Ubuntu and Debian images built by Armbian got popular because of the sad state of affairs of most single board computers. But since Raspberry Pi boards are rather well-supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and community, plus part of it is closed-source, there’s been little motivation by the Armbian community to work on it, and that means there’s no official support for Raspberry Pi. But some Armbian test images have just been released for Raspberry Pi 4, specifically Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” images with a CLI (headless) version, and two desktop variants with Cinnamon and XFCE desktop environments which you can download on their server(s). Separately, DietPi 7.9 lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian has also been released with various improvements. The good news about Armbian images for Raspberry Pi is that they exist, but the less good news is that those are still “test images”, and the popular board […]
ADLINK LEC-RB5 – A Qualcomm QRB5165 SMARC module designed for drones and robots
ADLINK Technology LEC-RB5 is a SMARC compliant system-on-module powered by the Qualcomm QRB5165 octa-core Cortex-A77 class processor which we’ve already seen in Qualcomm Flight RB5 high-end drone reference design and Lantronix Open-Q 5165RB system-on-module designed for robotics applications. The LEC-RB5 SMARC module ships with up to 8GB PoP LPDDR4 memory, 256GB UFS storage, provides on-device artificial intelligence capabilities (up to 15 TOPS), support for up to 6 cameras, and low power consumption. The main target applications are high-end robots and drones in the consumer, enterprise, defense, industrial, and logistics sectors. LEC-RB5 SMARC SoM specifications: SoC – Qualcomm QRB5165 octa-core Kryo 585 processor with a Kryo Gold Prime @ 2.84 GHz, 3x 3 Kryo Gold @ 2.42 GHz, 4x Kryo Silver @ 1.81 GHz, Adreno 650 GPU @ up to 587 MHz, Video decode HW acceleration for H.265/HEVC, H.264, MPEG2, MVC, VC-1, WMV9, JPEG/MJPEG, VP8, VP9, video encode HW acceleration for […]
Tribulations with Linux on Zidoo M6 Rockchip RK3566 mini PC
After our review of the Zidoo M6 mini PC with Android 11, we’ve installed Linux on the Rockchip device, and we did boot to a Linux Qt user interface built with buildroot. Let’s try to see what we can do with the image, and then try Ubuntu from a competing mini PC to check out if that can work. Since there’s no package manager to install a screenshooting program, I tried to use the usual method to take a framebuffer screenshot.
1 |
cat /dev/fb0 > screen.raw |
It generated an 8MB file which looked good, but the content was just comprised of zeros.
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
$ ls -lh screen.raw -rw-r--r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc 8.0M Nov 13 15:08 screen.raw $ hexdump screen.raw 0000000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 * 07e9000 |
I asked Zidoo for a method to take screenshots in their Linux image, but I was told there weren’t any at this time… No worries, let’s try some of the applications in the Qt interface starting with the Multivideoplayer: It starts well with 9 videos of Big Buck Bunny playing simultaneously, […]
Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC runs Linux, supports gaming with Box64 emulator
Dragonbox is now taking pre-orders for a “Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC” with an octa-core 64-bit Arm processor, 16GB RAM, a 512GB NVMe, and an AMD Radeon RX550 GPU that makes it powerful enough to play older PC gaming like Crysis through Box64 x86_64 emulator, the 64-bit version of Box86 x86 emulator compatible with Raspberry Pi and other 32-bit Arm platforms. If the Dragonbox name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the community that developed the Pyra handheld Linux game console/PC, except now they are offering a mini PC based on Phytium D2000 processor based on the same FTC663 Armv8 cores as found in the earlier Phytium FT2000/4 processor, with both Pythium SoC specifically designed for desktop PCs, contrary to most other Arm SoCs on the market. Phytium D2000 mini PC specifications: SoC – Phytium D2000 ARMv8 octa-core custom Armv8 (FTC663) desktop processor @ 2.3 – 2.6 GHz with 8MB L2 […]
