computer News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 11, 2026 by Debashis Das - 10 Comments

piBrick PocketCM5 – An open-source handheld Linux computer kit for Raspberry Pi CM5

Designed by Indonesian maker Ahmad Amarullah (amarullz), the piBrick PocketCM5 is an open-source hardware handheld Linux computer kit built around the Raspberry Pi CM5; it’s basically a smartphone-sized Linux machine with a physical keyboard and touchscreen. It is for developers, makers, and system administrators, for tasks such as general experimentation, embedded development, and remote access. We have seen other handheld terminals and pocket computers based on Raspberry Pi SBCs and Compute Modules over the years, such as the PocketTerm35, DevTerm, Carbon’s CyberT, Pi Slate, and many others. However, the piBrick PocketCM5 is based on the latest Raspberry Pi CM5 and features a 3.92-inch AMOLED touchscreen display, a physical BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard, and various expansion options. piBrick PocketCM5 specifications: Compatibility – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5 and CM5 Lite) Auxiliary MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 for keyboard/trackpad input, rotary encoders and buttons, USB HID (keyboard/mouse) emulation, and accelerometer data processing Storage […]

August 10, 2021August 10, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Desktop and All-in-One Arm Linux computers launched with Baikal-M processor

The last time we wrote news about Baikal Electronics, the Russian company was offering MIPS-based processors, but they’ve now announced that several iRU-branded desktops and one all-in-one computer had been introduced with Baikal-M octa-core Cortex-A57 processor with Mali-T628 GPU, and support for up to 32GB DDR4 RAM, up to 3TB HDD. The computers target the Russian market, especially business to business (B2B) and business to government (B2G) customers, with the use of Astra Linux distribution that contains Russian “data protection tools” such as ViPNet SafeBoot, PAK Sobol, and others. iRU Opal Baikal-M Arm Linux SFF & microtower computers We’ve used to find Arm processors into really compact fanless systems, but it’s the case for iRU Opal computers with two form factors offered: SFF (Small Form Factor) and MT (Microtower). The company says the systems are offered with up to 32 GB DDR4 DIMM memory, up to 1TB SSD storage, and […]

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

It’s raining i.MX 8M Plus systems-on-module at Embedded World 2021

NXP introduced i.MX 8M Plus AI SoC with a built-in 2.3 TOPS neural processing unit (NPU) last year, and we’ve already covered several early announcements about i.MX 8M Plus systems-on-module (SoM) with Variscite VAR-SOM-MX8M-PLUS and DART-MX8M-PLUS, TechNexion EDM-G-IMX8M-PLUS and AXON-E-IMX8M-PLUS respectively using SO-DIMM edge connectors and board-to-board connectors, as well as SolidRun i.MX 8M Plus SoM that was announced together with the HummindBoard Mate carrier board with dual Gigabit Ethernet. But as Embedded World 2021 Digital is taking place virtually until Friday, other companies have now made their own announcements of i.MX 8M Plus SoMs as the processor enters mass production this month, and since as far as I know, it’s pin-to-pin and software compatible with earlier i.MX 8M Nano/Mini SoCs, the update must have been easy. That means we’ve got a longish list of modules, and I have probably missed some. Supported operating systems are basically the same across […]