development board News - Page 80 of 290 - CNX Software

June 21, 2021June 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

$3.5 RV-Debugger Plus UART & JTAG debug board comes with BL702 Zigbee & BLE RISC-V SoC

USB to UART debug boards are a necessity for anyone playing with single board computers, at least when using bleeding-edge bootloader or Linux kernel where the target board may not always boot, or when troubleshooting booting problems. Those are often based on FDTI or WCH chips, but Sipeed RV-Debugger Plus features Bouffalo Lab BL702 Zigbee & Bluetooth LE RISC-V SoC instead and offers both UART and JTAG interfaces. So let’s have a look at both the board and SoC. Sipeed RV-Debugger Plus USB to TLL debug boards are meant to be simple and that’s the case for Sipeed latest BL702 board as it comes with a 12-pin connector with Tx/Rx for UART, 8 signals for JTAG, plus 5V, 3.3V, and GND power signals. We can also see pads for Tx/Rx/CTS, a boot button, a crystal oscillator, and a USB-C port to connect to the host computer. What I don’t see […]

June 18, 2021December 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

TI AM64x 7-core processor is made for PLC’s, motor drives, industrial robots

Texas Instruments AM64x is a family of 64-bit Arm processors with functional safety designed for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), motor drives, remote I/O, and industrial robots. The top-end processor of the family, AM6442, comes with seven cores including two Cortex-A53 application cores, four Cortex-R5F real-time cores, and one Cortex-M4F isolated core. AFAICT, while the documentation is dated January 2021 and TI announced the processor in February in a blog post with a cryptic title, it was only first picked up by Embedded Computing in early May. Besides the processor itself, TI also provides an AM64x starter kit and a full-featured AM64x evaluation kit, and several companies are already preparing development boards and modules as we’ll see further below. TI AM64x processor AM64x key features & specifications: CPU cores Dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.0 GHz with 256KB L2 shared cache with SECDED ECC, 32KB L1 D-cache, 32KB L1 I-cache Up […]

June 10, 2021March 29, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

BastWAN Feather-compatible LoRaWAN board features RAK4260 Microchip R34 module

We’ve previously written about a Feather-compatible LoRaWAN board equipped with RAK4260 module based on Microchip R34 LoRa SIP called Penguino Feather. It appears somebody, namely Electronic Cats based in Mexico, decided to design an almost identical board with BastWAN. Let’s see if there are any differences besides the cheaper price. BastWAN specifications: LoRa module – Rak wireless RAK4260 module with: SiP – Microchip SAML21 Arm Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz, 32 KB RAM, 256 KB Flash, Semtech SX1276 LoRa Connectivity Frequency Range – 862 to 1020 MHz High level of accuracy and stability (32MHz TXCO) Max Tx Power: 20dBm; Max Sensitivity: -148dBm; Rx Current: 17mA (typical) Compliant with LoRaWan 1.0.2 Antenna – SMA and u.FL (IPEX) antenna connector I/Os – Feather headers with 20x IO pins including PWN, serial, I2C, SPI, 6x 12-bit ADC, 1x 10-bit DAC HW security – ATECC608A crypto authentication chip Programming and debugging 10-pin 4-pin […]

June 9, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

IZIRUN open-hardware STM32 development boards expose GPIOs through M.2 connector (Crowdfunding)

IZIRUNF7 STM32F7 MCU board with M.2 socket

M.2 sockets are typically used to connect wireless or storage expansion boards to laptops, computers, and SBC’s. But nothing precludes them from being used for another purpose, and earlier this year we wrote about Sparkfun MicroMod MCU boards with an M.2 connector for GPIOs, I2C, SPI, etc… IZITRON has expanded the concept with three slightly larger (IZIRUN) STM32 boards routing more IOs to the M.2 connector, and additional features such as built-in EEPROM and buttons. IZIGOBOARD carrier board is then used to host the STM32F0, STM32F4, or STM32F7 board in order to ease development. IZIRUN STM32 development boards IZIRUN boards specifications: Microcontroller IZIRUNF0 – STMicro STM32F030CCT6 Cortex-M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 256KB flash, 32 KB SRAM IZIRUNF4 – STMicro STM32F407VET6 Cortex-M4 MCU @ 168 MHz with 512KB flash, 192KB SRAM IZIRUNF7 – STMicro STM32F769NIH6 Cortex-M7 MCU @ 216 MHz with 2MB KB flash, 532KB SRAM On-board RAM – IZIRUNF7 […]

