orange pi News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 1, 2025December 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 6.18 LTS release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.18 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), which will likely become the next LTS kernel [update: it’s now official]: So I’ll have to admit that I’d have been happier with slightly less bugfixing noise in this last week of the release, but while there’s a few more fixes than I would hope for, there was nothing that made me feel like this needs more time to cook. So 6.18 is tagged and pushed out. Most of the last-minute fixes are minor fixes to drivers, with some random noise elsewhere (bluetooth, ceph, afs..). Nothing strikes me as standing out, but hey, there’s a shortlog appended if you want to see the details. And this obviously means that the merge window will open tomorrow, and I already have three dozen pull requests pending. Thanks. And as I already mentioned a couple of […]

November 13, 2025November 13, 2025 by Debashis Das - 3 Comments

The PV PI HAT adds 10A true MPPT solar charging to the Raspberry Pi (Crowdfunding)

PV Pi A Solar Charging Hat for Raspberry Pi

Developed by Luke Ditria and his team at AutoEcology, the PV PI is a plug-and-play MPPT solar charging HAT designed for Raspberry Pi and other SBCs like the Orange Pi, Banana Pi, and NVIDIA Jetson. Designed for outdoor and remote projects and built around TI BQ25756 charge controller and STM32F103 MCU, it supports LiFePO4 management, true MPPT charging, power monitoring, and automation over the RS-232 UART interface. It also produces 5V output via a high-current buck/boost converter, supports watchdog-based power cycling, RTC wake-up scheduling, and automatic restart at safe voltage levels. With XT30 connectors, stackable headers, and RTC backup, the PV PI HAT is ideal for solar-powered IoT like AI-based wildlife monitors, environmental monitoring, and remote data logging applications. PV PI HAT specifications Compatibility – Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, NVIDIA Jetson, etc… Main MCU – STmicro STM32F103 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller @ 72 MHz Charge controller – BQ25756 I2C […]

October 25, 2025October 25, 2025 by Debashis Das - 17 Comments

$35 Orange Pi 4 Pro – An Allwinner A733 Edge AI SBC with up to 16GB LPDDR5, WiFi 6

Orange Pi 4 Pro – Allwinner A733 Edge AI SBC

Just last week, we wrote about the Orange Pi 6 Plus, a powerful CIX P1 SBC that features up to 64GB LPDDR5 memory. Now, the company has introduced the Orange Pi 4 Pro, an Allwinner A733-based low-cost, low-power SBC, which is very similar to the Radxa Cubie A7A in terms of architecture, AI capabilities, and use cases. It supports up to 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, eMMC modules (16–128 GB), NVMe SSD via an M.2 M-key PCIe 3.0 slot, and microSD storage. Connectivity options include Gigabit Ethernet with PoE, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4. It also features HDMI 2.0, dual MIPI CSI/DSI interfaces, USB 3.0/2.0 ports, and audio I/O. Target applications include robotics control, industrial automation, smart gateways, NAS, and more. Orange Pi 4 Pro specifications: SoC – Allwinner A733 CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 @ up to 2.00 GHz Hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.79 GHz Single-core RISC-V E902 real-time […]

October 15, 2025October 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Orange Pi 6 Plus – CIX P1 SBC offers up to 64GB LPDDR5 memory, 45 TOPS of AI performance

Orange Pi 6 Plus Heatsink fan cooling solution

We wrote about the Orion O6N Nano-ITX SBC yesterday, mentioning that the Orange Pi 6 Plus was in the works. The good news is that the CIX P1 (CD8180/CD8180) single board from Orange Pi is now available on AliExpress for $223.90 with 16GB RAM and $268.89 with 32GB RAM, including a heatsink with fan, and a 100W USB-C port adapter. It’s the smallest CIX P1 board we’ve covered so far, but it still packs of lot of features including up to 64GB LPDDR5, two M.2 Key-M sockets for storage and/or AI accelerators, one M.2 Key-E socket for WiFi and Bluetooth, dual 5GbE networking, five displays interfaces via HDMI, DP, USB-C, and eDP, two 4-lane camera interfaces, and more. Orange Pi 6 Plus specifications: SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8180 or CD8160) 12-core DynamIQ processor 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz 4x Cortex‑A720 medium cores @ up to […]

