pine64 News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 20, 2026June 20, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Pine64 Pinevoice – A $50 RISC-V Smart Speaker for Home Assistant based on Bouffalo Lab BL606P MCU

After over two years in the making, Pine64 has now launched the PineVoice (previously PineVox) smart speaker based on the Bouffalo Lab BL606P RISC-V wireless microcontroller with WiFi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee radio interfaces. The device also features two microphones, a speaker, a USB 2.0 OTG port, volume buttons, a mute button with LED, a start/stop button, and four RGB LEDs. The PineVoice smart speaker is mainly designed to work with Home Assistant. PineVoice specifications: SoC – Bouffalo Lab BL606P CPU D0 core – T-Head C906 64-bit RISC-V (RV64IMAFCV) CPU @ 480 MHz M0 core – T-Head E907 32-bit RISC-V (RV32IMAFCP) CPU @ 320 MHz Memory – 544KB RAM (788KB SRAM listed on the Pine64 store), 16MB embedded PSRAM Storage – 128KB ROM, 4KB eFuse Wireless 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n 1T1R WiFi 4 Bluetooth 5.x Dual-mode (Classis + BLE) 802.15.4 radio (Zigbee) Storage – 128Mbit (16MB) SPI NOR flash Audio 2x […]

March 30, 2026March 30, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

PineTime Pro smartwatch to feature dual-core Cortex-M33 MCU, 2.13-inch AMOLED, GPS, and more

Pine64 has announced progress on the PineTime Pro smartwatch, powered by a dual-core Cortex-M33 microcontroller with Bluetooth 5.2 Classic and LE and 800KB SRAM. The watch also features a 2.13-inch AMOLED display, GPS support, a heart rate monitor, and a 6-axis motion sensor. It’s an upgrade to the PineTime project unveiled in September 2019, and one of the most popular Pine64 devices thanks to open-source software projects such as InfiniTime firmware. For reference, the PineTime ships with a Nordic nRF52 Arm Cortex-M4 Bluetooth MCU with 64 KB SRAM, a 1.3-inch IPS display, and basic HRM and accelerometer. The PineTime Pro is a massive upgrade that should support a wider range of firmware. PineTime Pro specifications: SoC – Unnamed wireless MCU CPU – Arm Cortex-M33 MCU @ up to 200 MHz Memory – 800 KB SRAM Wireless – Bluetooth 5.2 Classic (BR/EDR) & Low Energy (additional Cortex-M33) Memory – 8 MB […]

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 […]

April 23, 2025May 7, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Pine64 StarPro64 is a RISC-V SBC with ESWin EIC7700X AI SoC, 32 GB LPDDR5

Pine64 StarPro64 is a single board computer (SBC) powered by an ESWin EIC7700X quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC with a 19.95 TOPS AI accelerator and equipped with up to 32GB LPDDR5 RAM. It has a similar design to the Star64 SBC powered by a StarFive JH7110 RISC-V SoC, and features HDMI video output, MIPI DSI and CSI display/camera interfaces, two gigabit Ethernet ports, four USB ports, a 40-pin GPIO header, and a PCIe Gen3 x4 slot. The OS can boot from a microSD card or an eMMC flash module. StarPro64 specifications: SoC – ESWIN EIC7700X CPU 4x SiFive Performance P550 RV64GC RISC-V cores @ up to 1.4GHz or 1.8GHz with Cortex-A75-class performance 32KB(I) + 32KB(D) L1 Cache 256KB L2 Cache 4MB shared L3 Cache Cache supports ECC (supports SECDED) NPU – Up to 19.95 TOPS in INT8, 9.975 TOPS in INT16, and 9.975 FTOPS in FP16 Vision Engine HAE (2D Blit, […]

March 16, 2025March 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Updated PineTab-V RISC-V tablet ships with Debian 12-based Linux image

Pine64 has launched an updated version of the PineTab-V RISC-V tablet with the same StarFive JH7110 SoC, 8GB RAM, and 128GB eMMC flash, but a few small hardware changes, and a Debian-based Linux image maintained by StarFive themselves. The PineTab-V is not exactly a new RISC-V tablet since it was launched in 2023, but at the time it was reserved for developers since it shipped with nothing… Users had to install the OS (that did not support the display yet) themselves, and work on the software/OS to improve it. The new model still targets developers and enthusiasts/early adopters, but at least now there’s a Debian 12 image optimized for the PineTab-V. The hardware is mostly the same, except Pine64 added an accelerometer, a status LED, an ID for the PineTab-V in the EEPROM, and a fix for slow charging while the tablet is turned off. PineTab-V (2025) specifications: SoC – […]

February 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

Armbian v25.2 and DietPi v9.11 released with updated Ubuntu and Debian-based Linux images for single board computers

Vendor-provided Linux images for single board computers are not always working optimally, so this post is a regular reminder that users may want to check out Armbian and DietPi projects mostly supported by the community but also backed by some of the vendors who offload some (repackaging) software work to them. Armbian and DietPi are separate projects, but this month, Armbian v25.2 and DietPi v9.11 were almost released simultaneously. I don’t report on each release (should I?), but they release an update every few months. The last time we had a look at both projects was in September 2024 for the releases of DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8. Let’s see what the new releases have to bring. Armbian v25.2 Main changes: New Boards – Rock 2A and 2F, NanoPi R3S, Retroid Pocket RP5, RPMini, Rock 5T, GenBook, MKS-PI, SKIPR, Armsom CM5, NextThing C.H.I.P, Magicsee C400 Plus Rockchip 3588 Improvements – […]

October 3, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Quartz64 Zero – A customizable, cost-optimized Rockchip RK3566T SBC with Raspberry Pi PCIe connector

The Quartz64 Zero is a thinner, cheaper version of the Quartz64 Model B with a Rockchip RK3566T quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC clocked at 1.6 GHz, 1GB LPDDR4, and HDMI and USB ports. The Quartz64 Zero has almost the same design as the Quartz64 with footprints for optional components (more on that later). Two noticeable differences are the presence of the 20-pin PCIe connector compatible with the one found on the Raspberry Pi 5 instead of a mini PCIe socket, and WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 support instead of just WiFi 5/Bluetooth 5.0. Quartz64 Zero specifications (changes highlighted in bold and strikethrough when items have been removed): SoC – Rockchip RK3566T CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A55 processor up to 1.6 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1 NPU – 0.8 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration (Unclear whether it’s present, not listed in the specs) System Memory […]

June 26, 2024June 26, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Pine64 Oz64 RISC-V+Arm SBC to support NuttX RTOS and Debian Linux

Pine64 Oz64 is an upcoming credit card-sized SBC based on the SOPHGO SG2000 RISC-V+Arm(+8051) processor that currently runs NuTTX RTOS, and a Debian Linux image is also in the works. With a name likely inspired by the earlier Pine64 Ox RISC-V SBC, the Oz64 is a more powerful embedded board with 512 MB of DRAM integrated into the SG2000, a microSD card, an eMMC flash module connector, Ethernet port, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, a USB 2.0 Type-A host port, and a 26-pin GPIO header. Pine64 Oz64 specifications: SoC – SOPHGO SG2000 Main core – 1 GHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 or Arm Cortex-A53 core (selectable) Minor core – 700 MHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 core Low-power core – 25 to 300 MHz 8051 MCU core with 8KB SRAM NPU – 0.5 TOPS INT8, supports BF16 Integrated 512MB DDR3 (SiP) Storage MicroSD card slot eMMC flash module connector Display – Optional 2-lane […]