We’ve seen Raspberry Pi cluster boards before, and most of them either use Raspberry Pi Zero boards or Raspberry Pi Compute Modules. Some examples include Turing Pi Clusterboard for up to 7 RPi CM3 modules, Cluster HAT board taking up to 4 Pi Zero board, and Mininodes Raspberry Pi 3 COM Carrier Board. But some other solutions like Bitscope rely instead on full-sized Raspberry Pi 2/3/4 Model B boards. Another such option is IPTerra CloverPI board allowing up to 4 Raspberry Pi or compatible boards with 40-pin header to be clustered into a single unit powered by one power supply and connected via a 5-port Gigabit Ethernet switch. CloverPI is shown above without RPi boards. The mainboard includes four 40-pin headers, four 6-pin Ethernet headers for SBC’s, as well as one Gigabit Ethernet port, and one power jack. There’s also a board/card fitted in the middle of the latest version […]
Price of Raspberry Pi 4B with 2GB RAM Drops to $35 Permanently
Raspberry Pi 1 Model B was introduced to the world almost exactly 8 years ago on February 29, 2012, and to celebrate the Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to permanently lower the price of Raspberry Pi 4B with 2GB RAM to $35. This was made possible due to falling RAM prices. The 1GB RAM version will still be sold for $35 to industrial and commercial customers due to long term support commitments. Sadly, the 4GB RAM version remains at $55, so no discount for this version for now. Due to inflation, Raspberry Pi 4B 2G is even cheaper than the first Raspberry Pi 1 since $35 in 2012 is roughly equivalent to $40 now. But more importantly, 8 years make a huge difference in terms of performance and features. The Raspberry Pi Foundation explains the new board is now 40 times faster, has eight times more memory (the very first batch […]
Raspberry Pi 4 Rev 1.2 Fixes USB-C Power Issues, Improves SD Card Resilience
The first Raspberry Pi 4 boards suffered from a poor USB-C power supply compatibility due to issues for the power circuitry. That means if you bought the official USB-C power supply you had no issues, but if you wanted to re-use a spare USB-C power supply or incompatible cable, you may be out of luck. The Register is now reporting that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has discreetly released a new revision (v1.2) of the board that fixes several issues including USB-C PD compatibility, and as Eben Upton explains the new revision also: moved the WLCSP SD card voltage switch to the top side … silk screen tweaks to reduce solder bridging in manufacture”. The new boards have been around for a couple of months as some users report the USB-C power issues have been fixed on new boards. Spotting Differences in the new Raspberry Pi 4 Rev 1.2 Board? The […]
ADLINK Industrial-Pi (I-Pi) SMARC Development Kit Features Rockchip PX30 SoC
ADLINK Technology has just announced the Industrial-Pi (I-Pi) SMARC Development Kit to help engineers quickly design prototypes for industrial applications using peripherals and sensors. The I-Pi SMARC development kit is comprised of a baseboard, LEC-PX30 SMARC-compliant Rockchip PX30 system-on-module, an acrylic case, a 12V/2A power supply, USB cable, and a 32GB MicroSD card. The company promotes the kit as “an industrial-ready substitute for Arduino and Raspberry Pi (RPi) platforms that are commonly used for prototyping but cannot typically be ‘dropped’ into an industrial solution as-is“. LEC-PX30 SMARC System-on-Module Specifications: SoC – Rockchip PX30 Quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 CPU with TrustZone technology, ARMv8 Cryptography Extensions, Mali-G31 GPU System Memory – 1GB or 2GB DDR3L at 1066/1333 MHz Storage – 8, 16, 32 or 64 GB eMMC flash Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet from SoC, 10/100M Ethernet via LAN9514 USB 2.0 Ethernet controller Video Decoding – H.264 up to 1080p60, H.265/HEVC up to 1080p60, […]
NetBSD 9.0 Released with Aarch64 Support, Arm ServerReady Compatibility
