Developer Board 4 V3 Brings Gigabit Ethernet to 96Boards Snapdragon 410E SBC

Snapdragon 410E SBC Gigabit Ethernet

The original 96Boards CE compliant Dragonboard 410c development board launched in 2015 was followed by Geniatech Developer Board IV the following with many of the same features plus the addition of a Fast Ethernet port and an RTC battery, and an 85x60mm form factor all of which made it non-compliant with the 96Board specs. Geniatech has now introduced a new Developer Board 4 V3 version, that like the V2 model integrates a Gigabit Ethernet port and WiFi 5 connectivity, but the design has been modified get closer to  96Boards CE compliance with 85x54mm dimensions, and the same ports’ arrangement as on 96Boards CE boards, excluding the Ethernet RJ45 jack that is out of (96Boards CE) specs. Geniatech Developer Board 4 V3 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 410E (APQ8016E) quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Adreno 306 GPU System Memory – 1 or 2 GB LPDDR3 @ 533MHz […]

Wandboard 8MPLUS SBC Gets NXP i.MX 8M Plus SoC with 2.3TOPS NPU

Wandboard 8MPLUS

TechNexion Wandboard Dual was one of the first Freescale i.MX 6 single board computers when it launched in early 2013 and the company has introduced a few more models over the years including Wandboard QuadPlus in 2017. TechNexion is now working on a new version called Wandboard 8MPLUS powered by the recently announced NXP i.MX 8M Plus SoC that features a built-in 2.3 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration. Wandboard 8MPLUS preliminary specifications: EDM System-on-Module SoC – NXP i.MX8M Plus quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz, Arm Cortex-M7 real-time core @ up to 800 MHz, Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU, HiFi 4 audio DSP, and 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) System Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash Video Decode – HD (1080p +720p) Video Encode – 1080p60 H.265, H.264 260-pin EDM Type G board-to-board connector Debugging – JTAG Interface […]

Renesas ZMOD4410 Indoor Air Quality HAT for Raspberry Pi Measures VOC, Humidity, and Temperature

Renesas ZMOD4410 Indoor Air Quality HAT Raspberry Pi

We’ve recently covered a few products or solutions designed to report indoor air quality (IAQ) including ESPurna firmware getting support for BME680 precise indoor air quality measurements and Metriful Sense indoor environment monitor for Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Avnet has now introduced its own Raspberry Pi IAQ add-on board with “Renesas ZMOD4410 Indoor Air Quality HAT for Raspberry Pi” capable of measuring VOC (volatile organic compounds), humidity and temperature, as well as estimating carbon dioxide (eCO2) levels. Renesas ZMOD4410 TVOC Sensor Hat (AES-RHSEN-ZM44-G) key features and specifications: Sensor – Renesas ZMOD4410 TVOC / IAQ I2C sensor, Renesas HS3001 relative humidity & temperature I2C sensor Misc – Power LED; software-controlled status LEDs for “sample active” and “limit” Host Interface – 20-header for Raspberry Pi with configurable alarm/interrupt output Power Supply via header Jumper for supply voltage selection between 1.75V and 3.9V (default:  3.3V) Test points to measure ZMOD4410 current consumption Avnet […]

HeliOS is a Tiny Embedded OS Designed for Arduino Boards

Helios Arduino Operating System

Mannie Peterson (aka FellFromTree) has developed an embedded operating system called HeliOS that’s designed specifically for 8-bit and 32-bit Arduino boards, and can easily be used from the Arduino IDE. HeliOS is said to have only 21 function calls and implements cooperative and event-driven multitasking, task notification/messaging, timers, and memory management. It’s a non-preemptive multitasking kernel so you won’t have to deal with mutexes. The developer explains how scheduling works with HeliOS: HeliOS uses a run-time balanced strategy which ensures tasks with shorter run-times are prioritized over tasks with longer run-times. This ensures all running tasks receive approximately equal total run-time without using context switching. The other multitasking option available in HeliOS is event driven multitasking, which uses the wait/notify and timer interfaces. Mixing cooperative and event driven tasks in HeliOS is not a problem. To give it a try, simply open the Arduino IDE Library Manager, search for “HeliOS” […]

