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

October 13, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Remodo X is a Programmable Bluetooth & IR Remote Control for Raspberry Pi (Crowdfunding)

There are plenty of Bluetooth or RF remote controls on the market, but Remodo X is a little different. Mainly designed for the Raspberry Pi board, the compact Bluetooth & IR remote control comes with four buttons that can be programmed from a mobile app to launch program or trigger scripts for home automation, home entertainment, or any other function you may think of. Remodo X specifications: Connectivity Bluetooth LE up to 30 meters (line-of-sight) via Realtek BLE 4.2 Class 2 chip IR up to 10 meters User Input – 4x keys for 8 different actions using long or short presses Misc – Buzzer for “find me” function Power Supply – 2x AAA batteries Dimensions – 114 x 36 x 13 mm Weight – 37 grams The remote control can be programmed in the yet-to-be-released Remodo app for Android or iOS with any smartphone that comes with Bluetooth LE connectivity. […]

October 12, 2020March 19, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Hi3861 based HiSpark WiFi IoT development board supports LiteOS and HarmonyOS

HiHope HiSpark WiFi IoT development board features Hisilicon Hi3861 microcontroller with 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and supports Huawei LiteOS as well as HarmonyOS. Equipped with 2MB flash and 384KB SRAM, the board targets smart home applications, and ships with a baseboard to help with development. HiSpark board specifications: MCU – Hisilicon Hi3861 32-bit microcontroller @ up to 160 MHz with 352 KB SRAM and 288 KB ROM, 2 MB flash memory, and WiFI 4 connectivity; QFN-32 5x5mm package WiFi 802.11b/g/n standard up to 72 Mbps @ HT20 2.4 GHz frequency band (ch1-ch14). Station (STA) and access point (AP) modes with up to 6 clients for the latter WiFi mesh with up to 256 nodes Security – WPA, WPA2 personal, and WPS 2.0 PCB antenna USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming via CH340 chip Expansion – 2x headers with up to 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 3x […]

October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Linux 5.9 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.9 on lkml: Ok, so I’ll be honest – I had hoped for quite a bit fewer changes this last week, but at the same time there doesn’t really seem to be anything particularly scary in here. It’s just more commits and more lines changed than I would have wished for. The bulk of this is the networking fixes that I already mentioned as being pending in the rc8 release notes last weekend. In fact, about half the patch (and probably more of the number of commits) is from the networking stuff (both drivers and elsewhere). Outside of that, the most visible thing is a reinstatement of the fbdev amba-clcd driver – that’s a noticeable patch, but it’s basically just mainly a revert. The rest is really really tiny (mostly some other minor driver updates, but some filesystem and architecture fixes […]

October 11, 2020October 12, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Enabling AV1 Hardware Video Decoding in Windows 10

AOMedia AV1 royalty-free video codec delivers up to 50% better compression than H.264 and up to 20% better than VP9 for the same video content, so streaming companies like Netflix and YouTube enabled the codec a while ago. When I play a YouTube video in Chrome in Ubuntu 20.04 and check the stats for nerds info, it will usually show the video is played with “av01.0” codec which refers to AV1, but it’s played with software video decoding using libraries like Dav1d leveraging SIMD instructions. But ideally, you’d want hardware video decoding for lower power consumption for increased battery life, and potentially smoother videos. One good news is that Microsoft has recently announced support for AV1 GPU-accelerated hardware video decoding in Windows 10. The less good news is that support will be limited to recent and fairly powerful GPUs. So for instance, if you own mini PCs with older Intel […]

October 10, 2020October 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

NXP IW620 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.1 Chip Targets Gaming, Audio, Industrial and IoT Markets

