VoltaStream ZERO NXP i.MX6ULL Linux Audio Board Follows Raspberry Pi Zero Form Factor

Back in 2013. Philip came with the idea of designing a development board for audio application, and after various experiments with off-the shelf Raspberry Pi boards and audio DACs,  he founded PolyVection company, and started designing the board. Forwarding to today, he has completed his work and introduced VoltaStream ZERO to the world, a board based on NXP i.MX6ULL processor with 512MB or 1GB RAM, and a choice of Texas Instruments DAC. It also follows Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, like the upcoming Banana Pi BPI-M2 Zero board. VoltaStream ZERO specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX6ULL ARM Cortex-A7 processor @ 996 MHz System Memory – 512 MB or 1 GB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Audio 1x I2S for integrated DAC, 1x I2S for GPIO access, 1x S/PDIF header / TOSLINK jack Analog DAC – Texas Instruments PCM5121 (106 dB) or PCM5142 (112 dB) USB – 1x micro USB […]

Movidius Neural Compute Stick Shown to Boost Deep Learning Performance by about 3 Times on Raspberry Pi 3 Board

Intel recently launched Movidius Neural Compute Stick (MvNCS)for low power USB based deep learning applications such as object recognition, and after some initial confusions, we could confirm the Neural stick could also be used on ARM based platforms such as the Raspberry Pi 3. Kochi Nakamura, who wrote the code for GPU accelerated object recognition on the Raspberry Pi 3 board, got hold of one sample in order to compare the performance between GPU and MvNCS acceleration. His first attempt was quite confusing as with GoogLeNet, Raspberry Pi 3 + MvNCS achieved an average inference time of about 560ms, against 320 ms while using VideoCore IV GPU in RPi3 board. But then it was discovered that the “stream_infer.py” demo would only use one core out of the 12 VLIW 128-bit vector SHAVE processors in Intel’s Movidius Myriad 2 VPU, and after enabling all those 12 cores instead of just one, […]

Work on VideoCore V GPU Drivers Could Pave the Way for Raspberry Pi 4 Board

I’ve come across an article on Phoronix this morning, about VideoCore IV GPU used in Broadcom BCM283x “Raspberry Pi” processors, but part of the post also mentioned work related to VC5 drivers for the next generation VideoCore V GPU, written by Eric Anholt, working for Broadcom, and in charge of the open source code related to VideoCore IV GPU for Raspberry Pi. This led me Eric’s blog “This Week in VC4/VC5” and articles such as “2017-07-10: vc5, raspbian performance“, where he explains he committed Mesa drivers for VC5. I’ve just pushed a “vc5” branch to my Mesa tree (https://github.com/anholt/mesa/commits/vc5). This is the culmination of a couple of months of work on building a new driver for Broadcom’s V3D 3.3. V3D 3.3 is a GLES3.1 part, though I’m nowhere near conformance yet. This driver is for BCM7268, a set-top-box SOC that boots an upstream Linux kernel. I’m really excited to be […]

RakWireless RAK831 LoRa Gateway Module is Based on Semtech SX1301 Base Band Processor

We’ve previously covered several products from RakWireless, with a Realtek WiFi IoT board, a WiFi camera board, and a Amazon Alexa compatible audio board. The company has now launched RAK831, a LoRaWAN gateway board powered by Semtech SX1301 base band processor, and working with their RAK811 LoRa node or other compatible nodes. RAK831 LoRA gateway board specifications: Connectivity Semtech SX1301 base band processor with LoRa concentrator IP Frequency bands – 433, 470, 868, or 915 MHz Sensitivity – Down to -142.5 dBm Maximum link budget – 162 dB Output power level – up to 23 dBm Emulates 49 x LoRa demodulators 12x parallel demodulation paths 1x (G)FSK demodulator 2x SX1257 Tx/Rx front-ends high frequencies 2x SX1255 Tx/Rx front-ends low frequencies Range  – Up to 15 km (Line of Sight); several kilometers in urban environment GNSS – Optional GPS support Host Interface – SPI Expansion – 24-pin 2.54mm pitch “DB24” header […]

Gumstix Pi Conduit Gateway Board Leverages Raspberry Pi Compute Module, Off-the-Shelf LoRa and Cellular Modules

Gumstix has designed Pi Conduit Gateway baseboard for both the Raspberry Pi Compute Module and RisingRF RHF0M301 LoRa gateway module, in order to create a Linux based LoRa gateway that can optionally support LTE or other cellular connectivity via NimbeLink Skywire cellular modem. Conduit Pi LoRa Gateway board specifications: 200-pin SO-DIMM connector for Raspberry Pi Compute Module / Raspberry Pi 3 Compute Module (CM3 / CM3L) Headers for RisingRF RHF0M301 LoRa Module NimbeLink Skywire 2G/3G/4G cellular modem connector Low profile 10/100M Ethernet jack (implemented via USB 2.0) USB – 1x micro USB port for debugging via an FTDI USB to TTL chip Misc – User (GPIO5) and reset buttons Power Supply – 5V via power barrel The board was designed using Geppetto, which means you should be able to customize it to your needs by modifying it the original design in a web browser, and order your brand new custom […]

Intel’s Movidius Neural Compute Stick Supports Raspberry Pi 3 Board

Last month, Intel introduced Movidius Neural Computer Stick to accelerate applications such as object recognition, and do so offline, i.e. without the cloud, and at low power. While there was not that much information available at the time, the minimal requirements for the host machine were that it had to be a x86_64 computer running Ubuntu 16.04, and come with at least 1GB RAM, and 4GB storage. So I understood the stick would only work attached with 64-bit Intel or AMD processors, and ARM development boards would not be an option. But today, I’ve found that Movidius had uploaded a new video showing a Python based object recognition demo with the Neural Compute Stick connected to the the Raspberry Pi 3 board. You just need to add a USB camera, copy ncapi directory from the SDK installed on your Ubuntu 16.04 development machine to the Debian Jessie installed on RPi 3 […]

Buy Raspberry Pi 2 Board for Just $19.50 (Promo)

With the launch of Raspberry Pi 3 last year, there’s been much less interest for the Raspberry Pi 2 board, especially there has not been any official price cut. But Seeed Studio has an interesting promotion right now where the company sells Raspberry Pi 2 board for just $19.50, or $20 off the normal price on their website. That price does not include shipping, but this can apparently be combined with TENOFFSHIP coupon to bring the total price with shipping to Germany to $21.66. If the same laws are still in place, it’s below the 22 Euros limit in Europe meaning you won’t need to pay for VAT or custom duties on the board. You need to use the coupon before July 31, midnight (GMT+8), so there are only a few hours left. The main downside is that only 10 are available on backorder with shipping scheduled for August 11. […]

Manga Screen 2 is Smartphone Touchscreen Display with USB and HDMI Ports for Makers (Crowdfunding)

Most touchscreen displays aimed to be connected to a development board work through a display interface such as MIPI DSI or LCD RGB (and USB or I2C for touch support), and come with somewhat low resolution such as 800×480 which can be suitable for HMI applications. They also often don’t work with all boards due to the different interfaces used, and there’s no way to easily connect such small display to your computer. Taking those limitations into account, and since most boards and computers come with HDMI and USB ports, Elias Bakken and his team have added HDMI and USB ports to two smartphone displays, and Manga Screen 2 was born. The two displays – made by Sharp – have the following hardware specifications: Big (5.9”) Small (4.8”) Resolution 1920×1080 1280×720 FPS (max) 60 57 Color mode 24-bit PPI 376.2 307.9 Brightness 400 cd/m2 500 cd/m2 Contrast ratio 1000:1 800:1 […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case