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Category: Audio

Audio playback, audio processing,

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Gemma Translator multilingual interpreter runs locally on Raspberry Pi 5 with the LiteRT runtime

Gemma Translator multilingual interpreter runs locally on Raspberry Pi 5 with the LiteRT runtime

Gemma Translator

Gemma Translator is an open-source project for the Raspberry Pi 5 that acts as a multilingual interpreter running locally without access to the cloud using Google Gemma 4 and LiteRT runtime. It’s a project built by three Google engineers with the help of Google Antigravity. It includes code to run an on-device, fully offline voice translator/interpreter using Gemma 4 E2B (2.3B effective / ~5.1B total parameters with per-layer embeddings) and the LiteRT runtime. The hardware is comprised of a few components: A Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM Display – HDMI monitor or touchscreen display such as a 480×320 kiosk display Audio Microphone or USB audio capture interface Speaker or headphone output device Keyboard  – The project demonstrated below appears to use a custom PCB (AX-4LABS-NEW) with a rotary encoder and four mechanical keys (of which only two are used) Optional 3D printed parts for the enclosure Software highlights: […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on LILYGO T-Echo Card – A weatherproof, solar-powered, nRF52840-based LoRa + GPS development kit

LILYGO T-Echo Card – A weatherproof, solar-powered, nRF52840-based LoRa + GPS development kit

LILYGO T-Echo Card

LILYGO T-Echo Card is a thin development kit based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 wireless MCU and a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver with a solar panel for charging an 800 mAh battery. It supports Bluetooth 5, NFC, Bluetooth Mesh, ANT, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), LoRaWAN, and GNSS (L76K module) connectivity. The board also features a 0.42-inch OLED information display, a magnetic USB interface, a 9-axis motion sensor, a digital microphone, a speaker, and an RGB LED for status/notifications. It’s mainly useful for off-grid communication (text and audio), GNSS location sharing, personal/asset tracking, and as a compact mesh network node. T-Echo Card specifications: SoC – Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 CPU – 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 64 MHz Memory/Storage – 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM Wireless – Bluetooth 5, NFC, Bluetooth Mesh, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), ANT, 2.4 GHz proprietary Storage – 32 Mbit SPI flash (ZD25WQ32CEIGR) LoRa transceiver – Semtech SX1262 with global coverage support: […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on reCamera Pro “Open AI Camera” supports computer vision, LLM, VLM, STT, and TTS workloads

reCamera Pro “Open AI Camera” supports computer vision, LLM, VLM, STT, and TTS workloads

reCamera Pro RV1126B AI camera

Seeed Studio’s reCamera Pro is an AI camera powered by a Rockchip RV1126B quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC with a 3 TOPS NPU for on-device AI vision, but also large language models (LLMs), vision language models (VLMs), as well as speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) with built-in audio capabilities. It offers a powerful update to the earlier reCamera modular AI camera based on an SG2002 RISC-V AI SoC, with up to 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, an 8MP camera sensor supporting up to 4K @ 30 FPS, an M12 lens mount, a built-in 1W speaker, two microphones, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE, dual-band WiFi 5 connectivity, a USB-C port for power and data, and and expansion through a GPIO and MIPI DSI connectors. reCamera Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RV1126B CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 up to 1.2 GHz with 32KB L1 I-Cache and 32KB L1 D-Cache, unified 512KB L2 Cache MCU – […]

Posted on by Debashis Das - 3 Comments on HALO TOUCH V2 – A customizable desktop USB hub with rotary encoder fitted with round touchscreen display

HALO TOUCH V2 – A customizable desktop USB hub with rotary encoder fitted with round touchscreen display

HALO TOUCH USB Hub Dock with Clock V2

Designed by Innoelement in Guangzhou, China, the HALO TOUCH V2 is a multifunctional desktop USB hub with a round touchscreen and a rotary encoder designed as an interactive desk companion. It integrates system monitoring, media playback, and productivity features for workstations, home offices, and desktop setups. The device features a USB 2.0 hub with two USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, two microSD card readers, and a 100Mbps Ethernet port with per-port power monitoring. Its 360 × 360 IPS touchscreen supports a Pomodoro timer, photo and animation viewer, MP3 player, audio spectrum visualizer, and an AIDA64 system monitoring dashboard. A rotary encoder provides Microsoft Surface Dial-compatible controls on Windows, while 2.4GHz Wi-Fi enables clock synchronization and OTA firmware updates. It also supports USB PD power input and customization for themes, media, and animations using files on a microSD card. MAHOGANY HALO TOUCH V2 specifications: MCU – Unspecified (potentially ESP32-S3) […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on PaperBoy Game Boy Emulator works at 60 FPS on ESP32-S3 E Ink devkit

