Precursor is a mobile, open hardware, dual FPGA development kit (Crowdfunding)

Precursor mobile open-source dual FPGA devkit

Sutajio Ko-usagi PTE LTD has launched some interesting hardware on Crowd Supply over the years include Novena open-source hardware Arm laptop, and Fomu FPGA USB board. The company is now back with another project: Precursor, a mobile, open-source hardware devkit powered by not one, but two FPGA with Xilinx Spartan 7-Series FPGA, plus a super-low-power Lattice iCE40 UP5K FPGA for deep-sleep system management. The device also comes with a display, battery, and keyboard that make it looks like older Palm or Blackberry phones. Precursor FPGA devkit specifications: FPGA Xilinx XC7S50 primary System on Chip (SoC) FPGA with -L1 speed grade for longer battery life; tested with 100 MHz VexRISC-V, RV32IMAC + MMU, 4k L1 I/D cache Lattice Semi iCE40UP5K secondary Embedded Controller (EC) FPGA for power, standby, and charging functions; tested with 18 MHz VexRISC-V, RV32I, no cache System Memory – 16MB external SRAM Storage – 128MB flash Display -536 […]

The quest for a blob-free WiFi & Bluetooth stack for BL602 WiSoC

PineCone BL602 Board

I thought I was done writing about Bouffalo Lab BL602 WiFI & Bluetooth RISC-V SoC for a while after first covering the chip itself, and then an inexpensive BL602 development board this weekend. But the BL602 SDK has shown up in various Github repositories, including Bouffalo Lab’s own bl_iot_sdk repository, and as more people are looking into it, there’s now an effort to develop a fully open-source blob-free WiFi & Bluetooth stack for BL602, and other Bouffalo Lab WiFi and/or Bluetooth wireless chips. Last day we communicate with Bouffalolab, finally they release the SDK of BL602 (RV32 chip of wifi+bt), all code is open, except libblecontroller.a, libatcmd.a, libbl602_wifi.a (while they have all symbol inside)https://t.co/giHsQ4ezXxwe have a fork too https://t.co/FiaAIxLBc8 — Sipeed (@SipeedIO) October 27, 2020 First, Sipeed says the code is mostly open-source except for three libraries: ibblecontroller.a, libatcmd.a, libbl602_wifi.a, all of which are un-obfuscated, and easy to disassemble. Then […]

E3K all-in-one wireless bio-sensing platform supports EMG, ECG, and EEG sensors (Crowdfunding)

E3K ESP32 bio-sensing platform

Over the year, The maker community has designed several platforms to monitor vital signs with boards like Healthy Pi v4 or HeartyPatch both of which are powered by an ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth wireless SoC. WallySci has designed another all-in-one wireless bio-sensing platform, called E3K, that also happens to be powered by Espressif Systems ESP32 chip, and can be connected to an electromyography (EMG) sensor to capture muscle movements, an electrocardiography (ECG) sensor to measure heart activity, and/or an electroencephalography (EEG) sensor to capture brain activity. The board also has an extra connector to connect a 9-axis IMU to capture motion. E3K main board which the company refers to as “Data Communication and Processing Unit” (DCPU) comes with the following specifications: Supported wireless board – ESP32-DevKitC with ESP32-D0WD-V3 dual-core 32-bit LX6 microprocessor, up to 240 MHz, Integrated 520 KB SRAM, 16 MByte SPI flash. 2.4 GHz WiFI 4, and Bluetooth […]

ESP32 CNC Controller Board Supports Grbl Arduino Firmware

ESP32 CNC Controller Board

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 […]

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

PineCube open-source IP Camera

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 […]

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

PeeNaPle OpenPnP board for Teensy 4.1

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 […]

Arm Officially Supports Panfrost Open-Source Mali GPU Driver Development

Arm Panfrost Linux

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 […]

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

PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC

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 […]

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