NXP has announced the IW62X WiFi 6 & Bluetooth 5.1 family of chips designed for high-end gaming, audio, industrial and IoT markets. The family currently consists of IW620 and IW620S parts with respectively PCIe and SDIO host interfaces. Both chips integrate dual-band Power Amplifiers (PAs), Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs), and switches in order to reduce the board-level BOM (Bill of Materials). IW62X key features and specifications: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 DB (802.11ax) 1024 QAM, 80MHz Peak Throughput: 1.2 Gbps Improved wideband noise & MU-MIMO performance Advanced active channel scanning 802.11s, EasyMesh 802.11mc Bluetooth & Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 BLE 2Mbps + Long Range BLE direction finding with Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) BLE Mesh Antenna support 2×2 5G 1×1 2.4G + BT Multimode energy-efficient support (TWT, Micro AP, TX Power Control, Wi-Fi Direct, BT5.1) Host Interfaces IW620 – PCIe 1.0 IW620S – SDIO 3.0 […]

October 9, 2020October 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

GSM repeater & signal booster extends 2G/3G/4G cellular coverage in your house or building

If your WiFi router range does not cover some of your rooms what do you do? You install a WiFi repeater or some of the more recent WiFi mesh networking solutions. What I did not know is that you can do something similar for cellular connectivity if you don’t quite get a reliable signal from your telco’s base station. Specifically, I’ve just come across a 900 MHz GSM repeater & signal booster that claims to be able to extend the 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular signal in a 100 to 300 m2 area, and sold for $59 on Banggood. Here are the specifications listed for the GSM repeater: Operating Frequency Band – GSM Uplink: 890-915Mhz Downlink: 935-960Mhz Gain: 70dbm Outdoor Directional Antenna Gain – 8dB Compatible with 2G / 3G / 4G cell phone signal Power Supply – 12V DC via 110-240V DC adapter Dimensions – 135 x 105 x […]

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

$16 Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 Cortex-M4F Board Embeds AI Accelerator, WiFi Module

Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 AI MCU Development Board

Last April, we wrote about Edgeless EAI-Series dual Arm Cortex-M4 MCU equipped with a 300 GOPS CNN-NPU for AI at the very edge as we had discovered the chip in an upcoming Banana Pi board. It turns out Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 development board powered by Edgeless EAI80 AI microcontroller has just launched for $16 on Aliexpress, or you could get a complete kit with a touchscreen display, a camera, and a USB power supply for $80. Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 development board specifications: System-in-Package – Edgeless EIA80 dual-core Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 200MHz with 300GOPS AI accelerator (CNN-NPU), 384KB of SRAM including 256KB for CNN-NPU, and 8MB SDRAM Storage – SPI flash Display I/F – LCD connector up to 1024×768 Camera I/F – 1x DVP camera interface Audio – 2x onboard microphones Connectivity – 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFI 4 using ESP8266 module USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port Expansion 40-pin GPIO header […]

October 9, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Renesas Launches RA6M4 Cortex-M33 Microcontrollers for Secure IoT Applications

Arm Cortex-M33 core with Arm Trustzone security was first unveiled in 2016, and since then several silicon vendors introduced secure Cortex-M33 microcontrollers with, for instance, Nordic nRF91 LTE-IoT SoC, STMicro STM32L5 MCU family, or NXP LPC551x/S1x. Renesas has now added one more alternative with RA6M4 Cortex-M33 microcontroller family clocked at up to 200 MHz with increased performance and security compared to their earlier Cortex-M4 RA6 microcontrollers clocked at 120 Mhz. Key features for RA6M4 microcontrollers: MCU Core – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 200 MHz with TrustZone technology Memory – 256 KB RAM include 64KB ECC RAM Storage – 512-1024 embedded flash, QuadSPI, and OctaSPI memory interface Networking – Ethernet controller with DMA USB – USB 2.0 Full Speed and CAN Other Peripherals Capacitive touch sensing unit SCI (UART, Simple SPI, Simple I2C), and SPI/ I2C multi-master interface SDHI and SSI (Serial Sound Interface) Security Renesas’ Secure Crypto Engine supporting multiple symmetric […]