We received the Edge 2 Kit IoT gateway on the Rockchip RK3568-powered Edge2 single board computer (SBC) and a 2-in-1 Zigbee and Z-Wave mPCIe card from Mixtile which we will be reviewing from the perspective of smart home applications using Home Assistant open-source home automation framework. Let’s dive into the details. Unboxing Mixtile Edge 2 Kit CNX Software previously reported on the Mixtile Edge 2 Kit in 2022 and you can check the detailed specifications and block diagram in that earlier article. Since then, Mixtile has found a wider range of applications for the device and is also promoting it as an Edge AI Box that performs AI object detection using the Edge 2 Kit (or the more powerful Mixtile Blade 3) using the built-in NPU (Neural Processing Unit) with up to 1 TOPS of AI performance for tasks such as object detection. Let’s unbox it and take a closer […]
Mixtile Edge AI boxes work with ONVIF cameras to deploy video analytics solutions (Sponsored)
Mixtile Edge AI solution supports ONVIF cameras and leverages object detection, object classification, real-time analysis, and intelligent monitoring to create IoT video analytics applications across the security, transportation, logistics, retail, industry, and agriculture sectors. The hardware is based on the time-tested Mixtile Edge 2 Kit IoT gateway powered by a Rockchip RK3568 SoC with a 1 TOPS NPU and 1080p60 VPU, or Mixtile Blade 3 SBC featuring the more powerful Rockchip RK3588 octa-core SoC with a 6 TOPS AI accelerator and an 8Kp60 VPU. The former can analyze up to 10 streams in real-time, and the latter up to a whopping 40 streams. So the novelty here is on the software side that has been developed by Mixtile and works the following way: The ONVIF cameras transmit video streams to a Mixtile Edge AI Box over the network. The Edge AI Box then runs pre-trained AI models to analyze the […]
$20 Zigbee & Z-Wave mPCIe module targets Home Assistant gateways
Mixtile’s “2-in-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave mPCIe module” is a relatively inexpensive way to add Zigbee and Z-Wave connectivity to a Home Assistant server without having USB dongles sticking out of the server and taking some of its spare USB ports. The module is compatible with any computer, gateway, or SBC with a spare mini PCIe socket featuring a USB 2.0 interface such as Rockchip RK3568-powered Mixtile Edge 2 Kit gateway. You’ll also need some way of mounting the antennas after connecting them to the IPEX-1 antenna connectors on the module, the Edge 2 Kit comes with multiple antenna holes. Mixtile 2-in-1 Zigbee & Z-Wave mPCIe module specifications: Wireless MCUs Silabs EFR32MG24 Arm Cortex-M33 @ 78.0 MHz with 256 kB RAM, 1536 kB flash Radio Frequency – 2.4 GHz (802.15.4 radio) TX Power – up to +19.5 dBm RX sensitivity – -105.4 dBm at 250 kbps Protocols – Zigbee, Matter, Thread […]
Save up to $75 on Rockchip RK3588-powered Mixtile Blade 3 SBC and Core 3588E module (Sponsored)
Mixile has launched a promotion that could save you up to $75 on the company’s Rockchip RK3588-powered devices, namely the Mixtile Blade 3 SBC that can be used standalone or integrated into a cluster and Core 3588E SO-DIMM system-on-module that follows the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, TX2 NX, Xavier NX, and Orin Nano form factor and will work with most carrier boards designed for those. The first part of the “Lucky Offer” promotion is a $50 discount coupon code (cnx50off) applicable to the Mixtile Blade 3, Mixtile Blade 3 Case, and Mixtile Cluster Box. The Mixtile Blade 3 is a pico-ITX SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor, with up to 32GB RAM, up to 256GB eMMC flash, three display interfaces, an HDMI input port, dual GbE, a 30-pin GPIO header, and a U.2 connector carrying 4-lane PCIe Gen3 and SATA 3.0 signals and specifically designed for cluster applications. […]
Testing AI and LLM on Rockchip RK3588 using Mixtile Blade 3 SBC with 32GB RAM
