Reviews - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

August 1, 2026August 4, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Creality Falcon T1 review – A 5-in-1 modular laser engraver tested with 20W fiber and 40W diode laser modules

Creality Falcon T1 5-in-1 Laser Engraver review

Creality sent us a sample of the Falcon T1 5-in-1 modular laser engraver for review. The company describes it as the world’s first 5-in-1 laser engraving and cutting machine that supports five types of laser modules in a single unit: 20W diode laser 20W, 40W diode laser, 20w fiber laser, 60W MOPA laser, and 5W UV Laser 5W. The laser heads can be swapped tool-free in just 15 seconds. It works with an HD camera and AI system and can engrave and cut a wide range of materials including wood, leather, acrylic, metal, glass, crystal, and plastic. Diode laser modules are ideal for cutting and engraving wood, leather, and acrylic, the fiber laser module is better suited for marking and engraving metal, the MOPA laser module supports color marking on metals such as stainless steel and titanium, and the UV laser module uses cold processing for high-precision work on glass, […]

July 26, 2026July 29, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Creality Pika review – An affordable, portable 3D scanner with infrared and blue laser modes

Creality has sent us a sample of the Pika portable 3D scanner for review. In some ways, it shares some of the features of the high-end Sermoon S1 3D scanner, like blue laser and NIR structured light scanning modes, but it’s more affordable and compact, works out of the box through USB or WiFi, and is offered in a design and form factor similar to an action or point-and-shoot camera. In this review, I’ll start by listing the specifications, then go through an unboxing, and test the Pika with an (underpowered) Android phone, before spending more time testing the portable 3D scanner on a powerful mini PC connected to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU dock. Pika 3D scanner specifications and host requirements Pika (CRS15CPK) specifications: SoC – Unnamed octa-core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz Display – 3-inch touchscreen display Scanning Modes 7 Parallel Blue Laser Lines Working […]

July 22, 2026July 22, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 – 10″ Portrait review, 3D printed VESA mount

Raspberry Pi has just announced the “Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 – 10″ Portrait”, and we’ve received an early review sample for testing. The new 10.1-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 is a multi-touch portrait panel for Raspberry Pi designed for interactive projects such as tablets, entertainment systems, and information dashboards. The new 10.1-inch model follows the original 7-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 launched in 2024 and the 5-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Displays 2 introduced in 2025. I reviewed the 7-inch model with the Raspberry Pi AI camera and a Pi 4, and I just gave away the 5-inch variant. In this short review, I’ll show how to mount a Raspberry Pi 5 to the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 – 10″ Portrait, install it on a VESA mount, and test features such as 10-pin capacitive touch and display orientation. But let’s start with the specifications first. Raspberry Pi […]

July 19, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Beelink EQi 304 review – Part 3: Ubuntu 26.04 on a Wildcat Lake mini PC

Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake mini PC Ubuntu 26.04 review

After checking out the hardware with an unboxing and a teardown of the Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake mini PC, we reviewed the Intel Core 3 304 computer with Windows 11 in detail. We’ve now had time to test the Beelink EQi mini PC running Ubuntu 26.04 with Linux 7.0/7.1 kernels. We’ll report our experience with feature testing, benchmark results, 2.5GbE, 10GbE, and WiFi 6 networking evaluation, storage and USB/Thunderbolt tests, and more, including power consumption measurements. Ubuntu 26.04 installation and system information I’d usually resize the Windows partition to install Ubuntu alongside it in dual boot configuration. However, since the Beelink EQi mini PC also comes with two PCIe Gen4 x1/x2 sockets, I installed Ubuntu 26.04 on a 256GB NVMe (PCIe Gen3 x4) SSD fitted into the PCIe x2 socket and left the Windows 11 partition on the UFS storage alone. Despite the Intel Core 3 304 chip being a […]

July 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

WisMesh Station Review – Telemetry, MQTT, and Grafana tested on a Raspberry Pi 4-based Meshtastic gateway

