CarPiHat Connects Raspberry Pi to your Car with Opto GPIO, CAN Bus, 12V Outputs

CarPiHat mounted Raspberry Pi

OpenAuto Pro software is a Raspberry Pi-based head-unit solution that brings various features to your car including Bluetooth hands-free Profile, music streaming, integrated media player, navigation via Android Auto, screen mirroring, rear camera support, and more. But TDJ realized he needs more than just a Raspberry Pi, touchscreen display, and OpenAuto Pro software to meet his requirements, so he designed CarPiHat add-on board for Raspberry Pi providing power supply, opto-isolated GPIOs, CAN Bus, and 12V outputs. CarPiHat key features and specifications: I/Os Dedicated reverse, illumination, and aux inputs, all opto-isolated. 2x opto-isolated general-purpose inputs (for a total of 5 inputs) 2x high-current, high side switched 12V outputs (@ 1A) for switching relays, lights, etc… 1x independent CAN bus port Broken out I2C bus. Broken out one-wire for temperature sensor, etc… Misc – Real-time clock to maintain system time across reboots, EEPROM for Raspberry Pi HAT compatibility Power Supply 12V – […]

CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Education Laptop Review

CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi Laptop Review

I started my review of CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Learning Kit a while ago and at the time I showed content from the kit and its first boot. I’ve now spent more time with this very special Raspberry Pi 4 laptop and will focus this review on the education part, namely CrowPi2 software, but will also look at thermal cooling under stress with and without a fan, and try to install another Raspberry Pi compatible board inside the laptop shell. CrowPi2 Education Software It’s quite important to read the user manual before getting started as there are a few non-intuitive steps you may have to take. First I assume the wireless keyboard would just connect after pressing the power button, but it did not. The user manual explains the RF dongle is inside the mouse, and once you connect it you’ll be able to use the keyboard that has some […]

PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC is an Open Source Alternative to Raspberry Pi Board

PicoRio Linux RISC-V SBC

There’s a lot of interest/hype around RISC-V, and low-cost boards such as Longan Nano or Maixduino are already available, but those are based on microcontroller-class chips, even though it’s possible to run Linux on Kendryte K210 RISC-V board, it comes without MMU, so it’s not for everyone. Linux capable RISC-V boards do exist but cost several hundred dollars or more with the likes of HiFive Unleashed and PolarFire SoC Icicle development kit. If only there was a RISC-V board similar to the Raspberry Pi board and with a similar price point… The good news is that the RISC-V International Open Source (RIOS) Laboratory is collaborating with Imagination technologies to bring PicoRio RISC-V SBC to market at a price point similar to Raspberry Pi. The PicoRio board was presented at the RISC-V Global Forum on September 3rd. I could not find the full presentation slides yet, but there are some screenshots […]

Monarch Go Pi HAT Adds LTE Cat M1 Connectivity to Raspberry Pi Board

Monarch Go Pi HAT

After introducing Renesas ZMOD4410 Indoor Air Quality HAT for Raspberry Pi earlier this month, Avnet is back with another Raspberry Pi HAT namely Monarch Go Pi HAT that adds LTE Cat M1 connectivity to Raspberry Pi boards and other compatible SBC’s with a 40-pin GPIO header. The expansion board gets its name from Sequans Monarch Go LTE-M modem itself based on the Sequans Monarch GM01Q LTE IoT module that supposed to support both LTE Cat M1 (eMTC) and NB-IoT. The solution is certified by various operators in North America, Europe, and Asia, and ships with a Verizon ThingsSpace IoT SIM. Monarch Go Pi HAT specifications: LTE IoT Connectivity Sequans Monarch Go LTE modem with  Cat-M1 (& NB-IoT?) connectivity Pre-installed Verizon ThingsSpace IoT SIM USB – Micro USB port for debugging and programming Expansion MikroElektronika shuttle click site with 3.3V I/O:  I2C, SPI, GPIO, UART Voltage I/O translator – 1.8V to […]

