Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on ESP32 CNC Controller Board Supports Grbl Arduino Firmware

ESP32 CNC Controller Board Supports Grbl Arduino Firmware

Grbl_ESP32 CNC development board is a breakout board for NodeMCU 32S board that also takes three stepper motor drivers, and designed to run Grbl open-source Arduino firmware to control wireless CNC machines. Grbl_ESP32 CNC breakout board specifications: Socket for NodeMCU 32S board with ESP32 WiFi and Bluetooth dual-core SoC 3 sockets for stepper motor drivers such as TI DRV8825 types and others. Micro-step selection jumpers included. MicroSD card socket Home/Limit switch connections for XY and Z axes. Control switch input connections for Feed Hold, Cycle Start, Reset, and Door. Spindle output for PWM to control speed. 3A DC-DC power supply to run the ESP32 if it is not connected to USB Grbl CNC firmware was initially developed for the Arduino UNO and basic 3 axis CNC routers around 10 years ago, but has since then been ported to other CPUs and is now found in other types of CNC machines as well as 3D printers. You’ll find the Grbl firmware […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments on PineCube open-source Linux IP camera devkit launched for $30

PineCube open-source Linux IP camera devkit launched for $30

Pine64 has been a busy company/community with the launch of Linux powered Arm development boards, PinePhone smartphone, PineTab tablet, and Pinebook Pro laptop in the last two years. They also had other smaller projects that got fewer resources due to the launch of the aforementioned products and COVID-19 induced delays, and one of those is PineCube open-source IP camera development kit that finally launched for $29.99 plus shipping. PineCube hardware specifications: SoC – Allwinner/Sochip S3 Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 800MHz with 128MB in-package DDR3 RAM Storage – 128Mbit SPI Nor Flash and MicroSD slot, both bootable Camera – 5MP OV5640 sensor Audio – Built-in microphone, speaker Display – Optional 4.5-inch RGB LCD screen ( Networking – 10/100M Ethernet with passive PoE and WiFi USB – USB 2.0 Type-A host port Expansion – 26-pin GPIO header Misc – Volume and home buttons Power Supply 5V/1A via micro USB port or GPIO pin 8V-24V passive PoE Optional 950-1,600 mAh 3.7V 903048 lithium […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments on Teensy 4.1 Cortex-M7 Board Gets Marlin Firmware and OpenPnP Breakout Board

Teensy 4.1 Cortex-M7 Board Gets Marlin Firmware and OpenPnP Breakout Board

Teensy 4.0 and Teensy 4.1 are some of the most powerful microcontroller-class boards you’ll find on the market thanks to NXP i.MX RT1062 Arm Cortex-M7 crossover processor clocked at up to 600 MHz, and there won’t break the bank are PJRC sells those for $20 and up on their own store or Amazon. If you’re into 3D printers, CNC, or pick-and-place machines, you’ll be glad to learn Teensy 4.1 board is the first Arm Cortex-M7 board to support Marlin 2.0 firmware, and a person nicknamed CrazzyFrenchDud is developing PeeNaPle breakout board for Teensy 4.1 to work with OpenPnP open-source software. The initial commit to Marlin firmware was made on September 10 for both Teensy 4.0 and 4.1 boards, but the title was changed to Teensy 4.1 only since Teensy 4.0 is not supported at this time, and may not be suitable for many 3D printers due to a lack of pins. Teensy 4.1 is much faster than existing boards support […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments on Arm Officially Supports Panfrost Open-Source Mali GPU Driver Development

Arm Officially Supports Panfrost Open-Source Mali GPU Driver Development

Most GPU drivers found in Arm processors are known to be closed-source making it difficult and time-consuming to fix some of the bugs since everybody needs to rely on the silicon vendor to fix those for them, and they may even decide a particular bug is not important to them, so you’d be out of luck. So the developer community has long tried to reverse-engineer GPU drivers with projects like Freedreno (Qualcomm Adreno), Etnaviv (Vivante), as well as Lima and Panfrost for Arm Mali GPUs. Several years ago, Arm management was not interested at all collaborating with open-source GPU driver development for Mali GPUs, but as noted by Phoronix, Alyssa Rosenzweig,  a graphics software engineer employed by Collabora, explained Panfrost development was now done in partnership with Arm during a talk at the annual X.Org Developers’ Conference (XDC 2020). A recent merge commit confirms the move with Daniel Stone, Graphics Leads at Collabora commenting To reiterate the answer from earlier […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments on PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an Open Source Alternative to Raspberry Pi Board

PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an Open Source Alternative to Raspberry Pi Board

There’s a lot of interest/hype around RISC-V, and low-cost boards such as Longan Nano or Maixduino are already available, but those are based on microcontroller-class chips, even though it’s possible to run Linux on Kendryte K210 RISC-V board, it comes without MMU, so it’s not for everyone. Linux capable RISC-V boards do exist but cost several hundred dollars or more with the likes of HiFive Unleashed and PolarFire SoC Icicle development kit. If only there was a RISC-V board similar to the Raspberry Pi board and with a similar price point… The good news is that the RISC-V International Open Source (RIOS) Laboratory is collaborating with Imagination technologies to bring PicoRio RISC-V SBC to market at a price point similar to Raspberry Pi. The PicoRio board was presented at the RISC-V Global Forum on September 3rd. I could not find the full presentation slides yet, but there are some screenshots here and there on Twitter giving us a few more […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on The Open Invention Network Aims to Protect Linux and Open-Source Software with a Patent Non-Aggression Pact

The Open Invention Network Aims to Protect Linux and Open-Source Software with a Patent Non-Aggression Pact

When we covered Alibaba XT910 RISC-V processor earlier this week, the company confirmed working with open-source companies to make the source code is available for the chip, but that there were legal challenges to do so for a high-performance core. The company did not expand on what legal challenges there were, but I’m pretty sure it’s about patents and potential lawsuits. But there may be a solution, or at least a way for companies to protect themselves to some degree against patent trolls, thanks to the Open Invention Network (OIN) which I discovered in a press release about UNISOC recently joined the organization. So what does the Open Invention Network does exactly? We enable freedom of action for Open Invention Network community members and users of Linux/OSS-based technology through our patent non-aggression cross-license in the “Linux System,” which defines the commitment. We will continue to grow our community and the “Linux System” over time, thereby strengthening OIN’s patent non-aggression coverage […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Perfetto Profiler Now Supports Mali GPU Hardware Counters via Panfrost

Perfetto Profiler Now Supports Mali GPU Hardware Counters via Panfrost

Perfetto is an open-source system profiler, app tracer, and trace analyzer for Linux, Android & Chrome platforms, and user-space apps. The program can already visualize CPU and memory usage, as well as power consumption.  GPU support is more limited with the program only capable of sampling the GPU frequency when the driver outputs that information via ftrace. When Perfetto is also extendable thanks to a Tracing C++ SDK that “allows userspace applications to emit trace events and add more app-specific context to a Perfetto trace”. Collabora made use of the tracing SDK to add support for Mali Midgard GPU performance profiling in gfx-pps project using the Mali GPU hardware counters exposed via Panfrost open-source Mali GPU driver. After following the installation instructions, you’ll be able to run the following executables for tracing and profiling: tracedtracing service. traced_probes OS probes service. perfetto command-line tool for recording traces. producer-gpuproviding the Panfrost data source. There’s also gpu.cfgconfig file to feed as input to […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Keyboard FeatherWing Brings Keyboard & Display to Adafruit Feather Boards

Keyboard FeatherWing Brings Keyboard & Display to Adafruit Feather Boards

Solder Party is a brand new Swedish startup founded by Arturo182 who previously designed several maker boards including the tiny Serpente R2 CircuitPython prototyping board, and its first product, named Keyboard FeatherWing, brings a QWERTY keyboard and 2.6” color LCD with resistive touch screen to any boards compatible with Adafruit Feather for factor. That means you can build a portable device that runs Linux via the  Giant Board, features an FPGA (Orange Crab), or a wide range of connectivity options including WiFi, Bluetooth LE, LoRa, etc… depending on your chosen board. The solution actually brings a bit more than just a keyboard and color, as shown by the list of Keyboard FeatherWing key features: Display – 2.6” 320×240 16-bit color LCD with resistive touch screen (SPI) Storage – MicroSD card slot (SPI) User Inputs controlled by a Microchip SAMD20 MCU QWERTY keyboard (I2C) 5-way button 4 soft tactile buttons Expansion Stemma QT/Qwiic I2C connector Dual-row Adafruit Feather compatible female headers […]

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