Olimex ESP32-C5-Devkit-Lipo is a compact ESP32-C5 board with dual-band WiFi 6, Bluetooth LE, and a 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter connectivity with support for LiPo battery for a charging circuit. It follows the company’s ESP32-C5-EVB board with isolated inputs and relays launched in September 2025, and offers a minimal design with two USB-C ports, a UEXT connector for expansion module, the usual breadboard-compatible GPIO headers, and not much else, which makes it ideal for space-constrained applications and prototyping. Olimex ESP32-C5-Devkit-Lipo specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-C5-WROOM-N8R4 SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-C5 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ 40 MHz acting as the main processor for power-sensitive applications Memory – 384 KB SRAM on-chip, support for external PSRAM Storage – 320 KB ROM, support for external flash Connectivity Dual-band 802.11ax WiFi 6 in the 2.4GHz and 5 GHz bands, with 802.11b/g/n WiFi […]
RA8P1 Titan board features 1 GHz Cortex-M85 MCU for AIoT applications, RT-Thread development
So far, if you wanted to evaluate Renesas RA8P1 Cortex-M85 MCU clocked at 1 GHz, you had to spend close to $200 to get the EK-RA8P1 evaluation kit, but the RT-Thread RA8P1 Titan board allows you to do that for about $50. Mostly designed for RT-Thread real-time OS development and evaluation, the RA8P1 Titan board comes with 32MB HyperRAM, 64MB HyperFlash, display and camera interfaces, two Gigabit Ethernet ports with Time Sensitive Networking support, WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.1, a USB 2.0 Type-C port, CAN Bus, Serial, and RS485 interfaces, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header, a built-in debugger, and flexible power options with 5V via USB-C or 9V-24V via an XT60 connector. RA8P1 Titan board specifications: SoC – Renesas RA8P1 (R7KA8P1) MCU cores Arm Cortex-M85 clocked at 1 GHz with Helium MVE (M-Profile Vector Extension) with 32KB I/D caches; 7300+ CoreMarks Arm Cortex-M33 clocked at 250 MHz with 32KB […]
Giveaway Week 2025 winners announced!
CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2025 has just ended and we’ve now ready to announce the winners. We offered some of the review samples we tested, and three companies joined us offering new samples, namely Banana Pi with two router boards, VOIPAC with an industrial development kit, and RAKwireless offered two of their IoT development kits for the fifth year running. Besides the aforementioned prize, we also included an ESP32-P4 development kit, a dry switch from SONOFF, a Raspberry Pi CM4-based HMI with a 915MHz LoRa module, a 5-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display, and two USB PD voltage indicators on both CNX Software “International” and CNX Software Thailand. You can see all prizes shown below. Without further ado, here are the seven winners of Giveaway Week 2025 on CNX Software (English): M5Stack M5Tab – Ed, Canada Elecrow Pi Terminal – Tom, Finland Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite router board – Stef, Belgium […]
Raspberry Pi CM5 industrial carrier board features dual Ethernet, optional 4G LTE/5G cellular connectivity, metal case, and more
Waveshare CM5-DUAL-ETH-4G/5G-BASE is an industrial carrier board for the Raspberry Pi CM5. It features dual Ethernet (GbE + 2.5GbE), 4G/5G options, and includes an optional metal enclosure, active cooling fan, and power supply, which is an upgrade from the previous CM5-DUAL-ETH-BASE carrier board. The board also offers two HDMI outputs supporting 4K displays, two MIPI DSI/CSI connectors for displays and/or cameras, two USB 3.2 ports, a 40-pin GPIO header, M.2 slots for both NVMe SSDs and 4G/5G modules, and PoE support via an add-on module. The board supports 7V–36V DC input, a PWM fan header, and RTC battery backup, with precise cutouts and labeled connectors for easy integration. Its main benefits over the CM5-DUAL-ETH-BASE are its more compact size and neatly arranged ports on the rear panels, while adding optional support for 4G LTE or 5G connectivity. CM5-DUAL-ETH-4G/5G-BASE specifications: Compatibility – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) Storage Optional NVMe SSD […]
