Linux 5.10 LTS release – Main changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V architectures

Linux 5.10 release

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.10: Ok, here it is – 5.10 is tagged and pushed out. I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it was, and that’s true here too. There’s a fair amount of fixes in here, including a few last-minute reverts for things that didn’t get fixed, but nothing makes me go “we need another week”. Things look fairly normal. It’s mostly drivers – as it should be – with a smattering of fixes all over: networking, architectures, filesystems, tooling.. The shortlog is appended, and scanning it gives a good idea of what kind of things are there. Nothing that looks scary: most of the patches are very small, and the biggest one is fixing pin mapping definitions for a pincontrol driver. This also obviously means that the merge window for 5.11 will start tomorrow. I already have a couple […]

Banana Pi BPI-M5 SBC with 4GB RAM, 16GB flash launched for $53

Banana Pi BPI-M5

Last September, we wrote Banana Pi team was working on an Amlogic S905X3 SBC called BPI-M5 and very similar to Hardkernel ODROID-C4 board launched in April 2020. At the time, we noted the Banana Pi BPI-M5 did add a 16GB eMMC flash on-board by default, while ODROID-C4 requires booting from a MicroSD card or a separate eMMC flash module. We also pointed out software and community support is usually much better for the ODROID board, and it was brought to our attention that BPI-M5 board uses 5V voltage only via USB-C, while the Hardkernel board support a wider 5.5V to 17V via a power barrel jack, and this could lead to potential power issue for customer connecting drives to USB 3.0 ports. The good news is that you can now buy Banana Pi BPI-M5 SBC on Aliexpress for $53 plus shipping. Banana Pi BPI-M5 specifications haven’t changed, and we can […]

Raspberry Pi CM3 “Industrial IoT” baseboard features PoE, 4G LTE modem, and isolated I/Os

Raspberry Pi CM3+ PoE 4G LTE

The Raspberry Pi Computer Module 4 (CM4) may have been introduced in October, but that does not mean people have stopped all development on Raspberry Pi CM3/CM3+ hardware, and Waveshare has just launched a carrier board for the module with PoE support and a 4G LTE modem namely Simcom SIM7600G-H module with 3G and 2G fallback. The board also offers Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, HDMI and MIPI CSI/DSI video interfaces, multiple USB ports, as well as isolated CAN bus, RS485, RS232, and other I/Os for industrial applications. Compute Module PoE 4G board specifications: Storage – MicroSD card slot for Raspberry Pi CM3 Lite / CM3+ Lite modules Video Output – HDMI 2.0 port, MIPI DSI connector compatible with the official Raspberry Pi display Audio – 3.5mm stereo audio jack, 4-pin speaker connector for 8Ω/5W speaker Camera I/F – 2x independent MIPI CSI ports Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 port with PoE […]

Hackboard 2 Intel Celeron N4020 SBC comes with optional 4G/5G cellular modem (crowdfunding)

Hackboard 2

We’ve seen several x86 SBCs made for the makers’ community including AAEON Up Board family, AMD powered UDOO BOLT boards, and Seeed Studio Odyssey-X864105 SBC and mini PC. Hackboard 2 is another one of those single board computers. Powered by a dual-core Intel Celeron N4020 Gemini Lake Refresh processor coupled with 4GB DDR4 RAM and 64GB eMMC flash, the board offers the usual HDMI, Ethernet, USB ports, plus a 40-pin Raspberry Pi header, and an optional 4G or 5G modem. Hackboard 2 specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N4020 dual-core Gemini Lake Refresh processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.8 GHz (Turbo) with 4MB cache, Intel UHD graphics 600; 6W TDP System Memory – 4GB DDR4 RAM Storage –  64 GB onboard eMMC flash, 2x NVMe M.2 slots for up to 4 TB additional storage Video output HDMI 2.0a output up to 4K 30-pin eDP connector for 11.6″ to 15.6″ displays 6-pin […]

