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June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Armbian Imager 2.0 release supports over 300 boards from 64 SBC vendors, custom user profiles

Rock 5B Plus Armbian Operating System Selection

The Armbian community has just released the Armbian Imager 2.0 GUI program to easily flash pre-built Armbian-built Ubuntu or Debian images for over 338 boards from 64 SBC vendors. The new version features a slick user interface rewritten from scratch and implements custom user profiles in the settings with username and password, SSH key, Wi-Fi network credentials and country code, timezone, locale, and shell. That means the board is ready to use after flashing. In some ways it’s similar to the Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0, except it covers a much broader ecosystem of single board computers. To be honest, I had no idea Armbian had an imager so far. The last time I used an Armbian image, I downloaded it directly from their website and used USB Imager or another tool to flash it to a microSD card slot. So it’s a good opportunity to check out the Armbian Imager […]

May 10, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

My experience upgrading the BIOS of a Windows 11 mini PC (with BitLocker) in 2026

I don’t always update the BIOS of my system, but when I do, I always make sure to waste several hours doing so. Last time I did that was in 2020, but this happened again when I updated the BIOS for the Khadas Mind 2 to test it with the Mind xPlay display and Mind Graphics 2 dock. Khadas provides the BIOS with instructions to update the Mind 2 mini PC, and it’s supposed to take five minutes, but I ended up wasting two about hours… The first step is to download and extract a zip file (mind-2-bios-v1.07-260122.zip), then start the Flash_BIOS upgrade program, and finally wait for the upgrade to complete. That part went great. No problem, but when the system rebooted, I was greeted by a BitLocker window asking me to enter a recovery key to carry on with the boot process. There’s no way to avoid this, […]

April 15, 2026April 15, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 49 Comments

Reminder: enable ZRAM on your Linux system to optimize RAM usage (and potentially save money)

With the price of RAM getting out of control, it might be a good idea to remind Linux users to enable ZRAM so they can get better performance without upgrading memory, or save money on their next single board computer by selecting a board with the right amount of memory.

I had already written about the subject when I enabled ZRAM on a ODROID-XU4Q in 2018 using zram-config, and did the same on my Ubuntu laptop at the time. In recent days, I found Firefox crashing often due to running out of memory on my system with 16GB of RAM, and the Linux 7.0 release reminded me about ZRAM, since there were some related changes. So I decided to check the current swap configuration on my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop:

February 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

AOMedia AV2 video codec draft specification release, and a quick try at the reference implementation

After 5 years of work and over 2700 commits against the reference software, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has recently released the AV2 specification. This next-generation open video codec provides up to 40% bandwidth reduction over AV1 at equivalent quality. The document entitled “AV2 Bitstream & Decoding Process Specification” specifies the Alliance for Open Media Video 2 (AV2) bitstream syntax, semantics, parsing process, and decoding process. AV2 builds upon the foundation of AV1 and has been engineered to provide higher compression efficiency and high-quality video delivery at lower bitrates. The Alliance for Open Media also highlights that it provides better “support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range”. The AOMedia Video Model (AVM) serves as the official reference software, and tools and source code can be found on GitLab. Note that reference […]

January 18, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Getting started with SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 Zigbee adapter using Home Assistant

SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 review AirGuard TH MINI-ZB2GS-L

We have received a sample of the SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 (also known as Dongle-PMG24) Zigbee/Thread USB dongle for review. As its name implies, it’s based on a Silicon Labs EFR32MG24 wireless chip, and the company claims up to 200 meters range thanks to an included 3dBi antenna. It is compatible with Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi OS, and other operating systems that support USB serial drivers. The dongle works seamlessly with popular open-source platforms, such as Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, ioBroker, and OpenHAB. In this review, we will go through an unboxing of the SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24, before connecting it to a Raspberry Pi 4 running Home Assistant. We will use two Zigbee devices from SONOFF: the AirGuard TH (SNZB-02DR2) temperature and humidity sensor with an LCD, and the MINI DUO-L (MINI-ZB2GS-L) dual-channel/2-gang Zigbee 3.0 switch to demonstrate how to use the dongle with Home Assistant. SONOFF Dongle Plus […]

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

FlashESP is an all-in-one web-based tool for ESP32/ESP8266 Arduino development and firmware flashing

FlashESP Web-based ESP32 programming tool

FlashESP is a web-based tool allowing the development of Arduino sketches and firmware flashing for ESP32 and ESP8266 hardware platforms. I initially thought it was similar to ESP Web Tools for flashing firmware from the web and used by projects like ESPHome, but it goes further than that, and it looks like an Arduino Cloud Editor for ESP32/ESP8266 instead, since users can select boards, write code, load libraries, and flash the resulting firmware from a compatible web browser without installing anything else on their computer. FlashESP key features: Cloud Compilation – Real-time compilation with live logs. Auto Configuration – Intelligent board and library detection. One-Click Flash – Web Serial integration. Connect your ESP via USB and flash directly from a compatible browser (WebSerial support needed) without any drivers or downloads. Public Explorer – Discover community projects. Flexible Visibility – Create private projects for your team, public for the world, or […]

December 2, 2025December 2, 2025 by Sponsored Post - 2 Comments

Mongoose Wizard builds professional embedded device dashboards for microcontrollers like ESP32, STM32, NXP, RPi and others (Sponsored)

Cesanta Software introduced Mongoose Wizard – a no-code visual tool that enables embedded developers to effortlessly build a professionally looking device dashboard (WebUI) and REST API without writing any frontend code, transforming the microcontroller (MCU) board into a browser-accessible web dashboard for control, monitoring, and updates. Whether for prototyping or building production devices, integrating a web dashboard into firmware gives end users intuitive and powerful control. Designed for use in Industrial, Automotive, Smart home, or any Internet of Things product (machinery, devices, appliances, etc.) that benefits from a browser-based interface. Mongoose Wizard utilises the Mongoose Library, an open source network library for C/C++. Mongoose Library provides event-driven non-blocking APIs for TCP, UDP, HTTP, WebSocket, MQTT, and other protocols. It is designed for connecting devices and bringing them online. On the market since 2004, used by a vast number of open-source and commercial products – it even runs on the International […]

November 24, 2025November 24, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 released with a revamped user interface, Raspberry Pi Connect support

Raspberry Pi Imager V2.0.0 Raspberry Pi 5 Device

Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 has just been released with a revamped user interface with a wizard to enable easier navigation, as well as a new option for Raspberry Pi Connect remote access, among other changes. The Raspberry Pi Imager was first released in March 2020 to improve the user experience when flashing OS images for the Raspberry Pi to a microSD card. No need to download an OS image from the website and flash it manually to a microSD card with the dd command line tool, Win32DiskImager, or BalenaEtcher. Just select your Raspberry Pi model, the image you want from a curated list, and the storage device, and you’re good to go. A popular feature was the OS customization settings, but the list grew quite large, and that’s one of the main reasons for the release of the Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 utility. Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 highlights: New UI […]