PaperBoy Game Boy Emulator works at 60 FPS on ESP32-S3 E Ink devkit

PaperBoy E Ink ESP32-S3 Gameboy emulator

60 FPS gaming on an E Ink display? That doesn’t seem right… But that’s exactly what Wenting Zhang’s PaperBoy Game Boy emulator project does, using the M5Stack PaperS3 devkit, pairing an ESP32-S3 wireless microcontroller with a 4.7-inch E Ink display with 960 x 540 resolution. One of the tricks here is that the bottom part of the ePaper touchscreen display is used for control buttons and doesn’t need to be refreshed, while the active part only requires 160 x 144 resolution, scaled three times to represent various shades of grey. Contrary to most small Eink devkits, the PaperS3 features a screen with a raw row/column driver interface, which enabled him to drive the display while bypassing the normal waveform method, and deliver a higher refresh rate up to 60 FPS. Wenting didn’t reinvent the wheel for the Game Boy emulation part, and after testing three different emulators, he went with […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on Louder ESP32 Mini board adds WiFi and Bluetooth to old speakers for SqueezeLite, Snapclient, or ESPHome support

Louder ESP32 Mini board adds WiFi and Bluetooth to old speakers for SqueezeLite, Snapclient, or ESPHome support

Louder ESP32 Mini

Sonocotta’s Louder-ESP32-Mini is a compact version of the Louder ESP32 board that converts old speakers into WiFi (and Bluetooth) connected speakers for your Smart Home. The board aims to replace the speaker terminals on your old speakers, and comes in two sizes: 42x42mm for small speakers, and 52x52mm for larger models. It’s powered by an ESP32-S3 wireless SoC with 8MB PSRAM and equipped with a high-quality TAS5805M DAC with DSP features. Louder-ESP32-Mini specifications: Wireless Module – ESP32-S3-WROOM-N8R8 SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 up to 240 MHz with vector extension for AI/ML workloads RAM – 512KB SRAM, 8MB PSRAM Storage – 8MB flash Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5 Antenna – PCB antenna Audio DAC – Stereo TAS5805M I2S DAC with built-in DSP and D-Class amp DSP Features – EQ, FIR, DRC, AGL, etc… Speaker output via two WAGO connectors 4Ω, 1% THD+N 42×42 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX RISC-V Chassis Kit Review – Part 2: What works, what doesn’t in Bianbu OS 4.0

SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX RISC-V Chassis Kit Review – Part 2: What works, what doesn’t in Bianbu OS 4.0

SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX Chassis Kit BianbuOS 4.0 review

Last month, I received the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX Chassis Kit based on the company’s K3 16-core RISC-V SoC, and started the review with an unboxing, a teardown, and a first boot to Bianbu OS 4.0. Since the system features a 10Gbps Ethernet SFP+ cage, I also had to order a 10GbE SFP+ to Copper adapter, as my 10GbE networking gear is exclusively based on RJ45 ports. In this review, I’ll check system information in Bianbu OS 4.0.1, run a few benchmarks, test 10GbE, GbE, and WiFi 6 networking performance, play YouTube videos at various resolutions, run AI workloads (LLM), check all/most features work as expected, and measure the power consumption of the SpacemiT K3 “Pico-ITX Chassis Kit” mini PC. It’s a fairly long review, so if you are short on time, you can check out the “what works, what doesn’t” section. Bianbu OS 4.0 System Information Before running anything, I […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments on Pine64 Pinevoice – A $50 RISC-V Smart Speaker for Home Assistant based on Bouffalo Lab BL606P MCU

Pine64 Pinevoice – A $50 RISC-V Smart Speaker for Home Assistant based on Bouffalo Lab BL606P MCU

PineVoice RISC V Smart Speaker

After over two years in the making, Pine64 has now launched the PineVoice (previously PineVox) smart speaker based on the Bouffalo Lab BL606P RISC-V wireless microcontroller with WiFi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee radio interfaces. The device also features two microphones, a speaker, a USB 2.0 OTG port, volume buttons, a mute button with LED, a start/stop button, and four RGB LEDs. The PineVoice smart speaker is mainly designed to work with Home Assistant. PineVoice specifications: SoC – Bouffalo Lab BL606P CPU D0 core – T-Head C906 64-bit RISC-V (RV64IMAFCV) CPU @ 480 MHz M0 core – T-Head E907 32-bit RISC-V (RV32IMAFCP) CPU @ 320 MHz Memory – 544KB RAM (788KB SRAM listed on the Pine64 store), 16MB embedded PSRAM Storage – 128KB ROM, 4KB eFuse Wireless 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n 1T1R WiFi 4 Bluetooth 5.x Dual-mode (Classis + BLE) 802.15.4 radio (Zigbee) Storage –  128Mbit (16MB) SPI NOR flash Audio 2x […]