RAKwireless has sent us a sample of the WisMesh Station, a Meshtastic gateway and base station based on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, a WisMesh Pi HAT RAK6421 expansion board, a LoRa module, a GNSS module, all housed in a compact metal enclosure. It comes with meshtasticd preinstalled, making it ready to use right out of the box. Just unbox it, plug it in, and start using Meshtastic immediately. We’ll also use software packages for communication, data storage, and visualization, such as MQTT, Node-RED, InfluxDB, and Grafana, mostly following RAKwireless’s user guide WisMesh Station is available in 2 models according to transmit power: the standard RAK8622 model that uses the RAK13300 LoRa module (Semtech SX1262 with 22 dBm transmit power), suitable for urban networks where nodes are close to each other, and the high-power RAK8623 (HP) model that uses the RAK13302 module (SX1262 + SKY66122 amplifier circuit with 30 […]

July 12, 2026July 19, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Beelink EQi review – Part 2: An Intel Core 3 304 “Wildcat Lake” mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro

Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake Core 3 304 Windows 11 mini PC review

We’ve already checked out the specifications and hardware of the Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake mini PC in the first part of the review, with an unboxing and a teardown, before booting the mini PC into the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro for a first quick look. We’ve now had time to test the Intel Core 3 304 mini PC in more detail on Windows 11 Pro, so we’ll report our experience. The review includes feature testing, benchmark results, 4K and 8K YouTube video playback, 10GbE, 2.5GbE, and WiFi network performance evaluation, cooling performance, and measurement of fan noise and power consumption. Software Overview and Feature Testing After fully updating Windows 11 Pro and drivers to the latest version (excluding previews), I went to System > About window again. We still have a 1.50 GHz (base frequency) Intel Core 3 304 processor with 16GB 6400MT/s memory, and 834GB of storage from the […]

July 6, 2026July 19, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake Core 3 304 mini PC review – Part 1: Specifications, unboxing, teardown, and first boot

Beelink EQi Wildcat Lake Core 3 304 review

We’ve received our first Wildcat Lake hardware for review, as Beelink has sent us an EQi mini PC powered by the Intel Core 3 304 entry-level 5-core processor with a 15 TOPS AI accelerator. The mini PC ships with either 16GB of LPDDR5 (soldered-on) or 24GB/32GB of DDR5 (SO-DIMM) memory and 512GB UFS 3.1 storage. It also features two M.2 Key-M PCIe Gen4 sockets, 10GbE and 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, three display outputs via HDMI and USB4 ports, and more. We’ll start the review by listing the specifications, checking out the hardware with an unboxing and a teardown, before giving it a quick try with Windows 11 Pro. In the second part of the review, we’ll focus on Windows 11 Pro, with feature testing and benchmarks, before switching to Ubuntu 26.04 to test a recent Linux distribution on a Wildcat Lake mini PC. Beelink EQi […]

July 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SONOFF NSPanel Pro Gen2 touch control panel review with eWeLink and Home Assistant

SONOFF sent us a sample of the NSPanel Pro Gen2 Smart Home control panel for review. It’s a standard 86-type controller powered by a Rockchip RK3326-S SoC, equipped with 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC flash storage, a 3.95-inch touchscreen display, and a 2-channel relay supporting up to 10A. The Android device supports dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Zigbee 3.0, and Matter, and also includes a built-in 1.5W speaker and microphone for two-way audio. It’s an update to the NSPanel Pro we reviewed in 2024. In this review, we’ll start with an unboxing and a teardown, before going through the initial setup in standalone mode, and finally use the panel with the eWelink app and Home Assistant. We’ll connect one of the relays of the NSPanel Pro Gen2 to a ceiling LED light, test Zigbee through a SONOFF AirGuard TH (SNZB-02DR2) temperature and humidity sensor, WiFi through a SONOFF AirGuard PM2.5/PM10 air […]