devkit News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 1, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Canonical releases Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop image for the Qualcomm DragonWing QCS6490 and QCS5430 processors

Canonical has just released a publicly available Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop beta image for the Qualcomm DragonWing QCS6490 and QCS5430 processors, and more specifically for the Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Vision Kit (QCS6490) and Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Lite Vision Kit (QCS5430). This adds to the existing Ubuntu 24.04 Server image for the Qualcomm vision kits, and Canonical says the unified image is currently designed for developers, ODMs/OEMs, and customers who want to evaluate the solution, and certified versions of Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop and Server images are coming soon with long term support and maintenance. Canonical explains the image enables the full Ubuntu Desktop experience at the edge with “powerful AI acceleration with high-performance graphics” (so I assume that means GPU and NPU are already supported), enhanced camera and multimedia capabilities, sensor integration, and various performance optimizations of the DragonWing family. So the way I read the announcement is that contrary […]

April 30, 2025April 30, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ESP32-C5 dual-band WiFi 6 SoC enters mass production, ESP32-C5-DevKitC-1 board launched for $15

Espressif Systems has just started mass production of the ESP32-C5 RISC-V wireless microcontroller with dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) WiFi 6, Bluetooth LE, and 802.15.4 (Zigbee, Thread) connectivity. The ESP32-C5-DevKitC-1 development is now available for about $15 on AliExpress, and should soon show up on the company’s Amazon store. So far, WiFi-capable Espressif microcontrollers have only supported 2.4 GHz WiFi since it’s cheaper and offers better range for IoT applications, but some applications may benefit from 5 GHz WiFi, so the company unveiled the ESP32-C5 dual-band WiFi 6 and BLE RISC-V MCU in June 2022. Design probably took longer than expected, but we noted documentation for an ESP32-C5 beta board in March 2024, and finally, the company has just announced that mass production has started. We’ll have a closer look at the ESP32-C5-DevKitC-1 board in this article, since it is different from the beta board. ESP32-C5-DevKitC-1 specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-C5-WROOM-1 SoC […]

April 28, 2025April 28, 2025 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

Zalmotek RA6M1, RA8M1, and RZ/A3U SoMs follow Adafruit Feather form factor, support carrier board for robotics and industrial control

Romanian company Zalmotek has recently introduced three new SoMs, the RA6M1, RA8M1, and RZ/A3UL, and a modular carrier board designed for embedded applications such as robotics, industrial control, and edge computing. There are a few things that I find interesting about this setup. The SoM comes in Adafruit Feather form factor and, as a result, supports various Adafruit FeatherWings. The modular carrier board supports the Dynamixel motor driver module, the Particle M-SoM breakout module, Ethernet, and CAN modules. The RA6M1 Feather SoM is powered by a Renesas RA6M1 Arm Cortex-M4 CPU at up to 120 MHz, with 512 KB flash and 96 KB SRAM while the RA8M1 Feather SoM features a Renesas RA8M1 64-bit Arm Cortex-M85 running at up to 360 MHz with 128 Mbit SPI flash, the RZ/A3UL Feather SoM is based on a Renesas RZ/A3UL 64-bit Arm Cortex-A55 CPU at up to 1 GHz, with 512 Mbit OctaFlash […]

April 24, 2025April 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Espressif Systems ESP32-P4-EYE development kit looks like a camera

Espressif Systems’ ESP32-P4-EYE is a development kit designed for AI vision applications that looks like a standard camera. It combines an ESP32-P4 RISC-V microcontroller with an ESP32-C6 WiFi 6, BLE, and 802.15.4 SoC, and is equipped with a MIPI-CSI camera, a 2MP display, a microphone, and a MicroSD card to store photos or videos. There’s also a rotatory encoder to control the menu on the LCD or adjust the zoom, a fill/flash light, a few buttons, an LED, and support for either USB or battery power. The company says the ESP32-P4 camera devkit targets smart surveillance, vision-based edge AI, real-time image detection, and audio-visual IoT interfaces. ESP32-P4-EYE specifications: Microcontroller – ESP32-P4 MCU Dual-core RISC-V microcontroller @ 400 MHz with AI instructions extension and single-precision FPU Single-RISC-V LP (Low-power) MCU core @ up to 40 MHz GPU – 2D Pixel Processing Accelerator (PPA) VPU – H.264 and JPEG codecs support Memory […]

April 23, 2025April 23, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SPARK Microsystems SR1120 UWB ultra-low-power transceiver delivers up to 41 Mbps throughput

SPARK Microsystems SR1120 is the company’s second-generation ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless transceiver capable of up to 41 Mbps throughput at ultra-low power and up to 100 times lower power ranging than UWB competitors. The Canadian company also highlights the outperformance of their UWB solution over Bluetooth with the new SR1120 offering 40 times higher data rates than Bluetooth chips, while consuming 25 times less power than Bluetooth and offering 60 times lower latency. However, readers should note that Bluetooth LE is supposed to support up to 2 Mbps, so it should (only) be up to about 20 times faster, and Bluetooth HDT is coming soon with data rates of up to 7.5 Mbps to further narrow the gap. SPARK SR1120 key features and specifications: Compliant with the upcoming IEEE 802.15.4ab low-energy UWB PHY standard Dynamically reconfigurable UWB spectrum 6.2–9.5 GHz band Up to 3 dBm TX power RX sensitivity of -81 […]

April 11, 2025April 11, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

T-Pico-2350 is a fully integrated devkit with Raspberry Pi RP2350, ESP32-C6, 2.33-inch color touchscreen display, and HDMI video output

LILYGO T-Pico-2350, also called the T-Pico2, is a fully enclosed devkit based on Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU, an ESP32-C6 SoC for wireless connectivity, a 2.33-inch capacitive color touchscreen display, and an HDMI (DVI) video output port. The design is an update to the T-PicoC3 introduced in 2022 with the case design of the T-Display S3 Pro, and the devkit also features a microSD card slot, a USB-C port for power and programming, two GPIO headers, a 13-pin GPIO FPC connector, two Qwiic I2C/UART connectors, and a PMU for battery management. T-Pico-2350 specifications: Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350A CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 @ 150 MHz with Arm Trustzone, Secure boot OR Dual-core RISC-V Hazard3 @ 150 MHz Up to two cores can be used in any combination Memory – 520 KB on-chip SRAM Storage 16MB SPI flash connected to RP2350 MicroSD card slot Display – 2.33-inch color IPS LCD (ST7796S SPI […]

April 2, 2025April 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

NV8600-Nano AI Developer Kit features NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 8GB, quad GbE, Raspberry Pi Camera Module 2

AAEON NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit Raspberry Pi Camera Modules

AAEON NV8600-Nano AI Developer Kit is based on a 67 TOPS NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 8GB and ships with a carrier board with quad GbE, a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 2, a fan kit (heatsink with fan), and a 60W power adapter. The carrier board is also equipped with a 256GB M.2 2280 M-key NVMe SSD, a SATA connector, HDMI 1.4 video output, two MIPI CSI connectors compatible with Raspberry Pi Camera Modules, six USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports, a few serial interfaces, a 40-pin GPIO header compliant with the Jetson Orin Nano (Super) developer kit, and two more M.2 sockets for wireless/cellular expansion. NV8600-Nano AI Developer Kit specifications: NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 8GB Module CPU – 6-core Arm Cortex-A78AE v8.2 64-bit CPU @ 1.7 GHz with 1.5MB L2 + 4MB L3 GPU – 1,020 MHz NVIDIA Ampere architecture with 1024 CUDA cores and 32 tensor cores Video […]

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

ESP32-S3 Smart Audio devkit integrates 1.8-inch round touch LCD, microphone, optional battery and speaker box

Waveshare ESP32-S3 round display development board

Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.85C is an ESP32-S3 development kit with a 1.85-inch round touchscreen display with 360×360 resolution, support for Wi-Fi & Bluetooth BLE 5, and a built-in microphone. There’s also the ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.85C-BOX with the same specifications, but an additional box with a speaker and a 3.7V battery. Both versions come with 16MB SPI flash, a microSD card slot, a USB-C port, a few buttons, GPIO and I2C expansion headers, and can be used as music players, smart speakers, HMI solutions, etc… It’s not quite the first ESP32-S3 audio + display devkit we’ve covered, as Waveshare introduced the ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.8 earlier this year with a squared AMOLED display, and Wireless Tag launched the ESP32 Agent Dev Kit to interface with LLMs. ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.85C specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32-S3R8 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration Memory – 8MB PSRAM Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth […]