Operating Systems Category - CNX Software

January 16, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

NanoPC-T6 Plus Rockchip RK3588 SBC switches from LPDDR4x to LPDDR5 (up to 32GB)

It’s been a while since FriendlyELEC has released a board, and the NanoPC-T6 Plus SBC is more of a variant of the NanoPC-T6 and NanoPC-T6 LTS rather than a really new board. It’s still based on a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core SoC, and equipped with two HDMI 2.1 ports, an HDMI input port, MIPI DSI/CSI interfaces, two 2.5GbE ports, and M.2 sockets for NVMe SSD and wireless, among other features. The main change appears to be that the new model is now offered with up to 32GB LPDDR5 rather than up to 16GB LPDDR4x in the previous models. It’s closer to the NanoPC-T6 LTS, although it now supports two analog microphones instead of just one, and restores the M.2 Key-B socket for optional 4G LTE connectivity found in the original NanoPC-T6. The 10-pin UART + 2x USB 2.0 header found in the LTS variant gives way to a 3-pin UART debug […]

January 15, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Geniatech introduces SMARC and OSM system-on-modules powered by NXP i.MX 95 SoC

Geniatech NXP i.MX 95 SMARC OSM system-on-modules

Geniatech has released two new System-on-Modules (SoMs) powered by the NXP i.MX 95 Edge AI application processor: the OSM 1.1 Size L-compliant SOM-iMX95-OSM and the SMARC 2.1-compliant SOM-iMX95-SMARC. Both ship with up to 16GB LPDDR5 and up to 128GB eMMC flash, and are designed for markets such as smart retail, industrial automation, intelligent transportation, medical devices, and commercial IoT. Geniatech SOM-iMX95-SMARC SOM-iMX95-SMARC specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 95 CPU Up to 6x Arm Cortex-A55 application cores clocked at 1.8 GHz with 32KB I-cache and D-cache, 64KB L2 cache, and 512KB L3 cache 1x Arm Cortex-M7 real-time core clocked at 800 MHz 1x Arm Cortex-M33 safety core clocked at 333 MHz GPU – Arm Mali-G310 V2 GPU for 2D/3D acceleration with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0 VPU 4Kp30 H.265 and H.264 encode and decode JPEG Encoder, JPEG Decoder AI Accelerator – NXP eIQ Neutron 2 TOPS neural processing […]

January 15, 2026 by Kumpee Teeravech - 1 Comment

reComputer Industrial R2135-12 review – A Raspberry Pi CM5-powered fanless Edge AI PC with Hailo-8 AI accelerator

Hello, today I am going to review the reComputer AI Industrial R2135-12 from Seeed Studio. This is an industrial edge computer built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 platform. The model is configured with 8 GB LPDDR4 memory and 32 GB eMMC storage. It provides a rich set of I/O options, including dual Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0/USB 2.0, HDMI output, and industrial interfaces such as RS-485/RS-232, CAN, and GPIO, along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support and a wide DC power input range suitable for industrial environments. In addition to standard checking and benchmarking the device, I will also include a hands-on demo application in which the system runs an AI model for real-time people detection from a USB camera, then sends detection results to an external ESP32 microcontroller to drive LED matrices for visually highlighting the locations of detected people. I made the following YouTube video to quickly demonstrate […]

January 14, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

eWeLink CUBE OS enables all SONOFF WiFi and Zigbee devices to connect to Matter

All SONOFF WiFi and Zigbee home automation devices can now work with the Matter protocol. This can be done in two ways: Software path (free of charge) – Use eWelink CUBE OS on a Raspberry Pi or other host computer to bridge SONOFF WiFi & Zigbee devices to Matter. Hardware path — Install a certified Matter gateway such as SONOFF iHost, ZBBridge-U, or NSPanel Pro, and pair your WiFi/Zigbee devices to use them with Matter. The main benefit is that you no longer need to use the eWelink app, and any SONOFF devices can now work with Matter-compatible platforms, such as Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings, Amazon Alexa, and Home Assistant. I’ll focus on the software solution in this post. Most users will likely install eWelink CUBE OS on a Raspberry Pi 4/5 connected to a supported USB Zigbee dongle if they have Zigbee devices. SONOFF lists their own ZBDongle-MAX, […]

