UniPi Gate RS485 Linux IoT Gateway features 600 MHz Rockchip RK3328 SoC

UniPi Gate RS485 Linux IoT Gateway

Based in the Czech Republic, UniPi Technology design and manufacture programmable logic controllers, gateways, sensors and systems for smart homes, building management systems, industry and automation projects. Their latest product is UniPi Gate G100/G110 Linux IoT gateway with Ethernet and RS485 interfaces. When the company contacted CNX Software about the gateway, they told us the system was based on a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 600 MHz. Since we are not aware of such SoC, we asked, and UniPi told us it was Rockchip RK3328. That processor is normally clocked at 1.5 GHz, and it turns out the company purposely underclocked the processor to 600 MHz to extend the temperature range and reduce the heat emitted by the CPU. UniPi Gate G100 & G110 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 600 MHz System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot Networking – […]

H2 Net Card adds four 2.5 GbE ports to ODROID-H2/H2+ SBC

H2 Net Card

ODROID-H2+ is already a cool single board computer with an Intel Gemini Lake Refresh processor, up to 32GB RAM, dual 2.5GbE networking, support for SATA and NVMe storage, dual 4K video output, and more. But in recent days, I’ve read people complaining recently announced WiFI 6 or WiFi 6E routers only had one 2.5 Gbps or 5 Gbps Ethernet jack and wanted all/more RJ45 connectors to be 2.5 GbE ports or greater. But if even the two 2.5GbE ports on ODROID-H2+ are not quite enough for your needs, Hardkernel H2 Net Card triples that amount by adding four extra 2.5 GbE to the x86 SBC. It also works on ODROID-H2, meaning you’d get the existing dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus the four 2.5GbE ports from the M.2 card. There’s no much in the way of specifications for H2 Net Card: 4x Ethernet ports up to 2.5 GbE via RTL8125 controller. […]

Industrial 5G/4G Base Shield supports Raspberry Pi, Jetson Nano, other SBC’s (Crowdfunding)

Base Shield Raspberry Pi 4

Akari, a start-up based in Japan, has designed an industrial base shield for Raspberry Pi 4/3/Zero, Jetson Nano, Rock Pi 4, and other compatible single board computers. The board allows users to create industrial gateways integrating wireless modules (5G, 4G LTE, WiFi 6 and/or LoRa), a neural compute stick, relay module, and digital inputs, RS232/RS422/RS485, and more. Industrial 4G/5G Base Shield specifications: Compatible SBCs – Raspberry Pi 4, Raspberry Pi 3, Raspberry Pi Zero, Jetson Nano, Rock Pi 4, UP Board, and probably other SBCs with a similar form factor I/Os Build-in relay module and digital input (also reserve dry contacts and wet contacts) Digital input / digital output RS232, RS485, RS422 Internal headers USB host port for connection with Raspberry Pi Expansion M.2 socket for 5G Mini PCIe socket for 4G LTE, WiFI6, or LoRa SIM card socket Internal bay for Intel Neural Compute Stick Misc – RTC module […]

ODROID-N2+ based “Home Assistant Blue” announced as official hardware for Home Assistant

Home Assistant Blue

Home Assistant has announced “Home Assistant Blue” hardware with an enclosure designed by Hahn Werke housing Hardkernel ODROID-N2+ SBC, and software supported by BayLibre who helped upstreaming the code. The goal is to make Home Assistant Blue a fully open-source platform with long-life support. The device was officially announced during the Home Assistant Conference 2020 held a couple of days ago. Home Assistant Blue home automation gateway uses the 4GB DDR4 version of the Amlogic S922X SBC, ships with a 128GB eMMC flash module, and offers Gigabit Ethernet and four USB 3.0 ports. As I understand it, the gateway will run the latest Home Assistant Core 2020.12 that was announced at the conference with a new feature called Blueprints defined as “pre-created automation with user-settable options”, as well as new neural voices for Nabu Casa Cloud TTS (Text-to-Speech), the ability to temporarily disable devices, and more. The release was initially […]

