Linux 6.8 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.8 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.8 on the Linux kernel mailing list: So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer, but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any actual real sign of problems. And the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there’s no real reason to delay 6.8. We always have some straggling work, and we’ll end up having some of it pushed to stable rather than hold up the new code. Nothing worrisome enough to keep the regular release schedule from happening. As usual, the shortlog below is just for the last week since rc7, the overall changes in 6.8 are obviously much much bigger. This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was – we seem to […]

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max – Rockchip RV1106 powered boards with 10/100M Ethernet and camera support

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pro Max Rockchip RV1106 Powred Dev Board

The LuckFox LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max are two new Rockchip RV1106-powered development boards that offer a Linux-based development platform for IoT applications. The boards feature 10/100M Ethernet, up to 256MB DDR2 memory, and a 0.5TOPS NPU for AI tasks. With support for Buildroot and Ubuntu 22.04, this board can be used for smart homes, remote monitoring, and other AI-enhanced projects. Last year, we covered the LuckFox Core3566, a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 alternative, and the LuckFox Pico with its RV1103 SoC which has a similar form factor and similar features to these new modules. But the new modules are built around the RV1106 SoC which features an Arm Cortex-A7 processor (up to 1.2GHz),  a RISC-V co-processor, a 0.5 TOPS NPU for AI tasks, and a 4M @ 30fps ISP for high-quality image processing. LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max Specifications SoC – Rockchip RV1106G2 CPU – Arm Cortex […]

Firefly CT36L AI Smart Camera Features Rockchip RV1106G2 with 0.5 TOPS NPU, 100Mbps Ethernet with PoE support

CT36L AI Smart Camera with POE

Firefly CT36L AI Smart Camera (PoE) features a Rockchip RV1106G2 CPU with 0.5 TOPS NPU, a 5-megapixel ISP, and a 3-megapixel HD lens. It supports 100Mbps Ethernet with PoE and includes advanced image enhancements like HDR, WDR, and noise reduction, all while maintaining low power consumption and high image integration. We’ve previously explored various AI cameras such as Tokay Lite, EDATEC ED-AIC2020, ThinkCore TC-RV1126, Orbbec Persee+, M5Stack UnitV2 among others. Feel free to check them out for more information. Firefly CT36L AI Smart Camera (PoE) specifications: CPU – Rockchip RV1106G2 Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.2GHz, with Neon and FPU NPU – 0.5 TOPS, supports INT4/INT8/INT16, TensorFlow/MXNet/PyTorch/Caffe/Onnx NN ISP – 5MP high-performance, HDR, WDR, 3DNR, 2DNR, sharpening, defogging, fisheye and gamma correction, feature detection VPU – 3072×1728 (5M) @ 30fps H.265/H.264 encoding, 16M@60FPS JPEG snapshot RAM – 128MB DDR3 built-in Storage – 16MB SPI Flash built-in Camera specifications: Type – Color Camera Image Sensor – SC3336 CMOS Size […]

Linux 6.7 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.7 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.7, following Linux 6.6 LTS a little over two months ago: So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want to delay this any further. End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release. The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version – both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random […]

Linux 6.6 LTS release – Highlights, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.6 release

The Linux 6.6 release has just been announced by Linus Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): So this last week has been pretty calm, and I have absolutely no excuses to delay the v6.6 release any more, so here it is. There’s a random smattering of fixes all over, and apart from some bigger fixes to the r8152 driver, it’s all fairly small. Below is the shortlog for last week for anybody who really wants to get a flavor of the details. It’s short enough to scroll through. This obviously means that the merge window for 6.7 opens tomorrow, and I appreciate how many early pull requests I have lined up, with 40+ ready to go. That will make it a bit easier for me to deal with it, since I’ll be on the road for the first week of the merge window. Linus About two months ago, […]

LuckFox Pico Rockchip RV1103 Cortex-A7/RISC-V camera board comes with an optional Ethernet port

LuckFox Pico Plus Camera Board

LuckFox Pico is a small Linux camera board based on the Rockchip RV1103 Cortex-A7 and RISC-V AI camera SoC and offered with an Ethernet port in a longer version of the PCB called LuckFox Pico Plus. Both models come with 64MB RAM (apparently embedded in RV1103), a microSD card slot for storage, a MIPI CSI camera connector, a USB Type-C port for power, and a few through holes for expansion through GPIO, I2C, UART, and so on. LuckFox Pico and Pico Plus specifications: SoC – Rockchip RV1103 with Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2GHz, RISC-V core, 64MB DDR2, 0.8 TOPS NPU, 4M @ 30 fps USP Storage MicroSD card slot LuckFox Plus only – 1Gbit (128MB) SPI flash (W25N01GV) Camera – 2-lane MIPI CSI connector Networking (LuckFox Pico Plus only) – 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 port USB – USB 2.0 Host/Device Type-C port Expansion – 2x 20-pin headers with up to 24x […]

Edgeble AI Neural Compute Module 2 (Neu2) follows 96Boards SoM form factor

Edgeble AI Display carrier board 96Board SoM

Edgeble AI’s Neurable Compute Module 2, or Neu2 for shorts, is a system-on-module for computer vision applications based on the Rockchip RV1126 quad-core Cortex-A7 camera processor that follows the 96Boards SoM form factor. I first found the Neu2 and Neu6 (Rockchip RK3588) in the release log for the Linux 6.3 kernel, but at the time I found there was not enough information about those. The specifications for the Neu6 are still wrong (e.g. “64-bit processor with 4x Cortex-A7 core”) at the time of writing, so I’ll check the Neu2 system-on-module and its industrial version – the Neu2K based on RK1126K – for which we have more details. Edgeble Neu2 SoM specifications: SoC – Rockchip RV1126/RV1126K with CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.5GHz, RISC-V MCU @ 200MHz; (14nm SMIC process) GPU – 2D graphics engine NPU – 2 TOPS with INT8/INT16 VPU 4K H.264/H.265 video encoder up to 3840 x […]

SONOFF iHost Review – A future-proof Smart Home Hub for local control

SONOFF iHost review

ITEAD has sent us a Sonoff iHost Smart Home Hub for review, and this device seems to be what many SONOFF fans have been waiting for, especially in terms of local control. meaning it can work without an Internet connection. SONOFF is known for its durable devices and good interoperability, but they are still catching up with other companies in terms of local control. Finally, the iHost Smart Home Hub fills the gap. In addition to local control, it also comes with privacy features as data stay local. SONOFF plans to expand its ecosystem by including devices from other brands compliant with standards such as Zigbee 3.0. Furthermore, the iHost Smart Home Hub is more like a platform than just a product, as it has add-ons to add more capability over time. In the future, it can be expanded to support the new “Matter” standard, similar to Home Assistant. The […]