CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2025 has just ended and we’ve now ready to announce the winners. We offered some of the review samples we tested, and three companies joined us offering new samples, namely Banana Pi with two router boards, VOIPAC with an industrial development kit, and RAKwireless offered two of their IoT development kits for the fifth year running. Besides the aforementioned prize, we also included an ESP32-P4 development kit, a dry switch from SONOFF, a Raspberry Pi CM4-based HMI with a 915MHz LoRa module, a 5-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display, and two USB PD voltage indicators on both CNX Software “International” and CNX Software Thailand. You can see all prizes shown below. Without further ado, here are the seven winners of Giveaway Week 2025 on CNX Software (English): M5Stack M5Tab – Ed, Canada Elecrow Pi Terminal – Tom, Finland Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite router board – Stef, Belgium […]
LattePanda IOTA review – An Intel N150 + RP2040 SBC tested with Windows 11, UPS expansion, PoE, NVMe SSD, and more
I’ve received a review sample of the LattePanda IOTA single-board computer (SBC) from DFRobot. It is a compact, palm-sized SBC powered by an Intel Processor N150 quad-core Twin Lake CPU, and featuring 8 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 64 GB of onboard eMMC storage. It also integrates a Raspberry Pi RP2040 co-processor for handling I/O operations, providing greater flexibility for embedded and automation applications. LattePanda IOTA unboxing The parcel was shipped from China and arrived safely in a standard cardboard box. Inside were several smaller boxes containing the following components, with foam padding that was slightly loose but still provided adequate protection. All components arrived in good condition. I received a total of seven items from DFRobot, which are listed below. LattePanda IOTA (8GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash) Smart UPS Expansion Board: A plug-and-play UPS module for the LattePanda IOTA that provides stable, continuous power with intelligent management and supports […]
Raspberry Pi CM5 industrial carrier board features dual Ethernet, optional 4G LTE/5G cellular connectivity, metal case, and more
Waveshare CM5-DUAL-ETH-4G/5G-BASE is an industrial carrier board for the Raspberry Pi CM5. It features dual Ethernet (GbE + 2.5GbE), 4G/5G options, and includes an optional metal enclosure, active cooling fan, and power supply, which is an upgrade from the previous CM5-DUAL-ETH-BASE carrier board. The board also offers two HDMI outputs supporting 4K displays, two MIPI DSI/CSI connectors for displays and/or cameras, two USB 3.2 ports, a 40-pin GPIO header, M.2 slots for both NVMe SSDs and 4G/5G modules, and PoE support via an add-on module. The board supports 7V–36V DC input, a PWM fan header, and RTC battery backup, with precise cutouts and labeled connectors for easy integration. Its main benefits over the CM5-DUAL-ETH-BASE are its more compact size and neatly arranged ports on the rear panels, while adding optional support for 4G LTE or 5G connectivity. CM5-DUAL-ETH-4G/5G-BASE specifications: Compatibility – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5) Storage Optional NVMe SSD […]
$149 Allwinner A733 development board offers HDMI Input, eDP, Android 15 support
While browsing AliExpress, I came across an Allwinner A733 development board (A733MAIBORADBV1) priced at $149, which piqued my interest as the price tag was much higher than other A733 boards, such as the $35+ Orange Pi 4 Pro or Radxa Cubie A7Z/A7A. It turns out that this board not only supports up to 16GB of RAM, and Android 15. It also includes features like HDMI input and output, MIPI-CSI/DSI, eDP, capacitive touch, and M.2 expansion, making it a development platform for tablets, laptops, and AI prototypes rather than low-cost maker projects. A733MAIBORADBV1 board specifications: SoC – Allwinner A733 CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 @ up to 2.00 GHz Hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.79 GHz Single-core RISC-V E902 real-time core GPU – Imagination Technologies BXM-4-64 MC1 GPU VPU 8Kp24 H.265/VP9/AVS2 decoding 4Kp30 H.265/H.264 encoding AI accelerator – Optional, up to 3 TOPS NPU System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB […]
CRA-ready Grinn Genioboard Edge AI SBC features MediaTek Genio 510 or 700 System-on-module
Grinn has launched a credit card-sized SBC powered by its MediaTek Genio 510 or Genio 700 Cortex-A78/A55 SoM, and designed for Edge AI applications with support for the Thistle Security Platform via an on-board Infineon OPTIGA Trust M hardware security module to enable compliance with the EU’s Cybersecurity Resilience Act (CRA). With a form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 model B, the Genioboard features 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, a Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, a 40-pin GPIO header, a USB-C debuig port, USB-C PD power, and on the bottom side, two M.2 sockets for AI accelerators and wireless modules. Genioboard specifications: System-on-Module – Grinn GenioSOM-510 or Grinn GenioSOM-700 SoC MediaTek Genio 510 (MT8370) hexa-core Arm Cortex-A78/A55 processor up to 2.2 GHz, Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, 4Kp60 video decoding, 4Kp30 video encoding, up to 3.2 TOPS […]
AAEON PICO-ARU4 “Arrow Lake” Pico-ITX SBC is powered by up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 255U processor
AAEON PICO-ARU4 might be the world’s first Pico-ITX SBC powered by Intel Core Ultra 5/7 “Arrow Lake” (Series 2) processor family. More specifically, it’s available with the Core Ultra 5 225U or Core Ultra 7 255U, both with a 15W TDP. It ships with up to 32GB LPDDR5 RAM, offers 2.5GbE and GbE networking, HDMI and eDP interfaces for up to two independent displays, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two USB 2.0 headers, two M.2 sockets for storage (NVMe SSD) and wireless expansion, two RS-232/422/485 headers, a 4-bit GPIO header, SMBus/I2C, and more. AAEON PICO-ARU4 specifications: Arrow Lake SoC (one of the other) Intel Core Ultra 5 225U 12-core (2P+8E+2LPE) processor @ up to 4.8 GHz turbo frequency, 12MB cache, 4x Xe-core Intel Graphics (8 TOPS), and Intel AI Boost (12 TOPS); PBP: TDP 15W Intel Core Ultra 7 255U 12-core (2P+8E+2LPE) processor @ up to 5.2 GHz, 12MB cache, […]
Giveaway Week 2025 – Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite
The third prize of CNX Software Giveaway Week 2025 is the Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite router board, which will be shipped directly to a randomly selected winner by the company. It’s powered by a MediaTek Filogic 850 (MT7987AV) quad-core Cortex-A53 network processor, coupled with 2GB DDR4 and 8GB eMMC flash, and equipped with four gigabit Ethernet ports, a 2.5GbE RJ45 WAN port, and a 2.5GbE SFP cage. It can also be extended with WiFi 7 and 5G cellular modules thanks to two mini PCIe sockets and an M.2 Key-B slot with USB 3.0 interface. The board also features a 16-pin MikroBus GPIO header with UART, I2C, SPI, PWM, and other signals to connect one of the over 1000 Mikroe Click modules available. As its name implies, the BPI-R4 Lite is a cost-down version of the Banana Pi BPI-R4 introduced a few years ago. The documentation has improved since the last […]
Progress on upstream Linux for MediaTek Genio IoT SoCs and boards
Collabora announced a partnership with MediaTek to bring upstream support to the Genio IoT SoCs and boards in November 2024, but since the announcement was new at the time, no work had been done, and I didn’t write about it. However, almost one year later, Collabora can now report very good progress, especially for MediaTek MT8395 boards like Genio 1200 EVK and Radxa NIO 12L, which are now usable with mainline/upstream Linux since most features are implemented. But improvements also extend to MediaTek Genio 510 and Genio 700 EVKs, and the collaboration will continue with work on newer MediaTek Genio and Kompanio processors for IoT solutions and Chromebooks. The two MediaTek Genio 1200 boards can now boot mainline Linux without any out-of-tree patches while providing support for the Audio DSP, JPEG, video hardware encoders and decoders, the Arm Mali-G57 MC5 GPU (via the open source Panfrost driver), as well as […]