Yesterday, we wrote about Raspberry Pi 4 getting UEFI+ACPI firmware for Arm SSBR compliance allowing the board to run operating systems designed for “Arm ServerReady” servers out of the box. NetBSD 9.0 was just released on February 14, 2020, with support for Aarch64 (64-bit Arm) which had been in the works for a few years, and includes support for “Arm ServerReady” compliant machines (SBBR+SBSA). NetBSD 9.0 main changes related to hardware support: Support for AArch64 (64-bit Armv8-A) machines Compatibility with “Arm ServerReady” compliant machines (SBBR+SBSA) using ACPI. Tested on Amazon Graviton and Graviton2 (including bare metal instances), AMD Opteron A1100, Ampere eMAG 8180, Cavium ThunderX, Marvell ARMADA 8040, QEMU w/ Tianocore EDK2 Symmetric and asymmetrical multiprocessing support (big.LITTLE) Support for running 32-bit binaries via COMPAT_NETBSD32 on CPUs that support it Single GENERIC64 kernel supports ACPI and device tree based booting Supported SoCs Allwinner A64, H5, H6 Amlogic S905, S805X, S905D, […]
Raspberry Pi 4 UEFI+ACPI Firmware Aims to Make the Board SBBR-Compliant
As Arm wanted to enter the server market, they realized they had to provide systems that could boot standard operating system images without modifications or hacks – just as they do on x86 server -, so in 2014 the company introduced the Server Base System Architecture Specification (SBSA) so that all a single OS image can run on all ARMv8-A servers. Later on, Arm published the Server Base Boot Requirement (SBBR) specifications describing standard firmware interfaces for the servers, covering UEFI, ACPI and SMBIOS industry standards, and in 2018 introduced the Arm ServerReady compliance program for Arm servers. While those are specific to Arm server, some people are pushing to implement SBBR compliant for Arm PCs, and there’s one project aiming to build an SBBR-compliant (UEFI+ACPI) AArch64 firmware for the Raspberry Pi 4. The UEFI firmware is a build of a port of 64-bit Tiano Core UEFI firmware, and version […]
$99 RAK7246 LoRaWAN Developer Gateway Features Raspberry Pi Zero W SBC
Outdoor LoRaWAN gateways meant to be deployed in the field usually cost several hundred dollars, so companies also offer cheaper gateways for indoor use that can be used by developers. RAKWireless offers this type of gateway with products such as Pilot Gateway Pro RAK7243 based on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ board, or RAK7244 LoRaWAN Developer Gateway featuring the more recent Raspberry Pi 4 board and sold for $212 and up with price depending on options such as cellular connectivity. The company has now worked on providing much cheaper indoor/developer gateways with their RAK7246 and RAK7246G LoRAWAN developer gateways with the latter adding GPS. RAK7246 is available. RAK7246 key features and specifications: SBC – Raspberry Pi Zero W board with Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 processor @ 1GHz, 512MB RAM Storage – 16GB MicroSD card Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 via Cypress CYW43438 module found on RPi Zero W board […]
10.3″ E-paper HDMI Display Connects to Raspberry Pi & Jetson Nano SBC’s, Computers
E-paper displays only consume power when updated, work great in bright light, and are easier on eyes when reading text. The downside is the low refresh rate which makes those impractical for videos and games, and most E-paper displays are black and white or with just a few colors. Another hindrance is that most are connected via flat cables for specific display interfaces which may not be the easiest to handle, and you may not be able to easily move the display across platforms if you wish too. Waveshare EINK-DISP-103 10.3″ E-paper display solves this little problem since it should work with any SBC or computer with an HDMI output. EINK-DISP-103 Key features & specifications: 10.1″ e-Paper display, 1872×1404 resolution (225DPI), grayscale (16 shades) Video Input – Mini HDMI port Misc – UPD/RUN switch, contrast adjustment, power indicator, screen refresh button, mode switch button Power Supply – 5V/3A recommended and […]