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April 9, 2021April 12, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

DIY Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 NAS supports up to four drives

We previously noted it was possible to build a Raspberry Pi CM4 NAS using Wiretrustee carrier board with a built-in Marvell 88SE9215 PCIe to SATA controller and four SATA connectors. But Mebs just created his own Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 four-bay NAS with his own carrier board equipped with a PCIe socket used to insert a PCIe SATA card, as well as a neat 3D printed enclosure that took 6 days to print. This carrier board design is actually derived from the official Raspberry Pi CM4 IO board with only the interfaces needed for the NAS to make it smaller and fit within the width of a standard 3.5″ hard drive. It was also made as simple as possible because it was Mebs’ first PCB design. This leaves the board with Gigabit Ethernet, one HDMI port, a USB 2.0 port, the PCIe 2.0 socket, as well as some headers for power (board and SATA), a small I2C OLED display, […]

April 3, 2021April 26, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Top 5 most powerful Arm SBC’s & Devkits in 2021

Most Powerful Arm SBCs development kit 2021

While companies like Hardkernel, Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and FriendlyArm offers affordable, great little Arm Linux development boards that are suitable for many projects, in some cases, your requirements may lead you to spend a bit more for either extra CPU power, more memory, AI processing power, faster I/Os and so on. That’s why I did a list of the most powerful Arm single board computers in late 2017, but with over three years passed since then an update is warranted. The boards from the list must be easily purchasable from individuals (with the cash to spare) or small companies, so we’ll exclude hard-to-source hardware, as well as Arm server boards like Ampere eMAG motherboard, that do not really qualify as single board computers. Snapdragon 888 Mobile Hardware Development Kit While there are plenty of Cortex-A72/A73 development boards around, it’s much hardware to find one with more recent Cortex-X1 or Cortex-A78 cores, and Lantronix Snapdragon 888 Mobile Hardware Development Kit […]

March 27, 2021March 28, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

$30 Raspberry Pi CM4 IoT Router Carrier Board Mini offers Dual Gigabit Ethernet

We’ve recently written about Seeed Studio’s “Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4” that offers dual Gigabit Ethernet, and two USB 3.0 ports for software router applications, but it can also be used for IoT, Smart Home, and camera projects, as well as HTPC maker thanks to micro HDMI output and MIPI DSI/CSI connector. It is sold for an affordable $45, exceeding the Raspberry Pi CM4 module. But if all you want to do is get a dual Gigabit Ethernet WiFi router or IoT gateway, DFRobot has now introduced a more compact and cheaper carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4: “Compute Module 4 IoT Router Carrier Board Mini“. CM4 IoT Router Board Mini specifications: Compatible Module – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 / 4 Lite with Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 processor, up to 8GB RAM, up to 32GB flash, optional 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 Storage – MicroSD card slot for RPi CM4 modules without […]

February 1, 2021February 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

FOSDEM 2021 Online February 6-7 – Hardware, Embedded & IoT talks

FOSDEM is an open-source developer event that takes place on the first week-end of February every year in Brussels, Belgium. Every year except this year, as due to COVID-19 restrictions, FOSDEM 2021 will take place online like most events these days. The schedule has been up for some time, and today I’ll look at some of the interesting talks mostly from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive “virtual devroom” but also other tracks. Saturday, February 6, 2021 13:00 – 14:00 – From Reset Vector to Kernel – Navigating the ARM Matryoshka Long gone are the times of executing the OS in-place from memory-mapped flash upon reset. A modern SoC now comes with complex mask ROM firmware, with driver, filesystem, protocol and crypto support for loading… yet another bootloader. In his talk, Ahmad follows this chain of bootloaders until the kernel is started, stopping along the way for RAM setup, peripherial initialization, runtime services and other interesting sights. Getting acquainted with the […]

February 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier board

Wiretrustee SATA board Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4

Broadcom BCM2711 processor comes with a PCIe interface that is used for the USB ports on the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, but that is exposed through the board-to-board connectors of Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, aka Raspberry Pi CM4, and allows all sort of designs. So far we’ve mostly seen this PCIe interface used for M.2 expansion slots on devices ranging from industrial computers to carrier board such as Piunora or Gumstix Raspberry Pi CM4 development board. But Wiretrustee had a different idea and designed carrier board with Marvell 88SE9215 PCIe to SATA controller and offering four SATA connectors to build a 4-bay NAS with Raspberry Pi CM4 module. Wiretrustee carrier board specifications: Supported SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and 4 Lite Storage 4x SATA 2.0 via Marvell 88SE9215 (PCIe 2.0 x1 to 4 6Gb/s SATA ports, no HW RAID) chip tested at a write speed of ~220MB/s on each of the SATA ports (not simultaneously) MicroSD card […]

January 18, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ClusBerry 9500-CM4 – A Raspberry Pi CM4 cluster, industrial style

ClusBerry Industrial Raspberry Pi CM4 Cluster

Raspberry Pi cluster boards / solutions pop-up from time to time. But so far, I think we’ve seen only one based on Raspberry Pi CM4 modules with the upcoming Turing Pi 2 mini-ITX cluster board supporting four of those. TECHBASE has now unveiled a different kind of Raspberry Pi CM4 cluster with ClusBerry 9500-CM4 integrating up to eight Raspberry Pi Computer Module 4 in a DIN-Rail housing for industrial applications. ClusBerry 9500-CM4 is designed to be customizable with a choice of Raspberry Pi CM4 based modules and I/O cards: Standard 9500-CM4 cluster module with Compute Module 4 and a selection of configuration that include: I/O Controller with DI, DO, AI, 1-Wire, RS-232/485 and CAN interfaces Communication Gateway with up to 2x Ethernet, serial ports, wireless connectivity: LTE-cat.M1, 4G, 5G, LoRa, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Wireless M-Bus AI Gateway with Coral Edge TPU via PCIe M.2, or up to 4x Coral Edge TPU via USB3.0 NAS File Server RPI CM4 module with 2x […]

January 15, 2021January 15, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

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

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. M.2 edge connector Compatible with ODROID-H2 / H2+ The card […]

October 23, 2020October 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

ClearFog CX CN9K Mini-ITX 10GbE/5GbE networking SBC runs Linux or FreeBSD

Last year, SolidRun introduced ClearFog CX LX2X networking single board computer offering up to 100GbE via NXP LX2160A 16-core Cortex-A72 communication processor that followed ClearFog CX 8K ARMADA 8040 networking board launched the year before. The Israeli company is now working on two ClearFog CX CN9K networking SBC’s powered by CEx7 CN913x system-on-module featuring Marvell Octeon TX2 CN913x quad-core Cortex-A72 processor and offering multi-gigabit Ethernet with various 10Gbps, 5Gbps, and Gigabit Ethernet ports. ClearFog CN9132 Pro The higher-end version of the ClearFog CX CN9K boards is ClearFog CN9132 Pro with the following specifications: CEx7 CN9132 COM Express Type 7 module SoC – Marvell OCTEON TX2 CN9132 quad-core Arm Cortex A72 up to 2.2 GHz (Industrial temperature up to 2.0 GHz) System Memory – Up to 16GB SO-DIMM DDR4 up to2400MT/s (not included by default) Storage – Up to 32 GB eMMC flash, SPI NOR flash COM Express Type 7 board-to-board connectors with Storage – 2x SATA (Gen III) Networking – […]