NODE Mini Server V2 is a Raspberry Pi Based Storage Server for the Decentralized Web

Node Mini Server V2 3D View

We’ve previously covered networked hard drive enclosures with Ethernet and/or WiFi running OpenWrt or Ubuntu that allows you to easily and fairly cheaply connect SATA drives to your local network with models such as Blueendless X3. NODE has done something similar with a DIY project featuring a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. NODE Mini Server V2 connects the popular SBC to a 2.5″ SATA hard drive over USB and is designed to build out the physical infrastructure for the decentralized web (e.g. IPFS) that would allow users to replace remote servers with nodes that they themselves own and operate. Having said that nothing would prevent you from using this as a simple NAS although performance will not be as optimal as the aforementioned products due to the lack of SATA or USB 3.0 interface, as well as having “Gigabit” Ethernet limited to 300 Mbps. Having said that the design could […]

Top 5 Raspberry Pi Alternatives in 2019

Raspberry Pi Alternatives 2019

The Raspberry Pi boards are great little Arm Linux SBC’s with a low price and great community support. But the Broadcom processors used in the boards are also fairly old so they may not be suitable for some projects. If your application needs or would benefit from modern features such as memory over 1GB RAM, an actual Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.0 port(s), 4K video output, or H.265 hardware video decoding you’ll have to find Raspberry Pi alternatives. I’ll point out 5 alternative single board computers in this post from the point of view of existing Raspberry Pi users, who will want good software support and a board with the same or similar form factor as Raspberry Pi 3 Model B/B+ in order to reuse their add-on boards and/or enclosures. Price has to be competitive as well, so nothing above $80 will be mentioned. The boards are not listed in […]

Atomic Pi SBC is back with pre-orders on Amazon and Ameridroid

Atomic Pi single board board is probably the SBC with the best performance / value ratio on the market, so when we reported that Atomic Pi was available worldwide last month the 6,000 pieces available quickly ran out of stock. Many people suspect it was a limited product run from a previous project, and indeed Atomic Pi is most likely AAEON MF-001 board that was designed for Kuri robot designed for the now-defunct Mayfield Robotics. But we have some good news as Atomic Pi SBC does not appear to be a one-off sales getting rid of stock as it’s now back for pre-order on Amazon US and Ameridroid with shipping scheduled for the end of May. I won’t go through the whole specifications again but with an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad core processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB flash, Atomic Pi board has hardware far more powerful than the similarly priced […]

BB-400 Neuron Edge Dual Ethernet Industrial Controller Combines Raspberry Pi CM3+ and Arduino MCU

bb-400 neuron edge industrial controller

While the Raspberry Pi boards are mostly promoted as tools to teach STEM to kids and adults alike, they have found their way in a fair amount of industrial products, including ModBerry M500 industrial computer, Janz Tec emPC-A/RPI3 industrial embedded controller,  and Kunbus RevolutionPi RevPi Core among others. There’s yet another option with Brainboxes BB-400 Neuron Edge industrial controller that was announced last year with Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, but recently got an upgrade to Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+. The controller features two Ethernet ports and also includes an Arduino compatible microcontroller to control the system’s eight configurable digital inputs and outputs. BB-400 Neuron Edge industrial controller specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ with Broadcom BCM2837B0  quad-core , Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.2GHz, 1 GB LPDDR2, 32GB eMMC Flash storage MCU – Unnamed Microchip Atmel Arduino compatible microcontroller Connectivity Ethernet Uplink Port – 1x RJ45 jack, 10/100Mbps […]

Pinebook Pro Arm Laptop Video Demo

Pinebook Pro Laptop Demo

Pine64 first revealed working on Pinebook Pro Arm Linux laptop at FOSDEM 2019 back at the end of January. The first Pinebook laptop had limited hardware resources, and as such was meant for simple tasks, but Pinebook Pro equipped with Rockchip RK3399 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB to 128GB flash, and a 14″ Full HD display is designed to be used as your main laptop. That means everything needs to work from 3D graphics acceleration, to hardware video decoding, and USB-C video output. Lukasz Erecinski very recently shot a demo of the laptop in action, and everything looks very good, meaning the laptop should be come available soon. You can watch the demo further below, but if you are in a rush here’s what has been tested and works: Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop 4K video playback 3D graphics acceleration for games (Quake demo) 3D graphics acceleration in Chromium web […]

Toradex Torizon Industrial Linux Distribution Targets Windows Developers

Toziron Linux Docker Yocto

When we interviewed Toradex right before Embedded World 2019, they told us they would focus on their new software offering called Torizon, an easy-to-use industrial Linux Platform, especially targeting customers are coming from the Windows / WinCE environment or who have only experience with application development and are not embedded Linux specialists. The company has now officially launched Torizon, and provided more details about their industrial open source software solution especially optimized for their NXP i.MX modules. Torizon specifically relies on foundries.io Linux microPlatform which provides  full system with a recent stable kernel, a minimal base system built with OpenEmbedded/Yocto, and a runtime to deploy applications and services in Docker containers. The microPlatform is part of TorizonCore (light blue section above) that also includes an OTA client (Aktualizr). TorizonCore is free open-source software, and serves as the base to run software containers. To get started, Torizon provides a Debian container […]

$35 Atomic Pi Cherry Trail Linux SBC is now available worldwide

ATOMIC Pi

At the very end of last year, I covered Atomic Pi single board computer powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor which was mostly interesting because of its incredibly low price: $34 and up. Getting an Intel board fof the price of a Raspberry Pi looked too good to be true, and being launched via a Kickstarter, the crowdfunding campaign raised suspicions. The board would also only ship to the US. Shipping was scheduled for January 2019, backers received their board around two months ago, and most people appear to be satisfied with the main struggle being powering the board since it requires some manual wiring for people who did not purchase the breakout board. So it’s real, it works, and the good news is that the board now sells on Amazon US for $34.50 with the company (DLI – Digital Logger Inc.) shipping worldwide. Here’s a reminder of the […]

Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server Launched with Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 Board

Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server

Olimex works on open source hardware boards, while the FreedomBox Foundation has been developing FreedomBox, a free and open source private server system, since 2010 with the goal of empowering regular people to host their own internet services, like a VPN, a personal website, file sharing, encrypted messengers, a VoIP server, a metasearch engine, and more. When you mix open source hardware, open source software, and a bit of Internet freedom it gives birth to a product called “Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server” based on Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 board and running FreedomBox software. Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server specifications: SoC – Allwinner A20 dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU @ 1.0 GHz  with dual-core Mali 400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – microSD slot fitted with 32GB class 10 card loaded with FreedomBox, SATA data and power connectors, 2KB EEPROM for MAC address and custom data Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet Video […]