May 27, 2021June 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

CatsPi Industrial Lite RPi CM4 carrier board features GbE, RS485, Watchdog MCU

We’ve seen a fair deal of Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier boards, and here’s another one courtesy of QwaveSystems with CatsPi Industrial Lite board following Raspberry Pi SBC form factor/dimensions, and equipped with Gigabit Ethernet, RS485, USB ports, as well as a watchdog MCU among other interfaces and features. Contrary to what the name implies, CatsPi Industrial Lite only works with Raspberry Pi CM4 with eMMC flash, but not the CM4 Lite module since there’s no MicroSD card on the baseboard. It’s not the first Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 carrier board with RS485, however, as we previously covered CM Hunter also including CAN and 1-wire interfaces, but QwaveSystems’ solution is more compact and mostly mechanically compatible with Raspberry Pi model B SBC’s. CatsPi Industrial Lite board specifications: Compatible SoMs – Raspberry Pi CM4 with eMMC flash only Video Output – Micro HDMI port Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, optional 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi […]

May 26, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

CANPico open-source board adds CAN Bus to Raspberry Pi Pico

Canis Labs’ CANPico board adds a CAN bus to the Raspberry Pi Pico. The open-source hardware board can then be used as a CAN adapter connected to a host computer The company also provides an open-source MicroPython SDK, as well as a pre-built firmware image to quickly make it started, making it possible to easily control or monitor the CAN bus using Python. CANPico specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi Pico with RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller CAN interface through 3-pin terminal block implemented via: Microchip MCP2517/18FD (SPI) CAN controller with 2Kbyte buffer space Microchip MCP2562FD CAN transceiver. Misc Jumpers to connect a standard 120Ω CAN bus termination resistor and for disabling transmit access to the CAN bus 6-pin header for a logic analyzer or oscilloscope to see what’s happening on the bus Dimensions – Approx. 75 x 24mm The MicroPython SDK for CANPico contains two major APIs with CAN and CANHack. […]

May 23, 2021May 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Rock Pi 4 Plus SBC gets Rockchip OP1 processor, eMMC flash pre-loaded with Twister OS Armbian

The low-cost Rock Pi 4 SBC was unveiled in 2018 with a Rockchip RK3399 processor, up to 4GB RAM, and Raspberry Pi 3 form factor. Rock Pi 4 Plus builds on the relatively popular single board computer with an upgrade to Rockchip OP1 processor, which is a higher performance RK3399 SoC typically used in Chromebooks and ASUS Tinker Board 2. The new board also adds 16 to 128 GB eMMC flash, instead of relying on an optional eMMC module, and will come pre-loaded with Twister OS Armbian lightweight desktop OS based upon Armbian Focal 20.04.1 LTS (aarch64) for Rockchip RK3399-based SBCs. Four variants of Rock Pi 4 Plus share most of the same specifications: SoC – Rockchip OP1 big.LITTLE hexa-core processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.0 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.4 GHz, a Mali-T864 GPU with support OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC, and […]

May 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

A compact Raspberry Pi RP2040 WiFi board – Meet $12.95 Wio RP2040 mini

Seeed Studio has launched another Raspberry Pi RP2040 WiFi board with the compact Wio RP2040 mini development board that provides a cheaper and more compact alternative to ESP32 based Pico Wireless carrier board and Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect, albeit at the cost of providing fewer I/O pins, and lacking Bluetooth LE. Wio RP2040 mini dev board specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex M0+ microcontroller up to 133 MHz with 264 kB of embedded SRAM Storage – 2MB QSPI Flash Memory WiFi – 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 supporting AP & station modes USB – USB 1.1 Type-C host/device port for programming Expansion – 2x 14-pin headers with 20x multifunctional GPIO pins supporting PIO and PWM, 2x UART, 4x ADC, 2x SPI, 2x I2C. Misc – Boot & Reset(RUN) buttons, Power and user (GP13) LEDs Power Supply 5V via USB-C port(default) 3.6-5V via Vin header pin Dimensions – 45.5 […]