NODE Mini Server V3 Transforms Raspberry Pi 4 Into a Server or Mini PC

NODE Mini Server V3 Enclosure

Hardware hacker NODE has had a busy month starting with the announcement of Zero Terminal V3 modular Raspberry Pi Zero W powered handheld PC, and now he’s just showcased NODE Mini Server V3 that transforms a Raspberry Pi 4 into a compact server or mini PC. The project brings all ports to the same side in a similar fashion as Argon One enclosure through the use of custom adapter boards, but also enable easy integration of USB SSD drives, easier access to the MicroSD card socket, and support for fanless or dual-fan cooling. Besides the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, NODE Mini Server V3 includes the following components: HDMI Micro HDMI Male Component. “Wedge Type” as this HDMI connector on Aliexpress. HDMI Type A Connector (47151-1001) USB Pololu USB 2.0 Type-C Connector Breakout USB-C Male Plug Breakout Board Male USB 3.0 Plug (692112030100) Female USB 3.0 Connector (48405-0003) Storage USB3 to […]

ZynqBerryZero Brings Xilinx Zynq-7010 FPGA SoC to Raspberry Pi Zero Form Factor

ZynqBerryZero

Trenz Electronic introduced ZynqBerry in 2017 as a Xilinx Zynq FPGA board following Raspberry Pi 2/3 Model B form factor, and the company has now just launched another Raspberry Pi inspired FPGA board with ZynqBerryZero following Raspberry Pi Zero form factor. ZynqberryZero is equipped with a Xilinx Zynq-7000 series FPGA & Arm Cortex-A9 SoC combined with 512 MB RAM and 16MB flash, and offers all Raspberry Pi Zero ports namely a 40-pin GPIO header, two micro USB ports, a mini HDMI connector, a CSI connector, and micro SD card slot. ZynqBerryZero specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq XC7Z010-1CLG225C with dual-core Cortex-A9 clocked up to 667 MHz, FPGA fabric with 28K logic cells,  2.1Mbit block RAM, and 80x DSP slices System Memory – 512 MB DDR3L SDRAM Storage – 16 MB Flash memory, MicroSD card slot Video Output – Mini HDMI connector, type C Camera – CSI-2 connector USB – 1x Micro […]

Puffin Cloud Learning Renders Web Pages Up to 14 Times Faster on Raspberry Pi

Puffin Cloud Learning Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a great little Arm Linux board designed for STEM education. But with many children now have to learn remotely, the board would be useful as a computer replacement, but users may find web browsing on the Raspberry Pi to be rather sluggish. Puffin Cloud Learning is designed just for that use case and promises to make the Raspberry Pi SBC much faster for web browsing, and they tested several websites, and for instance, CNN website loads almost 14 times faster with the Puffin Internet Terminal compared to using Chromium only. How is that possible? Simple: the Raspberry Pi is simply used as a thin client with complex web rendering performed on the company’s encrypted cloud servers where a JavaScript engine is used to pre-process and compress web pages sent to the Raspberry Pi. The company also claims Puffin Internet Terminal is 1200% faster than Chromium using […]

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC Review with Ubuntu 20.04 – Raspberry Pi & Arduino Headers Tested

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Ubuntu 20.04 Review Arduino & Raspberry Pi Headers

We’ve already reviewed ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC with Windows 10. When combined with Re_Computer enclosure it’s a typical Intel Gemini Lake mini PC but with a twist: Arduino and Raspberry Pi header. The latter works fine in Windows, but at the time, the Raspberry Pi header does not. So Linux is our only option. I’ve now had time to install and test Ubuntu 20.04 on ODYSSEY-X86J4105 single board computer. I did not install Ubuntu on the internal eMMC flash where Windows 10 resides, but instead on a 128GB M.2 SATA SSD. I’ll first run some usual command to check system information, then run benchmarks, and check whether all features are working before focusing the review on the Arduino and Raspberry Pi headers. ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Ubuntu 20.04 System Info We can check some of the information from the system in the terminal:

An Intel Celeron J4105 processor with 8GB RAM and the rootfs […]

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