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

February 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

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 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) - 2 Comments

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 […]

January 30, 2026January 31, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Microchip PIC32CM PL10 Cortex-M0+ microcontrollers are pin-to-pin compatible with AVR MCUs, support 5V operation

Microchip has added the PIC32CM PL10 MCUs to its PIC32C Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller family. Pin-to-pin compatible with AVR MCUs, the new PL10 MCUs feature a range of Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs), 5V operation, and functional safety (FuSa) compliance. The microcontrollers notably integrate a 12-bit ADC with strong noise immunity, a Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC) for responsive touch applications, and two serial communication interfaces with USART, I2C, and/or SPI support. Target applications include industrial control, building automation, consumer appliances, power tools, and sensor-based systems. Microchip PIC32CM PL10 specifications: MCU core – Arm Cortex-M0+ core up to 24 MHz Memory – Up to 16 KB SRAM (8 KB in current datasheet) Storage – Up to 128 KB Flash (64 KB in current datasheet) I/Os and peripherals Up to 55x programmable I/O pins Up to 16x external interrupts Multi-Voltage I/Os (MVIO), removing the need for external level shifters Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC) with […]

January 30, 2026January 31, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

Jupiter 2 – RVA23-compliant SBC features SpacemiT K3 octa-core RISC-V AI SoC, up to 32GB RAM, 256GB UFS

MILK-V Shenzhen Technology has just unveiled the Jupiter 2, the first RVA23-compliant RISC-V SBC powered by a 2.4 GHz SpacemiT K3 octa-core X100 CPU with up to 60 TOPS of AI performance, up to 32GB LPDDR5, 256GB UFS, and PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe SSD support. Designed by SpacemiT themselves, the board also features an eDP connector, a 10GbE SFP+ cage, a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, built-in WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, two USB Type-C connectors, four USB 2.0 ports, an M.2 Key-B socket coupled with a NanoSIM card slot for 4G LTE or 5G cellular connectivity, and more. Jupiter 2 specifications (preliminary): System-on-Module – K3-CoM260 (aka Jupiter 2 NX) SoC – SpacemiT K3 CPU 8x 64-bit RISC-V X100 “big” cores clocked up to 2.4 GHz, RVA23 compliance; 130 KDMIPS performance (similar to RK3588) 8x RISC-V A100 AI Cores with support for up to 1024-bit RVV1.0 parallel computing, optimized for […]

January 29, 2026January 29, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Electronic components price and lead time increases announced across the board, and not only because of RAM

Most people already know about rapidly rising RAM prices, but I’m receiving more and more emails about price increases for a range of devices, in a way that’s reminiscent of the impact the Coronavirus/COVID-19 had in 2020 to 2022. We’ve already covered the Raspberry Pi Compute Modules price increase in October 2025, followed by the Raspberry Pi 4/5 price adjustment last December. Unsurprisingly, it’s going to spread to other companies as well. A few days ago, I received an email from SolidRun entitled “Customer Notification: Industry‑Wide Component Shortages and Price Increases”: The global semiconductor, and electronic components industry is currently experiencing significant price increases and widespread shortages. What started as memories shortage covering mostly DDR4 and NAND integrated circuits and modules – expanded across multiple categories (including SoCs). As a result, many critical components now face extended lead times, with certain items that were previously available within a few weeks […]

January 29, 2026January 29, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

MicroPythonOS graphical operating system delivers Android-like user experience on microcontrollers

Yesterday, I wrote about Ariel OS RTOS for microcontrollers written in Rust, but there’s another interesting open-source operating system for microcontrollers that will be covered at FOSDEM 2026: MicroPythonOS. While Ariel OS is designed for secure, memory-safe, networked IoT applications on microcontrollers, MicroPythonOS targets applications with graphical user interfaces and is heavily inspired by Android and iOS, with an appstore, an LVGL-based touchscreen and button UI with plenty of widgets, gestures and theme support, and a wifi manager, as well as over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates. You’ll probably be astonished to learn that MicroPythonOS is written in… MicroPython. It’s comprised of a Thin OS which handles hardware initialization, multitasking, and UI, and everything else is an app, including system features like WiFi configuration and OS updates. MicroPythonOS highlights: Native MicroPython foundation Runs on ESP32 microcontrollers, but the FOSDEM 2026 talk mentions that it can run on anything that supports MicroPython, including […]