CRA-ready Grinn Genioboard Edge AI SBC features MediaTek Genio 510 or 700 System-on-module
Grinn has launched a credit card-sized SBC powered by its MediaTek Genio 510 or Genio 700 Cortex-A78/A55 SoM, and designed for Edge AI applications with support for the Thistle Security Platform via an on-board Infineon OPTIGA Trust M hardware security module to enable compliance with the EU’s Cybersecurity Resilience Act (CRA). With a form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 model B, the Genioboard features 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, a Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, a 40-pin GPIO header, a USB-C debuig port, USB-C PD power, and on the bottom side, two M.2 sockets for AI accelerators and wireless modules. Genioboard specifications: System-on-Module – Grinn GenioSOM-510 or Grinn GenioSOM-700 SoC MediaTek Genio 510 (MT8370) hexa-core Arm Cortex-A78/A55 processor up to 2.2 GHz, Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, 4Kp60 video decoding, 4Kp30 video encoding, up to 3.2 TOPS […]
Giveaway Week 2025 – RAKwireless Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit
It turns out we don’t have two, but three companies offering free samples on CNX Software this year. The last one is a regular, and RAKwireless joins us for the fifth year running with a Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit that can be useful for industrial automation and asset-tracking applications. Regular readers may recall that it is the same prize as last year. While I usually prefer getting a new devkit, the company didn’t launch any this year (just some Meshtastic kits). The good news is that if you missed out last time around, you have a chance to give it another go. Here’s what the winner will get as a reminder: RAK4631 WisBlock Core Module based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 64 MHz with 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 protocol stack Semtech SX1262 LoRa Transceiver with LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol stack […]
Nexalta Guardian NXG0042AI – Qualcomm IPQ9574-based networking solution with 10GbE, WiFi 7, 5G, local AI (Crowdfunding)
Nexalta Guardian NXG0042AI is a large networking and IoT gateway “monster” powered by a Qualcomm IPQ9574 chipset offering 10GbE and 2.5GbE networking, WiFi 7 support with up to five concurrent WiFi radios, up to four/seven 5G modems, up to 52 (e)SIMs, and two on-board Compute Module slots for Rockchip RK3588 or NVIDIA Jetson SO-DIMM system-on-modules. The main board (XWR A1) also offers 25Gbps WAN fabric, three MCUs for BMC, power management, and cryptography, M.2 slots for NVMe storage or AI accelerators, two mSATA sockets, HDMI video output, USB ports, Starlink satellite support, and a range of IoT protocol options such as LoRaWAN, 5G RedCap, UWB, Bluetooth LE, and so on. Nexalta Guardian specifications: Main SoC subsystem SoC – Qualcomm IPQ9574 quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor @ 2.2GHz processor System Memory – 2GB DDR4 RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, 64MB NOR flash SoM sub-system 2x 260-pin SO-DIMM sockets for: Turing RK1 […]
Progress on upstream Linux for MediaTek Genio IoT SoCs and boards
Collabora announced a partnership with MediaTek to bring upstream support to the Genio IoT SoCs and boards in November 2024, but since the announcement was new at the time, no work had been done, and I didn’t write about it. However, almost one year later, Collabora can now report very good progress, especially for MediaTek MT8395 boards like Genio 1200 EVK and Radxa NIO 12L, which are now usable with mainline/upstream Linux since most features are implemented. But improvements also extend to MediaTek Genio 510 and Genio 700 EVKs, and the collaboration will continue with work on newer MediaTek Genio and Kompanio processors for IoT solutions and Chromebooks. The two MediaTek Genio 1200 boards can now boot mainline Linux without any out-of-tree patches while providing support for the Audio DSP, JPEG, video hardware encoders and decoders, the Arm Mali-G57 MC5 GPU (via the open source Panfrost driver), as well as […]


