development board News - Page 83 of 261 - CNX Software

November 14, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$10 HelTec CubeCell LoRa Board Features Cypress PSoC 4 MCU

HelTec CubeCell is an Arduino-compatible LoRa module based on Semtech SX1262 transceiver and a Cypress PSoC 4 mixed-signal MCU. The module itself currently sells for $6.90, but you’ll also find a more convenient board for $9.90, as well as a $13.90 IP67 “capsule” housing a battery, an antenna, and a sensor board. All three are available on the same Aliexpress page. CubeCell LoRa board specifications: SoC – ASR Microelectronics ASR6501 with MCU – Cypress PSoC 4 Arm Cortex-M0+ @ 48 MHz with 128KB flash, 16KB SRAM LoRa Transceiver – Semtech SX1262 LoRa Connectivity Bands – EU433, CN470-510, EU863-870, US920-928 Output Power – 21 dB +/- 1 dB max LoRaWAN standard protocol support USB – 1x Micro USB port for power and programming Expansion – 2x 11-pin headers with GPIO’s, UART, I2C, SPI, ADC, Reset, and VIN, 5V, 3.3V, and GND power signals Misc – User and boot buttons, RGB LED […]

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-F2S SBC is Powered by SunPlus SP7021 Processor, Supports Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA Add-on Board

BPI Tech, a spinoff from SinoVoIP, has introduced a new single board computer with Banana Pi BPI-F2S powered by SunPlus SP7021 “Plus1” SoC with four Cortex-A7 cores, one older ARM9 real-time core, and one even older 8051 IO controller. The chip also embeds up to 512MB DDR3 memory. The board comes an 8GB flash, dual Fast Ethernet, HDMI, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO header, as well as headers for an optional Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA expansion board. Banana Pi BPI-F2S SBC Specifications: SoC – Sunplus SP7021 “Plus1” with a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.0 GHz, one Arm A926 microprocessor, an 8051 core to handle I/Os, and 128MB or 512MB DDR3 DRAM. Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output Camera I/F – MIPI CSI connector Connectivity – 2x 10/100M Ethernet USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB port Expansion 40-pin GPIO […]

November 11, 2019May 16, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

NVIDIA Jetson Nano Review with 52Pi ICE Tower Cooling Fan – Part 1: Unboxing

Jetson Nano Review with ICE Tower Cooling Fan

If you remember soon after Raspberry Pi 4 launch, there were talks about the SBC overheating under load, and depending on room temperature and workload a heatsink may be needed for the board to perform optimally at all times. This gave birth to “interesting” solutions such as 52Pi ICE Tower Cooling Fan, an oversized cooling solution for Raspberry Pi 4. It does the job however, and it allows me to overclock Raspberry Pi 4 to 2.0 GHz while keeping the CPU temperature under 55°C in a room at 28°C. But the latest Raspberry Pi Foundation board is not the only SBC to suffer from overheating, as at least one user noticed the board would just shutdown under load. The solution was to switch from 10W mode to 5W mode, not an ideal solution since it’s also lowering performance. But 52Pi is coming to the rescue again, as they adapted their […]

November 10, 2019November 12, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 283 Comments

Giveaway Week – NanoPi M4V2 SBC & Metal Case Kit

Let’s finish giveaway week 2019 on a high with FriendlyELEC NanoPi M4V2 single board computer, and its metal case kit. The board features a Rockchip RK3399 processor with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, and the metal case kit allows the addition of an NVMe M.2 SSD as well. I tested the mini PC with FriendlyCore Desktop based on Ubuntu 18.04, since at the time, Armbian was still not working with the updated board equipped with LPDDR4 memory, and Android requires an eMMC flash module which was not part of the kits I received. NanoPi M4V2 performed fairly well in the case, but the fan is quite noisy, and somehow the RAM bandwidth was almost half of the one in the earlier NanoPi M4 board with DDR3 memory, which is the opposite one would expect. Probably related to some software tweaks as explained in the comments section of the review. I received two […]

November 9, 2019November 11, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 135 Comments

Giveaway Week – Particle Mesh IoT Development Kit

In early 2018, Particle introduced three nRF52840 Bluetooth 5 boards, also supporting the company’s Particle Mesh technology, and selling for as low as $9. Later that year, the company send me what they call Particle Mesh IoT development kit with several of those boards to get started with their mesh networking solution. That’s what I’m offering as the 6th prize of this giveaway week. With this kit on hand, I wrote a Particle Mesh networking getting started guide showing how to configure the board in Particle.io dashboard, and easily push a new program to multiple Xenon Bluetooth 5 + Mesh boards using an Argon WiFi & Bluetooth 5 + Mesh as the gateway. I’ll give away the full kit shown in the top picture which includes: The Argon kit (ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth + Mesh) A Grove and Particle Sensor Kit with various modules and a shield An Adafruit Featherwing […]

November 8, 2019November 10, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 97 Comments

Giveaway Week – ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit

Leon ANAVI makes from fun little boards for home automation, either ESP8266 based, or pHAT for Raspberry Pi boards. Earlier this year, I wrote about my experience getting ANAVI Gas Detector with Home Assistant. Now that’s I’m done, I’m giving away the starter kit that includes the ESP8266 board, an acrylic case, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, and MQ135 air quality sensor. The board is open-source hardware, meaning everything is open source from the KiCAD files to the Android sketch running on the board. It’s very easy to get started, as you can just connect a USB cable for power, and after configuring WiFi you can see the air quality – either Poor, Moderate or Good – displayed on the OLED display, and you can easily see the data in a web dashboard after setting up Home Assistant. Everything shown in the top photo will be given […]

November 7, 2019November 7, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

HLK-7688A OpenWrt Development Board Comes with an Audio Jack

We first tested MediaTek MT7688 MIPS processor in Mediatek Labs’ LinkIt Smart 7688 / 7688 Duo hardware development kits running OpenWrt in 2015 with the boards having a focus on IoT applications. A year later, Widora NEO board launched with an audio jack for connected audio applications, but AFAIK it’s not available anymore. There’s now another OpenWrt audio board based on the processor with HLK-7688A board featuring Hi-Link HLK-7688A module which we previously found in MatchBox LoRaWAN gateway. HLK-7688A board specifications: Wireless Module – HLK-7688A based on MediaTek MT7688 MIPS24KEc processor @ 580 MHz, and equipped with 128MB RAM, 32MB flash Storage – MicroSD card slot Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 150 Mbps with u.FL antenna connector 10/100M Ethernet Audio – 3.5mm audio jack; 4-pin speaker header, WM8960 audio codec USB – 2x Micro USB ports one USB 2.0 port and one for debugging & power Expansion – […]

November 7, 2019November 11, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 145 Comments

Giveaway Week – Maixduino Sipeed M1 RISC-V AI Kit

For the fourth day of Giveaway Week, I’ll give out a kit comprised of Maixduino a RISC-V development board with an AI accelerator in Arduino form factor, a camera, and a 2.4″ color LCD. I tested the Maixduino kit with MicroPython, but it can also be programmed with the Arduino IDE, or Kendryte SDK. It basically allows you to run low-power AI workloads at the edge, i.e. without access to the cloud, such as face detection. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address. Contests are open for 48 hours starting at 10 am (Bangkok time) every day. Comments will be closed after 48 hours. If comments are open, the contest is still going on. Winners will be selected with random.org and announced in the comments section […]