Jetson EX1 and SUB mini PCs put Xavier NX SoM into metal enclosures
Seeed Studio has just unveiled another Jetson Xavier NX mini PC with the Jetson EX1, plus some metal enclosures for the Jetson SUB mini PC announced last month with the official NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX developer kit, a 128GB SSD, and the Re_Computer case comprised of an aluminum frame and a plastic cover. Jetson EX1 mini PC The Jetson EX1 mini PC has a different design with a custom carrier board offering dual Gigabit Ethernet and support for four MIPI CSI cameras, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and an aluminum enclosure designed to help with cooling, albeit the computer is not completely fanless since a 5V fan is included in the design as well. Jetson EX1 specifications: NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module CPU – 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARMv8.2 64-bit processor with 6 MB L2 + 4 MB L3 cache GPU – NVIDIA Volta architecture with 384 NVIDIA CUDA cores and 48 […]
COM Express Type 6 module supports up to 64GB ECC RAM, 2.5GbE, 4 displays, and more
Here’s another Tiger Lake UP3 COM Express module courtesy of AAEON with the COM-TGUC6 COM Express Compact Type 6 modules equipped with a choice of Celeron. Core i3/i5/i7 embedded processors from the 11th generation Tiger Lake family. The module supports up to 64 GB ECC RAM via two SO-DIMM sockets, 2.5 Gpbs Ethernet, up to four independent displays via LVDS, VGA, and 4K DDI interfaces, SATA storage, PCIe Gen 3 & Gen4, and more for industrial. medical, and military applications. COM-TGUC6 specifications: Tiger Lake UP3 SoC (one or the other) Intel Core i7-1185G7E/GRE quad-core/octa-thread processor @ 1.8/4.4 GHz with 12 MB cache, 96 EU Intel Iris Xe graphics; TDP: 15W (Up to 28W) Intel Core i7-1145G7E/GRE quad-core/octa-thread processor @ 1.5/4.1 GHz with 8 MB cache, 80 EU Intel Iris Xe graphics; TDP: 15W (Up to 28W) Intel Core i3-1115G4E/GRE dual-core/quad-thread processor @ 2.2/3.9 GHz with 6 MB cache, 48 EU […]
Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS is a cheaper dual GbE SBC with YT8531C Ethernet transceiver
It’s been a while since Shenzhen Xunlong Software released a new Orange Pi board. But the wait is over… sort of, as Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS is a low-cost version of Orange Pi R1 Plus SBC that replaced the Realtek RTL8211E PHY with a YT8531C Ethernet PHY that offers the exact same features but at a lower price. That means the new single board computer is still designed for headless operation, for example a router or firewall, with a Rockchip RK3328 processor, 1GB RAM, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and a USB 2.0 port. Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – MicroSD card slot, 16 MB SPI flash Connectivity – 2x Gigabit Ethernet via YT8531C Ethernet PHY and RTL8153B USB 3.0 to Ethernet chip USB – 1x USB 2.0 port, 1x USB-C OTG […]
Portwell COM Express Tiger Lake-H module supports 2.5GbE, PCIe Gen 4, 8K, up to 64GB DDR4
Portwell PCOM-B657VGL joins other COM Express and COM HPC modules based on Intel Tiger Lake-H Xeon, Core, and Celeron embeddded processors such as ADLINK Express-TL and Congatec conga-HPC/cTLH. Just like its competitors, the Portwell COM Express Type 6 Basic module offers 8K video output, PCIe x16 Gen 4, up to 64GB DDR4, USB 3.2 Gen 2, and 2.5GbE networking for a wide range of higher-end embedded applications such as industrial automation, medical equipment, graphics-intensive applications, and artificial intelligence. Portwell PCOM-B657VGL specifications: SoC (one or the other) General Embedded Intel Celeron 6600HE dual-core processor @ 2.6GHz with 8MB L3 Cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics, 35W TDP Intel Core i3-11100HE processor with 4 cores / 8 threads @ 2.4GHz (up to 4.4GHz in Turbo Boost) with 8MB L3 Cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics, 45/35W cTDP Intel Core i5-11500HE processor with 6 cores / 12 threads @ 2.6GHz (up to 4.1GHz in Turbo […]