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March 14, 2026 by Debashis Das - 2 Comments

Esparagus Audio Brick ESP32-based DIN-rail 65W Hi-Fi amplifier supports Home Assistant and Squeezelite (Crowdfunding)

Sonocotta (Andriy Malyshenko), the developer of Esparagus “Media Center”, HiFi-Amped, Louder Raspberry Pi, and Louder Raspberry Hat Plus, has returned to Crowd Supply with the Esparagus Audio Brick, a compact ESP32 or ESP32-S3-powered Hi-Fi Class-D amplifier with Home Assistant support. With support for Music Assistant, Snapcast, and Logitech Media Server (LMS), the module can be used to build whole-home audio setups, retrofit vintage speakers with modern streaming features, or power custom speaker configurations such as subwoofers or bi-amp systems. The board is built around an ESP32 or ESP32-S3 dual-core microcontroller with 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM, and features Wi-Fi with optional W5500 SPI Ethernet for connectivity. Audio is processed via a Texas Instruments TAS5825M stereo I²S DAC with an integrated 65 W Class-D amplifier, and includes a DSP for a 15-band equalizer and hardware fault management. Other features include a USB Type-C port with a CH340 chip for […]

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

Discovery Drive – An ESP32-S3-based azimuth/elevation rotator for satellite dishes and SDR antennas (Crowdfunding)

KrakenRF, the team behind the KrakenSDR, has designed the Discovery Drive ESP32-S3-based, low-cost, fully weatherproof, automatic azimuth/elevation (Az/El) antenna rotator for their Discovery Dish or other directional antennas, such as Yagis and Wi-Fi grids, weighing up to 5kg. Compared to DIY projects like SatNOGS (which require 3D printing and hardware sourcing), the Discovery Drive is designed as a plug-and-play solution. You can simply mount it to a mast, attach the dish, connect to 12V power and Wi-Fi, and use its web UI to start tracking polar-orbiting weather satellites (like METEOR-M2 or FENGYUN), CubeSats, or amateur radio satellites. KrakenRF Discovery Drive specifications: Controller – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3-based control board Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 (via ESP32) with external antenna Motor and Rotation Torque – Up to 125 kg·cm (12.25 Nm); supports antenna payloads up to 5 kg Azimuth Range – -360° to +360° Elevation Range – 0° to […]

March 9, 2026March 8, 2026 by Debashis Das - No Comments

DSG-22.6 GHz is a $1,590 open-source RF signal generator based on Atek Midas’s custom ICs (Crowdfunding)

DSG 22.6 GHz RF signal generator block diagram

Atek Midas, a Turkish company, has launched DSG-22.6 GHz, a high-performance, open-source RF signal generator designed to provide professional-grade frequency synthesis at a fraction of the cost of traditional benchtop equipment from manufacturers like Anritsu or Keysight. It has an operating frequency range of 0.15 GHz to 22.6 GHz and is designed for makers and production test environments for RF testing, calibration, wireless experimentation, and microwave research. The device offers 1 Hz tuning resolution, adjustable output power −15 dBm to +20 dBm, and supports linear and logarithmic frequency sweeps with configurable start/stop frequencies, step size, and dwell time. It achieves ≥40 dBc spurious and harmonic suppression on the filtered output path and features a tuning speed of <100 µs. The generator includes a capacitive touchscreen display and can also be controlled over a USB Type-C port and/or Wi-Fi. DSG-22.6 GHz specifications: Frequency range – 150 MHz to 22.6 GHz Tuning […]

March 4, 2026March 4, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Dabao board features open-source hardware Baochip-1x RISC-V MCU (Crowdfunding)

An open-source hardware board usually features a closed-source microcontroller or processors, but the Dabao evaluation board goes further with the open-source Boachip-1x MCU, whose RTL files are available. It’s also manufactured in such a way that it is inspectable with the Infra-Red, In Situ (IRIS) technique, so users can look at the silicon and confirm they’ve got the right chip in a non-destructive way. Baochip-1x is a “general-purpose” microcontroller with a 350 MHz Vexriscv RV32-IMAC CPU core, a BIO accelerator for I/Os with four 700MHz PicoRV RV32-EMC CPU cores, 4MB of ReRAM, 2MB SRAM, a USB interface, various other I/Os, and hardware secure elements such as cryptography accelerators, key stores, one-way counters, true random number generation, and hardware attack countermeasures such as glitch sensors and a security mesh. The Dabao board itself is pretty basic with the microcontroller, two 16-pin headers for I/Os, a USB-C port for power and programming, […]