Folding@Home ARM64 Linux Beta Release for COVID-19 Vaccine Research

Folding@Home ARM64 Raspberry Pi

A few months ago, we reported that Rosetta@Home supported 64-bit Arm SBC’s and Servers in the Fight against COVID-19. But Folding@home did not support Arm hardware just yet, but thanks to work from Neocortix, Linaro, Arm, miniNodes, and Packet.com, we now get support for Folding@home on ARM64 meaning you can help researchers studying SARS-CoV-2 virus and help them develop a COVID-19 vaccine with Raspberry Pi 3/4 boards, or other 64-bit Arm SBC’s and servers. The solution relies on Neocortix Cloud Services Platform allowing the unused capacity of large numbers of individual mobile phones or other connected nodes to be harnessed into a single, unified computational engine. The very first application that made use of the platform was Neocortix PhonePaycheck were users get paid to let businesses perform calculations on their phones at night while charging and connected to WiFi. That way users of premium phones like Galaxy S10 or S20 […]

Snapdragon 626 Powered Rugged Tablet Comes with NFC, RFID and Barcode Readers

Rugged Tablet RFID

Estone Technology has launched another rugged tablet with UA-80 IP-67 waterproof rated, and MIL-STD-810G compliant rugged Android tablet powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 mobile platform driving an 8″ capacitive touchscreen display. The tablet is equipped with up to 8GB RAM, up to 128GB storage, and comes with HF(NFC) and UHF RFID readers and an optional barcode reader for healthcare, construction, retail, oil and gas, and logistics use cases. Estone UA-80 tablet specifications: SoC – Qualcomm MSM8953 Pro (Snapdragon 626) octa core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 2.2GHz with Adreno 506 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.1 + AEP System Memory – 4GB LPDDR3 (Option: 8GB LPDDR3) Storage – 32GB eMMC flash (Option: 64GB, 128GB) Display – 8″ sunlight-readable IPS LCD with 1200 x 800 resolution, 450 nit brightness, 10-point touch, and chemically hardened cover glass Audio – Built-In microphone and 8 Ohm/1W speaker, 3.5mm 4-pole audio jack with […]

Zidoo Z10 Pro & Z9X Realtek RTD1619DR 4K Android Media Players Launched for $229 and up

ZIDOO Z10Pro 4K Media Player Remote Control

We previously wrote about some upcoming Realtek RTD1619 media players targeting the videophone and audiophile crowd, and expected them to launch very soon with models from Zidoo and Dune HD. Zidoo has now launched two models with the awaited Zidoo Z9X and a new, higher-end Zidoo Z10 Pro which can be purchased on Aliexpress for respectively $229 and $349 with free shipping. Zidoo Z9X Specifications Key features and specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1619DR hexa-core Cortex-A55 processor with Arm Mali-G51 MP3 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR4 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, SATA 3.0 external port (on side) Video Output HDMI 2.0a up to 4Kp60 with HDR, 12Bit, YCbCr 4:4:4 color range, audio passthrough support 3.5mm AV jack with composite Video Input – HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60, 48khz PCM audio Video Decoding – HDR, HDR10 +, Dolby Vision, 10-bit HEVC/H.265 up to 4K @ 60fps, VP9 up to 4K @ […]

How to Fix Unreliable USB Hard Drives, Stalled Transfers in Linux

Fix USB Hard Drive Stalled Linux

Last June, I reviewed a Ryzen Embedded SBC with Windows 10, and the USB hard drive I normally use for review had all sorts of problems including very slow speeds and/or stalled transfers but no error messages. Last week, I tried again by installing Ubuntu 20.04 on the same Ryzen Embedded SBC, and the USB hard drive had troubles again, so just assume there were some hardware incompatibility issues between the SBC and the drive, and there may not be a fix or workaround. Sometimes, it’s indeed a hardware issue with the drive getting too many bad blocks, and if that’s the case, and the drive is still under warranty you can return it and get a fresh new (or refurbished) drive for free. But that drive was still working with my laptop getting around 100MB/s. So I ran out of ideas until numero53 commented he had similar problems with […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC