friendlyarm News - Page 3 of 15 - CNX Software

November 16, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Giveaway Week 2022 winners announced!

CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2022 has just ended, and it’s time to announce the winners. Just like last year, some companies added to the review samples I offered with Rakwireless and ELECFREAKS offering a LoRaWAN devkit and an educational robot respectively. If you check out the photo of the items given away below you’ll find quite more than seven because the SONOFF NSPanel kit includes four Zigbee modules, and more importantly, we also organized a parallel giveaway week on CNX Software Thailand with small boards such as the Raspberry Pi Zero W or XIAO BLE. We had eight winners on CNX Software: NanoPi R5S gateway – Ingmar, GERMANY e-con Systems e-CAM20_CURB camera – Johnny, ESTONIA Pico:ed Smart Cutebot Kit – jednorozec, CZECH REPUBLIC Pico:ed V2 board – Leonardo, BRAZIL Sonoff NSPanel Pro and Zigbee modules – Tim, CANADA RAK Developer Kit (Air Quality Kit) – Magnus, SWEDEN GL.iNet GL-S10 BLE […]

November 12, 2022March 8, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

NanoPi R6S Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Teardown, OpenWrt 22.03, and iperf3

NanoPi R6S is a Rockchip RK3588S powered device that can not only work as a router with two 2.5GbE ports, but also as a mini PC with HDMI and USB ports, and an Edge AI computer thanks to the 6 TOPS NPU found in the processor. FriendlyElec has just sent me two samples of the NanoPi R6S for review. Today, I’ll start with an unboxing, a teardown, and install OpenWrt 22.03 to run some iperf3 benchmarks. I’ll try other features with either Debian or Ubuntu Desktop in a few weeks. NanoPi R6S unboxing The router/mini PC ships with 6 rubber feet (3M), and nothing else. The front panel comes with four LEDs for the system and Ethernet ports, a USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.0 port, as well as an IR receiver “window” (under the USB 3.0 port). The rear panel includes a USB Type-C port that supports 5V […]

November 7, 2022November 9, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 758 Comments

Giveaway Week – NanoPi R5S router

It’s that time of year… CNX Software giveaway week! For the 9th edition, we’ll have seven items to give away, five that I will send myself, and two that will be sent directly from two companies that accepted to add their own products to the giveaway. We’ll start the giveaway with NanoPi R5S router based on Rockchip RK3568 SoC with 2 GB DDR4 RAM, 8GB eMMC flash plus an M.2 socket for NVMe SSD, two 2.5GbE Ethernet ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as HDMI 2.0 video output and two USB 3.0 ports. I reviewed the NanoPi R5S router with OpenWrt and Ubuntu 20.04 “FriendlyCore”, but I had to call this a “preview” since 2.5GbE was far from optimal, sometimes only a little faster than with a Gigabit Ethernet link. But I can see the company has released new images, including one based on the latest OpenWrt 22.03, […]

October 28, 2022October 31, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 44 Comments

NanoPi R6S – A Rockchip RK3588S router and mini PC with dual 2.5GbE, GbE, and… HDMI 2.1

FriendlyELEC has launched its sixth generation router with the NanoPi R6S equipped with a Rockchip RK3588S processor, two 2.5GbE ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and two USB interfaces. But the device will not exactly be limited to router functions as it comes with 8GB RAM, a 32GB eMMC flash, and an HDMI 2.1 port that support up to 8Kp60 video output, not to mention 8K video decoding capability and the integrated 6 TOPS NPU for AI workloads. NanoPi R6S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S octa-core processor with: CPU – 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with OpenGL ES3.2 / OpenCL 2.2 / Vulkan1.1 support VPU – 8Kp60 H.265/VP9/AVS2 video decoder, 8Kp30 H.264 decoder, 4Kp60 AV1 decoder, 8Kp30 H.265/H.264 video encoder AI accelerator – 6 TOPS NPU System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4X @ 2133 MHz Storage […]

July 24, 2022July 28, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

NanoPi R4SE dual Gigabit Ethernet router adds 32GB eMMC flash

NanoPi R4SE is a variant of the Rockchip RK3399-powered NanoPi R4S dual Gigabit Ethernet router that adds a 32GB eMMC flash instead of only relying on a microSD card for the operating system. Most of the specifications remain the same with dual GbE, two USB 3.0 ports, but the router is now only offered with 4GB LPDDR4 and there’s no option for only 1GB RAM, and the GPIO and USB 2.0 headers are gone. The listed temperature range also changed from -20°C to 70°C to 0°C to 80°C. NanoPi R4SE specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with dual-Core Cortex-A72 up to 2.0 GHz, quad-core Cortex-A53 up to 1.5 GHz, Mali-T864 GPU with OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC support, 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 60fps video decoder System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot Networking – 2x GbE, including one native Gigabit […]

June 5, 2022April 2, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

NanoPi R5S preview – Part 2: Ubuntu 20.04 (FriendlyCore)

I started the NanoPi R5S review with an unboxing, a teardown, a quick try of the pre-installed OpenWrt-based FriendlyWrt, and some iperf3 benchmarks on the 2.5GbE interfaces that were rather disappointing. I test further I switched to the Ubuntu 20.04-based FriendlyCore image since I’m more familiar with Debian-based operating systems, and some tools will not run on OpenWrt. Note the performance is still not quite optimal, and that’s why I call this a preview since numbers should improve in the next few months as more people tweak the software. OpenWrt optimizations? But before jumping to Ubuntu, I gave an updated version of FriendlyWrt a try as FriendElec told me they had added some optimizations: We have made some optimizations on the new image, such as NIC interrupt settings, and offload support… So I downloaded “rk3568-eflasher-friendlywrt-20220526.img.gz” found on Google Drive, flashed it to a microSD card with USBImager, and booted it […]

June 2, 2022January 23, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 65 Comments

NanoPi R5S router review – Part 1: Unboxing, OpenWrt, and iperf3 benchmarking

FriendlyElec has just launched the NanoPi R5S mini router powered by a Rockchip RK3568 processor, and the company kindly sent me two samples for review. In the first part of the review, I’ll check out the device itself, the internal design, the preinstalled OpenWrt, and run some networking benchmarks with iperf3. NanoPi R5S unboxing The router comes fully assembled together with a 3M sheet with 6 rubber feet, which, as we’ll see below, are not really necessary. A microSD card socket can be found on one of the sides, while the rear panel comes with a USB-C port for power, a WiFi antenna hole (which can also be used to run cables for GPIO. UART console, etc…), two 2.5GbE RJ45 LAN ports, a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, and HDMI video output. We’ll find a Mask button for firmware flashing on the other side, and the front panel features four […]

May 30, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 53 Comments

NanoPi R5S Rockchip RK3568 mini router launched for $59 and up

The Rockchip RK3568-powered NanoPi R5S SBC with two 2.5GbE ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and M.2 NVMe storage is now available for $59, or $75 with a metal enclosure. As previously mentioned, the mini router board is equipped with 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC flash, two USB 3.0 ports, as well as an HDMI output for people wanting to make use of the Rockchip RK3568 processor’s multimedia capabilities, or simply have a user interface on a monitor. NanoPi R5S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 MP2 GPU, 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator, 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoder, 1080p60 H.264/H.265 video encoder System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4X Storage 8GB eMMC flash for OS Key M socket for M.2 2280 (PCIe 2.0 x1) NVMe SSD support Optional SPI flash for network boot MicroSD card socket Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60, […]