We were interested in testing artificial intelligence (AI) and specifically large language models (LLM) on Rockchip RK3588 to see how the GPU and NPU could be leveraged to accelerate those and what kind of performance to expect. We had read that LLMs may be computing and memory-intensive, so we looked for a Rockchip RK3588 SBC with 32GB of RAM, and Mixtile – a company that develops hardware solutions for various applications including IoT, AI, and industrial gateways – kindly offered us a sample of their Mixtile Blade 3 pico-ITX SBC with 32 GB of RAM for this purpose. While the review focuses on using the RKNPU2 SDK with computer vision samples running on the 6 TOPS NPU, and a GPU-accelerated LLM test (since the NPU implementation is not ready yet), we also went through an unboxing to check out the hardware and a quick guide showing how to get started […]
Mixtile Core 3588E SoM review – Part 2: Ubuntu 22.04, hardware features, RK3588 AI samples, NVIDIA Jetson compatibility
We’ve already had a look at the Mixtile Core 3588E NVIDIA Jetson Nano/TX2 NX/Xavier NX/Orin Nano compatible Rockchip RK3588 SO-DIMM system-on-module in the first part of the review with an unboxing and first boot with an Ubuntu 22.04 OEM installation. I’ve now had more time to play with the devkit comprised of a Core 3588 module in 16GB/128GB configuration and a Leetop A206 carrier board with low-level features testing, some benchmarks, multimedia testing with 3D graphics acceleration and video playback, some AI tests using the built-in 6 TOPS NPU and the RKNPU2 toolkit, and finally I also tried out the system-on-module with the carrier board from an NVIDIA Jetson Nano developer kit. Ubuntu 22.04 System info We had already checked some of the system information in the first part of the Mixtile Core 3588E review, but here’s a reminder:
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jaufranc@Mixtile-RK3588E:~$ uname -a Linux Mixtile-RK3588E 5.10.160-rockchip #18 SMP Wed Dec 6 15:11:42 UTC 2023 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux jaufranc@Mixtile-RK3588E:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=22.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=jammy DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS" jaufranc@Mixtile-RK3588E:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on tmpfs 1.6G 2.7M 1.6G 1% /run /dev/mmcblk0p2 113G 7.5G 101G 7% / tmpfs 7.7G 0 7.7G 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 8.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/mmcblk0p1 512M 101M 411M 20% /boot/firmware tmpfs 1.6G 60K 1.6G 1% /run/user/0 tmpfs 1.6G 76K 1.6G 1% /run/user/130 tmpfs 1.6G 68K 1.6G 1% /run/user/1000 jaufranc@Mixtile-RK3588E:~$ free -mh total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 15Gi 601Mi 13Gi 47Mi 1.4Gi 14Gi Swap: 2.0Gi 0B 2.0Gi |
I also ran inxi to check a few more details. […]
Mixtile Core 3588E development kit review – Part 1: Unboxing and first boot
Mixtile Core 3588E is a Rockchip RK3588 SO-DIMM system-on-module with up to 32GB LPDDR4 and 256GB eMMC flash that follows NVIDIA Jetson Nano, TX2 NX, Xavier NX, and Orin Nano form factor and should work with any board made for Jetson SO-DIMM modules. We first covered the module last April, but Mixtile is now shipping their Rockchip RK3588 module and sent us a development kit with the Mixtile Core 3588 SoM fitted with a fansink and a carrier board that looks quite similar to the NVIDIA Jetson Nano developer kit we reviewed a few years ago, although its design is closer to the new B01 developer kit as we’ll see below. We’ll start the review with an unboxing and first boot, before testing it in more detail with Ubuntu 22.04 in the second part of the review. Mixtile Core 3588E development kit unboxing We received the development kit fully preassembled. […]
Mixtile Cluster Box supports four Rockchip RK3588 SBCs connected over PCIe
The Mixtile Cluster Box is comprised of four Mixtile Blade 3 Pico-ITX single board computers each powered by a Rockchip RK3588 processor and connected over a 4-lane PCIe Gen3 interface through a U.2 to PCIe/SATA breakout board. We mentioned the Cluster Box last year, but Mixtile had few details about it at the time. The company has now released more technical information, worked on the software, and just launched the box for $339 (without the SBCs). Mixtile Cluster Box specifications: Supported SBCs – Up to 4x Mixtile Blade 3 with Rockchip RK3588, up to 32GB LPDDR4 each, up to 256GB eMMC flash each Control board running OpenWrt 22.03 SoC – MediaTek MT7620A MIPS processor @ 580 MHz System Memory 256 MB DDR2 Storage – 16 MB SPI Flash PCIe Switch – ASMedia ASM2824 with four PCIe 3.0 4-lane ports Storage interfaces via 4x U.2 breakout boards 4x NVMe M.2 M-Key […]