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

HalowLink 2 Wi-Fi HaLow access point and extender offers up to 1 km range, supports up to 1,000 IoT end devices

GL.iNet HaLowLink 2 WiFi HaLow access point extender

Designed in collaboration with Morse Micro, GL.iNet’s HalowLink 2 is a Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah) access point and extender that offers up to 1 km range and supports up to 1,000 IoT end devices. It’s an update to the earlier HaLowLink 1 Wi-Fi HaLow gateway with the exact same functionality, except it replaces a Morse Micro MM6108-based module with an MM8108-based module that offers a higher max link rate (43.3 Mbps vs 32.5 Mbps), broader region support, higher device capacity, and potentially better /performance range with up to 26 dBm Tx power (vs 23dBm in the first generation model). HalowLink 2 specifications: SoC – Mediatek MT7621 dual-core, quad-thread MIPS1004K processor @ up to 880MHz System Memory – 256MB DDR3 Storage – 32MB NAND Flash Connectivity Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah) AzureWave AW-HM677 module with Morse Micro MM8108 HaLow chipset supporting Wi-Fi HaLow, IEEE 802.11ah, Sub-GHz, 43.3 Mbps, ultra-low power, WPA3 Sub-GHz frequency range […]

January 13, 2026January 12, 2026 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

Radxa launches NX4 SoM with Rockchip RK3576(J) industrial SoC and NX4IO carrier board

Radxa NX4 is a 260-pin SO-DIMM SoM built around the Rockchip RK3576(J) octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 industrial SoC with a 6 TOPS NPU for edge AI workloads. It supports up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory along with optional SPI flash, eMMC 5.1 (up to 256GB), or UFS 2.0 storage (up to 1TB). Radxa has also introduced the NX4 IO carrier board for the module with an HDMI video output, two 4-lane MIPI CSI camera interfaces, four USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Type-C port, Gigabit Ethernet with optional PoE, and an M.2 M-key 2280 slot for storage, along with various I/Os. Radxa NX4 SoM specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576J (industrial-grade version) CPU – Octa-core CPU with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, and Vulkan 1.2 NPU – 6 TOPS […]

January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Milk-V Titan – A $329 octa-core 64-bit RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard with a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot

We first noted the UltraRISC UR-DP1000-powered Milk-V Titan mini-ITX motherboard when we wrote an article about three high-performance RISC-V processors to watch in H2 2025. There have been some delays, as there often are, but the Titan board finally appears to be in stock, so it’s probably a good time to have a closer look. Powered by a 2 GHz UR-DP1000 octa-core RISC-V CPU, the Titan mini-ITX motherboard supports up to 64GB DIMM memory and M.2 NVMe storage (PCIe Gen4 x4), and features a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot for a graphics card or other expansion, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 ports, a BMC, and more. Milk-V Titan specifications: CPU – UltraRISC UR-DP1000 8x 64-bit RISC-V UR-CP100 “RV64GCBHX” cores up to 2.0 GHz Two 4x core cluster design with 4MB L3 cache each, and a total of 16MB cache. Fully RVA22 compliant, and “Compliant with RVA23 excluding V extension.” Supports Hardware […]

January 12, 2026January 11, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Xibo open-source digital signage solution now works with Raspberry Pi 5 thanks to the Arexibo project

Xibo digital signage solution is now compatible with the Raspberry Pi 5 thanks to Axeribo, an unofficial alternative to the digital signage player for Xibo, that is implemented in Rust, and designed for Linux platforms. Long-time readers of CNX Software may remember that I played around with the Xibo open-source digital signage player many years ago (2011-2012). I notably managed to run Xibo for Arm in QEMU, test Xibo digital signage in the Raspberry Pi emulator, and even try it on real hardware: a MeLE A1000 Android TV box to which I installed Linux. It kind of works, but without hardware video decoding and no 3D graphics acceleration, performance was rather on the low side. I eventually stopped playing around with Xibo Arm Linux once Xibo for Android was released in late 2012, and the developers decided to drop support for the Linux client (although they relaunched it in 2019 […]