Raspberry Pi 4 gets a 13MP 4K MIPI camera devkit for $99

Raspberry Pi 4 4K mipi camera

The Raspberry Pi boards already have their official 4K MIPI camera with Raspberry Pi HQ camera based on a 12.3MP Sony sensor module that sells for $75 and up with a lens. But e-Con Systems still decided to launch their own 13MP 4K MIPI camera development kit for Raspberry Pi 4 which they currently sell for $99 plus shipping. At first, I dismissed the news, but let’s have a look if there may be some advantages in using that camera devkit. e-CAM130_CURB camera devkit specifications: e-CAM137A_CUMI1335_MOD 13.0 MP camera module with S-mount lens holder, ON Semiconductor AR1335 13MP 1/3.2″ CMOS image sensor Image Signal Processor (ISP) for auto functions such as auto white balance, auto exposure control as well as optional MJPEG compression. Resolutions and frame rates VGA (640 x 480) – 110 fps HD (1280 x 720) – 72 fps Full HD (1920 x 1080) – 60 fps 4K […]

AI Gateway combines Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with Google Coral Edge TPU

Modberry AI-Gateway-9500-CM4

Techbase quickly unveiled an update to their Modberry industrial controllers with Modberry 500 CM4 DIN Rail computer as soon as Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 was launched. The company has now introduced another Raspberry Pi CM4 based product with ModBerry AI GATEWAY 9500-CM4 gateway combining the Broadcom BCM2711C0 system-on-module to Google Edge TPU to cater to applications leveraging AI acceleration. ModBerry AI GATEWAY 9500-CM4 preliminary specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 AI accelerator – Google Coral Edge TPU module with up to 4 TOPS connected over the RPi CM4’s PCIe interface Peripherals (customizable as needed) USB, HDMI, and Ethernet. Serial RS-232/485 ports Digital and analog I/Os with or without opto-isolation Relays, 1-Wire, CAN bus, M-Bus Master and Slave PCIe modules for wireless support Cellular – 4G/LTE and 5G modem, interchangeable with Coral TPU, plus on-board eSIM LPWAN – NB-IoT, LoRa, Sigfox, Wireless M-Bus ZigBee Additional Wi-Fi/Bluetooth interface or […]

PiFinger is a Fingerprint HAT for Raspberry Pi (Crowdfunding)

PiFinger Fingerprint HAT Raspberry Pi

“There’s a HAT for that” they say, or something close to it… We’ve covered many HAT expansion for Raspberry Pi boards over the years, but so far, I don’t think we’ve seen any HAT with a fingerprint sensor, probable because tiny USB fingerprint readers are a thing. But if you’d like a HAT with a built-in fingerprint sensor, the guys at SB Components have you covered with PiFinger HAT equipped with a 2D capacitive fingerprint sensor and a small display. The expansion board is also powered by a Nuvoton Cortex-M23 MCU with Arm TrustZone support and on-chip crypto-accelerator. PiFinger specifications: SoC – Unnamed Nuvoton Arm Cortex-M23 microcontroller with Arm Trustzone (likely NuMicro M2351 since it’s made for fingerprint applications) Display – 0.91-inch OLED display Sensor – 2D capacitive fingerprint sensor with 176×176 resolution connected to MCU over SPI Host interface USB to computer UART up to 115,200 baud + GPIO […]

Mesa 20.3 released with Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV driver, Panfrost Bifrost support

Mesa 20.3 Raspberry Pi 4 Mali Bifrost

We’ve previously reported that the Vulkan 1.0 conformant V3DV driver for Raspberry Pi 4 and other Broadcom BCM2711 based platforms was part of Mesa 20.3 open-source graphics framework. But at the time, it was still under development. The good news is that Mesa 20.3 has now been released, and there’s much more than Raspberry Pi 4 support, as Collabora informed us the release also included Arm Mali Bifrost GPU support via the open-source Panfrost driver. The latter was made possible thanks to the work by Alyssa Rosenzweig and Boris Brezillon, with Alyssa going into details in a recent blog post on Collabora. More work is still needed with better performance and OpenGL 3.1 being the focus in the months ahead. But there were also many other changes in Mesa 20.3 as reported by Phoronix: OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.2 APIs support Initial support for Intel Gen12 Alder Lake graphics and […]

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