February 27, 2026February 28, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 H.264 and H.265 video decoders gain mainline Linux support

Rockchip RK3588 RK3576 main linux H.265 H.264 video decoders

VDPU381 and VDPU383 video decoders are found in Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs and variants like the RK3588S and RK3576J. So far, we had to rely on the Rockchip BSP to support hardware video decoding, but Collabora has just announced upstream/mainline Linux support for H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) video decoding for RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs. Highlights of H.265/H.264 video decoder implementation on mainline Linux: A 17-patch series adding decoder support, in addition to dt-bindings and device tree nodes New V4L2 HEVC UAPI controls for explicit short-term and long-term RPS (Reference Picture Set) handling Fixing a non-obvious IOMMU restore issue caused by decoder-embedded IOMMU resets Struct-based register programming model to enforce completeness, ordering, and future multi-core readiness The new V4L2 UAPI controls for HEVC long and short-term Reference Picture Set (RPS) are required for the VDPU381 (RK3588) and VDP383 (RK3576) video decoders, contrary to some other decoders (e.g., VeriSilicon) that […]

February 24, 2026February 24, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

PocketBeagle 2 SBC gets industrial version with 1GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash

PocketBeagle 2 Industrial 1GB RAM 64GB eMMC flash

The PocketBeagle 2 Industrial is an update to the PocketBeagle 2 Rev A1 SBC featuring 1GB DDR4 RAM, a 64GB eMMC flash, and industrial temperature range support. The original board only comes with 512MB DDR4 memory, an eMMC flash footprint (unpopulated), and commercial temperature range support. Apart from those changes, the other specifications remain the same, with a Texas Instruments AM6254 quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC, an MSPM0L1105 Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, a microSD card slot, a USB-C port, UART and JTAG debugging support, and two 36-pin GPIO headers. Another difference is that the PCB is red for the PocketBeagle 2 Industrial (like the BeagleBone Black Industrial 4G), while the PocketBeagle 2 features a black PCB. PocketBeagle 2 Industrial specifications: Main SoC – Texas Instruments AM6254 CPU Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.4 GHz Arm Cortex-M4F real-time core @ 400 MHz with 256KB SRAM GPU – Imagination PowerVR Rogue AXE-1-16M with support for OpenGL […]

February 24, 2026February 24, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

GyroidOS virtualization solution aims to secure embedded devices, ease cybersecurity certification

Maintained by Fraunhofer AISEC, GyroidOS is an open-source, multi-arch OS-level virtualization solution designed for embedded devices with hardware security features, and aiming to support security certification processes such as Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408), DIN SPEC 27070 – IDS Trust Security profile, and IEC-62443 cybersecurity standards. The virtualization layer is based on Linux-specific features like namespaces, cgroups, and capabilities to provide isolation of different guest operating system stacks on top of a single, shared Linux kernel. It offers a much smaller footprint and additional separation of privileged instances compared to other container solutions, such as Docker. GyroidOS security features Container isolation based on a modularized OS-level virtualization layer Secure boot (e.g., UEFI on x86) Kernel module signing Signed GuestOSes (containers) Measured boot and remote attestation Full disk encryption coupled to TPM and secure boot Restriction of superuser in containers with Linux capabilities Fine-grained device access with device cgroups whitelists Secure Element […]

February 20, 2026February 20, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

MediaTek MT7902 wireless chipset finally gets a Linux driver

MediaTek MT7902 wireless modules are used in many Windows laptops, but so far, a Linux driver has been missing. This is about to change, as Mediatek has finally committed a patchset for MT7902 to the mainline Linux mailing list. This is personal. I bought an ASUS Vivobook 16 in August 2023, and Ubuntu 22.04 worked pretty well out of the box, except for support for the Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth module, detected as “Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. Device 7902” with lscpi but without working drivers. Since then, I’ve been using the laptop connected to the USB dock with Ethernet support when at home, or using USB tethering with my phone when on the road. I initially thought it might just be a matter of time before the driver is ported to Linux, but it took well over two years. I was far from being alone in my ordeal, and you […]