September 30, 2025October 2, 2025 by Leo Zachary - 8 Comments

Orange Pi AI Studio Pro – A Huawei Ascend 310 AI box with up to 352 TOPS, 192GB RAM

Orange Pi AI Studio is a USB4 box designed for artificial intelligence applications, equipped with up to two Huawei Ascend 310 AI octa-core ARM 64-bit processors, delivering up to 176 TOPS per chip, as well as up to 192GB RAM. This follows the Orange Pi AIPro introduced last year, with an unnamed Huawei Ascend SoC delivering up to 20 TOPS NPU. The basic version of AI Studio has up to 96GB of LPDDR4X memory and 32MB of SPI Flash. The interface of the device is very simple, featuring a 12V 10A DC power interface, a USB 4.0 Type-C port, a power switch, and an indicator light. The only disadvantage is the limited number of ports provided, even do not include an HDMI port or an Ethernet port. Orange Pi AI Studio and AI Studio Pro specifications: SoC AI Studio – Huawei Ascend 310 octa-core 64-bit processor delivering up to 176 TOPS AI […]

September 29, 2025November 6, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.17 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.17 has just been released on LKML: No huge surprises this past week, so here we are, with kernel 6.17 pushed out and ready to go. Below is the shortlog for just the last week – not the full 6.17 release – as usual. It’s not exciting, which is all good. I think the biggest patch in there is some locking fixes for some bluetooth races that could cause use-after-free situations. Whee – that’s about as exciting as it gets. Other than that, there’ the usual driver fixlets (GPU and networking dominate as usual, but “dominate” is still pretty small), there’s some minor random other driver updates, some filesystem noise, and core kernel and mm. And some selftest updates. This obviously means that the merge window for 6.18 will open tomorrow, and I already have four dozen pull requests pending. Thanks to the proactive people – you know who […]

August 28, 2025 by Debashis Das - 3 Comments

Xerxes Pi – A Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5 carrier board with a rack-friendly design (Crowdfunding)

Xerxes Pi A cross vendor compute module carrier board

Designed by Rapid Analysis in Australia, the Xerxes Pi is a cross-vendor compute module carrier board that fits into a 1U rack and supports Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5, Radxa CM5, Banana Pi CM4/CM5, and Orange Pi CM4/CM5 compute modules. Designed at just one-third the size of a Nano-ITX board (120 × 40 mm), it’s ideal for home lab and small business servers looking for a low-cost way to run Docker containers and other open-source software. For storage, the carrier board includes a microSD card, and an M.2 E-Key slot enables support for accelerators or peripherals. Additionally, it features an I²C/SPI header and optional PoE via add-on boards or splitters. The design is well thought out and comes with a thermally efficient design with ventilated enclosures, optional PLA or metal heatsinks, and open-source 3D printable rack cases (single or multi-board). With open schematics, 3D files, Xerxes Pi targets DIY electronics, clustered computing, edge servers, […]

July 8, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Ubuntu 25.10 release to mandate RVA23 profile, obsoleting most RISC-V hardware

RISC-V is an open architecture standard that provides flexibility, and chip designers can add or remove instructions as they please to match their application requirements. That’s all great until complex software designed to run on multiple platforms is involved. That’s why for Linux and Android support, the RVA (RISC-V Application) profiles were created, so that every RISC-V SoC designed for those systems meets some minimal requirements and shared instructions, to which you would also add more if needed, as long as they don’t break the standard. The RISC-V association ratified the latest RVA23 profile for 64-bit RISC-V in October 2024, which notably mandates support for the vector and hypervisor extensions. OMGUbuntu also reports that Canonical has decided to raise the required RISC-V ISA profile family to RVA23, or more exactly RVA23U64, from RVA20 for the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 release. In other words, going forward, Ubuntu will only be supported on […]