a microSD card slot, a USB-C port for power and programming, a built-in microphone and a speaker connector, a few sensors, and various I/Os connectors for expansion. Let’s have a closer look. ESP32-C5-Touch-LCD-2.8 specifications: Wireless module – Espressif Systems ESP32-C5-WROOM-1-N32R8 SoC – ESP32-C5HR8 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ 40 MHz acting as the main processor for power-sensitive applications Memory – 384 KB SRAM on-chip, 8MB PSRAM Storage – 320 KB ROM Wireless […]