A few years ago I wrote about the danger of “juice jacking” highlighting the security risks posed by USB charging in public places, where a bad actor could attempt to hack your phone or laptop to steal your precious data or install malware/ransomware. In most cases, there are no risks at home, but it’s when you charge your device in a public place notably an airport or train station that you could be at risk of hacking. If you’re using an Android phone, there’s an easy way to detect Juice Jacking, and whether something fishy is going on as shown in the screenshots below. On the left screenshot, I connect my phone to a USB charger, all that changed was the battery icon changed to show it’s charging. But on the right screenshot, I connected my smartphone to my laptop, and since it’s trying to access data, I’m offered three […]
Industrial-grade 3D Vision Camera features Rockchip RK3399 SoC, Intel RealSense Technology
Vecow has just launched DVC-1000 industrial-grade 3D vision camera running Ubuntu on Rockchip RK3399 processor and based on Intel RealSense technology. The camera is rated IP67 for protection from water and dust, supports PoE, and the company says it’s “ideal for Robot Vision, Autonomous Mobile Robot, Object Dimensioning, and Intelligent Surveillance”. Vecow DVC-1000 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core Cortex-A72/A53 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz with Mali 860MP4 GPU, 4K encode/decode System Memory / Storage – TBD Camera Depth Module Depth Sensor – OmniVision OV9282 Active Stereoscopic technology Operating Range – From 0.105 to 10 meters (depends on calibration, scene, and lighting conditions). Resolution – 1280 x 720, 640 x 480, 480 x 270, or 424 x 240 Frame Rate – Up to 60 fps Shutter Type – Global Shutter FoV (H x V x D) – 87°±3° × 58°±1° × 95°±3° @ HD Resolution Z Accuracy – ≤ […]
Sipeed MAIX-II Dock is an Allwinner V831 powered AIoT vision devkit
Sipeed introduced MAIX development boards powered by Kendryte K210 dual-core RISCV processor with AI accelerators in 2018, and we tested the Maixduino and Grove AI HAT based on the solution using Arduino and Micropython the following year. It works fine for audio and video project requiring AI acceleration at low power, but performance (resolution/fps) is limited. So if you’d like a bit more oomph for your audio & vision AI projects, as well as proper Linux support, Sipeed has just launched MAIX-II Dock powered by Allwinner V831 Cortex-A7 AI camera SoC clocked at up to 800-1000 MHz and 64MB on-chip DDR2 RAM, as well as a Full HD camera and a small display.MAIX-II Dock specifications: MAIX-II core module SoC – Allwinner V831 single-core Cortex-A7 processor clocked at 800-1000 MHz with 0.2TOPS AI accelerator, H.264/H.265/JPEG video encoder up to 1080p30 System Memory – 64MB DDR2 in package (SiP) Storage – Optional […]
MINIX NEO J50C-4 Max mini PC international giveaway
Right before Christmas, I posted a review of MINIX NEO J50C-4 Max mini PC powered by an Intel Pentium J5005 Gemini Lake processor coupled with 8GB RAM and a 240GB SSD. It’s basically the same as the previously reviewed MINIX NEO J50C-4 except for the extra memory and faster & higher capacity SSD storage. MINIX asked me if I could do a giveaway of three units on CNX Software after the review, and I thought it would be a good idea so here we are. I wanted to complete the review before launching the giveaway and tested MINIX NEO J50C-4 Max with the pre-installed Windows 10 Pro. I worked just as well as the previous model with no CPU throttling and the performance one should expect from a Gemini Lake processor, but you may want to add an extra 8GB memory stick to take advantage of the higher bandwidth provided […]
Rock Pi X Review – An Atom x5 SBC running Windows 10 or Ubuntu 20.04
The ROCK Pi X is the first x86 SBC (single board computer) from Radxa and resulted from repeated enquiries about running Windows on their earlier ROCK Pi 4. The ROCK Pi X comes in two models (Model A and Model B) with each model having either 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of RAM and either 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB of eMMC storage. Additionally, the Model B includes WiFi and Bluetooth together with supporting Power over Ethernet (PoE) although this requires an additional HAT. Both Seeed Studio and Radxa provided samples and in this review, I’ll cover some performance metrics from both Windows and Ubuntu and also discuss the thermals. Rock Pi X Hardware Overview The ROCK Pi X is similar in size to a Raspberry Pi board… but with slightly different ports and port locations even when compared to the Raspberry Pi 4. It is physically slightly larger than its […]
Year 2020 in review – Top ten posts and stats
It’s this time of the year when we look back at what happened, and what may be next. 2020 did not pan out as planned in more ways than one, but there were still some interesting developments. Based on 2019 announcements, 2020 was promising to be an exciting year for Amlogic and Rockchip with the expected launch of RK3588 and S908X high-end processors for 8K capable devices, but we’ll have to wait for 2021 for this to happen. Instead, the most interesting processor of the year from the Allwinner, Amlogic, and Rockchip offerings was probably Amlogic S905X4 processing adding AV1 hardware decoding. As pointed out in our “RISC-V 2020 highlights” post, it was a fairly eventful year for RISC-V architecture, although there’s still a long road ahead, especially for application processors. We had seen some general-purpose and Bluetooth RISC-V MCUs in 2019, but 2020 saw the launch of the first […]
ECS GLKD-HTI is a “Half mini-ITX” motherboard with Gemini Lake processor
If you’ve never heard about a “half mini-ITX” motherboard, that’s normal, as I don’t think it’s actually a thing. At least until now, as ECS GLKD-HTI is an Intel Gemini Lake motherboard that’s half the size of a standard mini-ITX motherboard. The board still comes with the usual HDMI, DisplayPort, USB and Ethernet ports, as well as a SODIMM slot for DDR4-2133 memory, an M.2 socket for 2280 SATA SSDs, as well as a SATA 3.0 port. ECS GLKD-HTI “half mini-ITX” motherboard specifications: SoC – Choice of Intel Gemini Lake processors with Intel UHD 600 graphics System Memory – 1x DDR4 SO-DIMM socket for up to 8GB DDR4 2133 non-ECC memory Storage 1x M.2 slot for SSD for 2280 single side SATA SSD 1x SATA 3.0 6Gbps connector 128 MB SPI Flash for AMI BIOS / UEFI Video Output – HDMI 1.4a up to 1920×1200 1x LVDS connector Audio 2x […]
OAS software now supports Raspberry Pi 4 for Industry 4.0 solutions
A week before the announcement that Raspberry Pi supported industrial customers through several new services, including a dedicated website for the industry and the Raspberry Pi Approved Design Partners program, OAS announced support for deploying the Open Automation Software Platform on Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB or 8GB of memory. The solution enables the low-cost scaling of operations and “reliable on-site data logging in remote locations with limited power and connectivity”. As you may know… or not, OAS has provided IIoT solutions for the last 20 years and is widely used since the company offers secure moving of data from one location to another. Network Configuration Possibilities The platform offers support for Windows PC/Server, Windows Embedded, Windows IoT, Linux Server, Virtual Machines (Win/Linux), Raspberry Pi 4, and Docker Containers (Win/Linux). “These systems can be networked together and share data creating endless network configuration possibilities”. The OAS platform running on the […]