NanoPi R4S SBC preview with OpenWrt and Ubuntu Core

NanoPi R4S review

Rockchip RK3399 powered NanoPi R4S router SBC launched at the beginning of the month, and FriendlyELEC kindly sent a review sample to CNX Software. I intended to test thermally performance, Ethernet, and USB like I did for NanoPi R2S and NanoPi NEO3,  but Armbian is not available right now, so I could not use some of the tools I normally used right now. So instead, I tested the board/gateway with the image from FriendlyELEC. First FriendlyCore based on Ubuntu Core 20.04, but there some issues which we’ll detail in this preview, so I then switch to FriendlyWrt built upon OpenWrt 19.07 which works better, but I still encountered some problems. That’s just to say it might be better to wait a little longer until Armbian images are released, or until FriendlyELEC fixes some of the shortcomings. NanoPi R4S gateway unboxing Before testing the software, let’s see what I’ve received. NanoPi […]

LwM2M v1.2 M2M & IoT device management protocol adds support for HTTP and MQTT, LwM2M gateways

LwM2M v1.2

Lightweight M2M (LwM2M) is a REST-based protocol from the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) for M2M & IoT device management that defines the application layer communication protocol between an LwM2M server and an LwM2M client running on an IoT/embedded device. While LwM2M v1.0 was published in early 2017, we first covered the new protocol a year earlier as Imagination Technologies released the source code for the LwM2M stack running on MIPS Creator Ci40 development board.  Since then we’ve mostly seen the LwM2M protocol supported in cellular LTE IoT modules including Quectel BC66 and u-Blox Sara-R410M, as well as the now-defunct Samsung Artik WiFi IoT modules. LwM2M v1.0 was followed by v1.0.1 and v1.0.2 for bug fixes, and v1.1, but OMA has now announced LwM2M v1.2 protocol that adds the following new features: New transports for LwM2M: MQTT and HTTP Optimizations for the bootstrapping and registration interfaces to reduce the amount of […]

AI Gateway combines Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with Google Coral Edge TPU

Modberry AI-Gateway-9500-CM4

Techbase quickly unveiled an update to their Modberry industrial controllers with Modberry 500 CM4 DIN Rail computer as soon as Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 was launched. The company has now introduced another Raspberry Pi CM4 based product with ModBerry AI GATEWAY 9500-CM4 gateway combining the Broadcom BCM2711C0 system-on-module to Google Edge TPU to cater to applications leveraging AI acceleration. ModBerry AI GATEWAY 9500-CM4 preliminary specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 AI accelerator – Google Coral Edge TPU module with up to 4 TOPS connected over the RPi CM4’s PCIe interface Peripherals (customizable as needed) USB, HDMI, and Ethernet. Serial RS-232/485 ports Digital and analog I/Os with or without opto-isolation Relays, 1-Wire, CAN bus, M-Bus Master and Slave PCIe modules for wireless support Cellular – 4G/LTE and 5G modem, interchangeable with Coral TPU, plus on-board eSIM LPWAN – NB-IoT, LoRa, Sigfox, Wireless M-Bus ZigBee Additional Wi-Fi/Bluetooth interface or […]

DR6018-S is a more compact, cheaper WiFi 6 SBC with optional WiFi 6E

DR6018-S WiFi 6 Embedded Board

Earlier this year we wrote about Wallys Communications DR6018-V2 WiFi 6 embedded router board based on Qualcomm IPQ6010 processor with M.2 sockets for optional 5G and WiFi 6E cards. The company has now launched a more compact, and cheaper board with DR6018-S SBC based on the same processor with 802.11ax WiFi 6 and 802.11 b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 support, plus an M.2 socket for people wanting to add WiFi 6E cards. DR6018-S board specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ6010 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.8 GHz System Memory – 1GB (2x 512MB) DDR3L 16-bit interface with 32-bit memory bus design Storage – 256MB NAND Flash, 32MB NOR flash, optional SD card slot Networking Wired – 2x Gigabit Ethernet port including one with PoE support Wireless WiFi 2×2 2.4GHz MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11b/g/n/ax WiFi 6, max 23dBm per chain 2×2 5GHz MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11a/n/ac/ax WiFi 6, max 20dBm per chain 4x u.FL connectors […]