ZOTAC is known for their ZBOX consumer and business mini PCs, but they are now entering the embedded computing market with the launch of ZBOX PRO line-up based on their commercial offering but with more robust designs for medical equipment, industrial robots, casino game systems, IoT gateways, ATMs, and more. The company launched 5 models features various Intel processors from Celeron to Core-i7, but I’ll focus on the three passively cooled low power models in this post. ZBOX Pro CI329 nano Specifications mostly follow the ones of ZBOX CI329 Nano model with differences highlighted in bold or stricken-through: SoC – Intel Celeron N4100 quad-core processor (1.1GHz up to 2.4GHz, 4MB cache) with Intel UHD Graphics 600 System Memory – 2x DDR4-2400MHz dual-channel SO-DIMM slots, up to 8GB Storage 1x 2.5″ SATA 6.0 Gb/s HDD/SSD bay 1x M.2 2242/2260 key-M socket for SSD SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0, […]
OpenISA VEGAboard Combines RISC-V and ARM Cortex-M Cores
OpenISA has launched an Arduino compatible RISC-V development called VEGAboard that features RV32M1 wireless microcontroller with a RISC-V RI5CY core, a RISC-V ZERO-RISCY core as well as Arm Cortex-M4F and Cortex-M0 cores, and a radio operating in the 2.36 GHz to 2.48 GHz range. An external NXP Kinetis K26 Arm Cortex-M4 MCU is added to the board for OpenSDA (Open-Standard Serial and Debug Adapter) debugging over a single USB cable. The board was offered for free, I’m just not sure when, but they are already out of stock. Hopefully, they’ll start selling the board soon enough. VEGAboard (RM32M1-VEGA) board key features and specifications: Ultra-low-power RV32M1 Wireless MCU supporting BLE, Generic FSK, and IEEE Std 802.15.4 (Thread) platforms IEEE Std. 802.15.4-2006 compliant transceiver supporting 250 kbps O-QPSK data in 5.0 MHz channels, and full spread-spectrum encoding and decoding Fully compliant Bluetooth v4.2 Low Energy (BLE) Reference design area with small-footprint, low-cost […]
Adding Machine Learning based Image Processing to your Embedded Product
CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Greg Lytle, V.P. Engineering, Au-Zone Technologies. Au-Zone Technologies is part of the Toradex Partner Network. Object detection and classification on a low-power Arm SoC Machine learning techniques have proven to be very effective for a wide range of image processing and classification tasks. While many embedded IoT systems deployed to date have leveraged connected cloud-based resources for machine learning, there is a growing trend to implement this processing at the edge. Selecting the appropriate system components and tools to implement this image processing at the edge lowers the effort, time, and risk of these designs. This is illustrated with an example implementation that detects and classifies different pasta types on a moving conveyor belt. Example Use Case For this example, we will consider the problem of detecting and classifying different objects on a conveyor belt. We have selected commercial pasta as an example […]
LIVA Q2 Review – ECS Micro PC Tested with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.10
ECS (Elitegroup Computer Systems) is a Taiwanese company that has been offering mini PCs for several years now. Last year they announced their ‘pocket-sized’ model the LIVA Q. Originally featuring Apollo Lake SoCs it has now been upgraded and renamed as the LIVA Q2 and offers a choice of Gemini Lake SoCs. The distinguishing feature of the LIVA Q series however is the form-factor. Compared with Intel Compute ‘stick’ PCs and Intel NUC ‘mini’ PCs the LIVA Q2 is a ‘micro’ PC. This micro PC is like a minimalist mini PC that includes just the minimum number of useful ports namely a couple of USB ports (3.1 and 2.0) on one side, a micro SD card slot on another and finally an HDMI (2.0) and gigabit Ethernet at the rear. The resultant micro PC is beautifully small consisting of a 70mm (2.76″) square case by 33.4mm (1.31”) tall which can […]
Spare TV Box Board Sold for MXQ-4Q / MXQPro DIY Repairs
Once somebody asked me if spare TV box boards were available for purchase since his TV box died after a few months, and he wanted to repair it himself without having to purchase another complete TV box. Usually, such boards are not sold, except maybe on Alibaba, where you may or may not have to purchase in quantities. So I basically told him it would be hard to find, and buying a new or second hand TV box would be a better option. But I was recently made aware that at least one seller was offering spare TV box boards for MXQ-4Q and MXQPro on Aliexpress for $20.61 shipped in order to let people repair their boxes themselves. If your goal is to repair a TV box, I can only think of two reasons for buying a spare TV box board: saving money and/or reducing electronics waste. MXQ-4Q and MXQPro […]
GL-USB150 OpenWrt Microrouter Looks Like a USB Flash Drive
There are plenty of small low cost routers capable of running OpenWrt, including the TP-Link WR703N or Marstek MPR-N9 model which we covered several year ago. GL.inet also made several tiny routers that ended up being supported by OpenWrt, including their GL-USB150 microrouter that looks like a USB flash drive, but is really an Atheros AR9331 router that can be powered by any USB ports. GL-USB150 microrouter specifications: CPU – Qualcomm QCA9331 (Atheros AR9331) MIPS processor @ 400MHz System Memory – 64MB DDRII Storage – 16MB NOR Flash Connectivity – 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi up up 150Mbps transmission rate Power input – 5V/1A via USB port Power consumption – <1W Dimension – 82x24x11mm Weight – 10 grams There’s no Ethernet port, no extra USB port to add 3G/4G connectivity, and the microrouter can either be accessed wirelessly when connected to a power bank, or via Ethernet over USB when connected to […]
Amlogic S922X Cortex A73/A53 Processor Benchmarked
Amlogic S922X is an upcoming hexa-core processor with four Cortex A73 cores and Cortex-A53 cores mostly designed for devices running Android TV P, but it could also become potentially interesting for development boards and other products like Arm laptops. There aren’t any products available for purchase, but some results appeared on Geekbench in recently showing Droidlogic galilei board with a 6-core processor from Amlogic which has to be Amlogic S922X processor. There’s also g12b_w400 with a 6-core processor from Amlogic, but that’s A311D. So Amlogic S922X benchmarks report 1212 points for the single-core score, and “only” 3,133 points for the multi-core score. The base frequency in “Droidlogic galilei” board is 1.80 GHz, but 1.90 GHz in g12b_w400 “A311D” platforms. Strangely enough, the single core score is only 9xx in the latter. It’s very likely the maximum frequency drops when all four Cortex A73 cores are under loads, as the multi-core […]
Qihua CQH6 SoM – A Better Alternative to Raspberry Pi Compute Model 3+?
The Raspberry Pi Foundation just launched the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+ for $25 and up with Broadcom BCM2837B0 processor offering better thermals than BCM2837 processor. As is often the case, this post generated some insightful comments from the smart readers of CNX Software, and they pointed out some of the shortcomings of the module such as the lack of Ethernet support that would be required for cluster use cases for example. You can also add a USB to Ethernet chip to the carrier board, but that’s not ideal, and instead someone linked to Qihua CQH6 system-on-module powered by Allwinner H6 processor and sold for 158 RMB ($23.5 USD) or 199 RMB ($29.65) for respectively 512MB RAM/4GB flash and 1GB RAM/8GB flash configurations. Qihua CQH6 module specifications: SoC – Allwinner H6 quad-core Cortex A53 processor @ 1.8 GHz with Arm Mali-T720MP GPU System Memory – 512MB, 1GB or 2GB DDR3L […]