NanoPi R5S router SBC/gateway with 2x 2.5GbE, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, M.2 NVMe storage coming soon

NanoPi R5S

FriendlyELEC’s family of NanoPi router SBCs and gateways will soon be extended with the NanoPi R5S board equipped with a Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor, and providing three Ethernet ports (2x 2.5Gbps, 1x 1 Gbps), plus support for M.2 NVMe SSD storage. The company has not published any information publicly, but a post on Weibo social network reveals additional details with the single board computer being equipped with 2GB LPDDR4X, 8GB eMMC flash, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI video output, and more. NanoPi R5S preliminary specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568B2 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 MP2 GPU, 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator (RK3568B2 comes in a “plastic package” instead of the “metal-can type package” found on RK3568, but the features are the same) System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 Storage 8GB eMMC flash for OS Key M socket for M.2 2280 NVMe SSD support Optional SPI […]

$95 Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro 5-port Gigabit Ethernet router board is powered by Rockchip RK3568 SoC

Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro

Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro is an update to the Banana Pi BPI R2 router board that replaces MediaTek MT7623A quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with a much more powerful Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor. The Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro board looks very similar to the first generation R2 board with the same dimensions, 2GB RAM, HDMI & DSI display interfaces, five Gigabit Ethernet ports, one SATA port, two USB 3.0 ports, and one mPCIe socket, but it also adds one M.2 socket, support for MIPI CSI cameras, and extra storage with a 16GB eMMC flash. Banana Pi BPI-R2 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0 GHz with Mali-G52 GPU, 0.8 TOPS NPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 (option for 4GB) Storage – Onboard 16GB eMMC Flash (option for 32 and 64GB), MicroSD card slot, 1x SATA III port, SPI flash for network boot Networking 5x Gigabit Ethernet […]

Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro Series SoCs support up to 33 Gbps PHY rate, up to 2,000 clients

Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 networking pro

Qualcomm has announced the Wi-Fi 7 capable Qualcomm Networking Pro Series Gen 3 family designed for routers and access points with a PHY rate up to 33 Gbps with the quad-band 16-stream Networking Pro 1620 platform and offers some competition to the recently announced Broadcom WiFi 7 access point chips. The company will also offer the tri-band 12-stream Networking Pro 1220 with up to 21.6 Gbps aggregated link rate, the quad-band 8-stream Networking Pro 820 capable of 16.5 Gbps PHY rate, and at the low-end of the scale, the Networking Pro 620 limited to 10.8 Gbps with three bands and six streams. Qualcomm Networking Pro 1620 (IPQ9574) platform specifications: CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 @ 2.2 GHz System Memory – DDR3L, DDR4 16/32-bit Storage –  eMMC, NAND, Serial NOR, SD/eMMC Networking Wired – 6 Port Integrated Ethernet Switch 4 x 2.5 GbE + 5 GbE + 10 GbE Wireless Wi-Fi […]

Broadcom unveils WiFi 7 chips for access points and clients

BCM4916 WiFi 7 access point with bcm27263 and bcm6726

We first noticed the new WiFi 7 (802.11be) standard in January 2022 with MediaTek demonstrating Filogic 802.11be processors, and later Qualcomm introduced the FastConnect 7800 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 solution for wireless clients, but we had not seen anything for WiFi 7 access points yet. Broadcom has now announced four WiFi 7 chips for access points with the BCM67263, BCM6726, BCM43740, and BCM43720 up to 11.5 Gbps PHY rate, plus the BCM4398 Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5 combo chip for mobile handsets with up to 6.05 Gbps PHY rate. We’ve not quite at the theoretical  40+ Gbps PHY rate for WiFi 7, but those solutions will more than double the speed of existing Wi-Fi 6/6E solutions, while simultaneously delivering lower latency and extending range. The BCM67263 and BCM6726 chips are designed for the residential Wi-Fi 7 access point market with the following key features: Support for 4 streams of […]

Linux 5.17 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.17 changelog

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.17: So we had an extra week of at the end of this release cycle, and I’m happy to report that it was very calm indeed. We could probably have skipped it with not a lot of downside, but we did get a few last-minute reverts and fixes in and avoid some brown-paper bugs that would otherwise have been stable fodder, so it’s all good. And that calm last week can very much be seen from the appended shortlog – there really aren’t a lot of commits in here, and it’s all pretty small. Most of it is in drivers (net, usb, drm), with some core networking, and some tooling updates too. It really is small enough that you can just scroll through the details below, and the one-liner summaries will give a good flavor of what happened last week. Of course, this means […]

Sonoff ZBBridge gateway can be used as a Zigbee router/repeater

Sonoff ZBBridge Zigbee router

Sonoff ZBBridge WiFi to Zigbee gateway was introduced in April 2020, and a few months later got support for Tasmota ESP8266 firmware and Gecko firmware for either Home Assistant or Zigbee2MQTT support. But there’s now a new Tasmota firmware that converts Sonoff ZBBridge into a Zigbee router (a.k.a. Zigbee Signal Repeater or Zigbee Range Expender) following a request on Tastoma Github’s issue tracker from last year. The firmware, unofficial yet signed, was released a few days ago by xsp1989 Github’s user with a link to the firmware on Google Drive. Digiblur successfully tried it out on its own Sonoff Zigbee bridge and published the instructions. Assuming you already have Tasmota flashed to the device, switching to the router software is basically a firmware upgrade from the Tasmota web interface. Once the update is complete, you’ll still need to access the console in Tasmota in order to run a command to […]

Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS sells with metal enclosure for $35.99

Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS metal enclosure

Shenzhen Xunlong Software previously launched the Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS router board powered by Rockchip RK3328 quad-core processor last November for $27.99 on Aliexpress. As expected, albeit with some delays, the company has now introduced a metal enclosure for the Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS board transforming it into a complete router or gateway. You can get it as part of a kit for $35.99 plus shipping, or if you’ve already purchased the board previously, get the enclosure only for $9 plus shipping. Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS router/gateway specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – MicroSD card slot, 16 MB SPI flash Connectivity 2x Gigabit Ethernet via YT8531C Ethernet PHY and RTL8153B USB 3.0 to Ethernet chip; both tested by the company up to 945 Mbps Tx and 963 Mbps Rx On-board WiFi is not […]

NanoPi R2C Plus dual GbE router board adds 8GB eMMC flash

NanoPi R2C Plus

NanoPi R2C Plus is a variation of NanoPi R2C dual Gigabit Ethernet SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3328 processor that adds an 8GB eMMC flash for storage and replaces a 10-pin 2.54mm pitch I/O header with an 8-pin 1.25mm pitch header. FriendlyELEC introduced the NanoPi R2C last August as a lower-cost version of NanoPi R2S replacing Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet transceiver with a Motorcomm YT8521S chip for availability and pricing reasons. NanoPi R2C Plus is just an evolution of the original design. NanoPi R2C Plus specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB DDR4 RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC 5.1 flash, MicroSD Slot, SPI flash footprint Connectivity 1x Gigabit Ethernet (WAN) up to 941 Mbps (measured) via MotorComm YT8521S Gigabit Ethernet transceiver 1x Gigabit Ethernet (LAN) up to 941 Mbps (measured) via Realtek RTL8153B USB 3.0 to Ethernet controller USB – […]

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