Building a NanoPi M4V2 based All-in-One Linux PC running Armbian (Ubuntu/Debian)

Armbian Ubuntu All-in-One PC

At the end of my review of “RPI All-in-One” PC with Raspberry Pi 4, I noted the system also appeared to be compatible with NanoPi M4V2 single board computer. I’ve now tried it out, and assembling the board inside the 10.1-inch display is even easier than I initially thought. That means I now have a NanoPi M4V2 All-in-One PC running Ubuntu Hirsute or Debian Buster with XFCE desktop environment from Armbian, and most features work including the display and wireless connectivity, but I still have an issue with the touchscreen function. Here are the steps I followed initially: Download Armbian Buster XFCE image from Armbian and flash it to a microSD card with tools like USBimager. Insert the microSD card in the board Install the USB Type-C and HDMI-A adapters in the display. Insert the USB Type-C and HDMI port of the NanoPi M4V2 SBC into the adapters Install the […]

10.1-inch RPI All-in-One PC review with Raspberry Pi 4

10.1-inch Raspberry Pi PC portrait mode

A couple of months ago I received “RPI All-in-One”, a 10.1-inch touchscreen display for Raspberry Pi boards, listed the specifications, checked out the package content, installed a Raspberry Pi 4 inside the display before booting my new all-in-one (AiO) PC successfully. I’ve now had time to spend more time with the PC/display and see how it performs under various conditions. I also tested HDMI and USB-C input features with a laptop and mini PC. Fan or fanless operation? After updating Raspberry Pi OS, I ran sbc-bench.sh script together with rpi-monitor to see how the Raspberry Pi 4 with 1GB RAM would perform under load with the (noisy) fan enabled.

  No throttling was detected, and the temperature never exceeded 56°C in a room with an ambient temperature of 26°C. I then disconnect the fan, but it turns out the fan can also be easily disabled in the OSD menu […]

Intel launches NUC 11 Essential mini PC, Kits, and SBC with Jasper Lake SoC

Intel NUC 11 Essential

Details about the Intel NUC 11 Essential “Atlas Canyon” mini PCs with Jasper Lake processor were leaked in May 2021, but Intel has now made it official with the “launch” of five NUC 11 Essential SKUs with one Windows 11 mini PC with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, three kits (bare mini PC), and one bare board all listed on Ark Intel. I put “launch” between quotes because it’s only “launched” as stated on Ark Intel, but it does not look like it’s available for sale just yet, but now at least we get confirmation about the specs from the leak that was fairly accurate, except Intel did not launch 10W Jasper Lake J-Series processors, and both 6W and 10W Jasper Lake processors are part of the N-Series. Intel NUC 11 Essential specifications: SoC/memory/storage NUC11ATKC2 Mini PC SoC – Intel Celeron N4505 dual-core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz / 2.9 […]

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to leverage zswap to run on Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB RAM

Raspberry Pi 4 2GB Ubuntu 22.04

Canonical used to recommend Raspberry Pi 4 with at least 4GB RAM to run Ubuntu Desktop, but Ubuntu 22.04 LTS should run more smoothly on the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB as the company has enabled zswap by default to allow the Linux operating system to run better on systems with less memory. Canonical explains that zswap is essentially a compression tool. When a process is about to be moved to the swap file, zswap compresses it and checks whether the new, smaller size still needs to be moved or if it can stay in your RAM. It is much quicker to decompress a ‘zswapped’ page than it is to access the swap file so this is a great way of getting more bang for your buck from systems with smaller amounts of RAM. The good news is that you don’t even need to wait for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to come […]

Rockchip RK3568 SBC to power 4G/5G, WiFI 6 connected smart displays, features an optional tuner

Geniatech K3-3568 SBC smart display

Geniatech is back with another Rockchip RK3568 SBC. The K3-3568 single board computer is designed specifically for smart displays with 4G LTE, 5G, or WiFi 6 connectivity, and follows last year’s “Geniatech RK3568 development board” (aka DB3568) offered as a full-featured development kit for Rockchip RK3568 SoC. K3-3568 SBC ships with up to 8GB RAM, up to 64GB eMMC flash, and offers multiple display interfaces with HDMI, MIPI DSI, LVDS, eDP, plus and an internal HDMI input connector, as well as support for an optional DVB-T2, ISDB-T, DMBT, or ATSC digital tuner. Geniatech K3-3568 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor up to 1.5/2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 0.8 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4 Storage 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB eMMC 5.1 flash MicroSD card slot M.2 socket for NVMe SSD (See expansion […]

Linux 5.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.16 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.16: Not a lot here since -rc8, which is not unexpected. We had that extra week due to the holidays, and it’s not like we had lots of last-minute things that needed to be sorted out. So this mainly contains some driver fixes (mainly networking and rdma), a cgroup credential use fix, a few core networking fixes, a couple of last-minute reverts, and some other random noise. The appended shortlog is so small that you might as well scroll through it. This obviously means that the merge window for 5.17 opens tomorrow, and I’m happy to say I already have several pending early pull requests. I wish I had even more, because this merge window is going to be somewhat painful due to unfortunate travel for family reasons. So I’ll be doing most of it on the road on a laptop […]

ROCK5 Model B RK3588 single board computer is up for pre-order for $79 and up

ROCK5 Model B

Some will say “finally!” After years of waiting for Rockchip RK3588 processor, ROCKPi Trading Limited/Radxa got some samples for their ROCK5 Model B single board computer and has started to take pre-orders with discounted prices starting at $79 through distributors. But let’s check out the specifications first, with the octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 Pico-ITX SBC shipping with up to 16GB RAM, M.2 NVMe storage, 2.5GbE, optional WiFi 6E, 8K video output via HDMI or USB-C ports, 4K HDMI input, and more. Radxa ROCK5 Model B (aka ROCK 5B) specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with four Cortex-A76 cores @ 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz, an Arm Mali G610MC4 GPU, a 6TOPS NPU, 8K 10-bit decoder, 8K encoder System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB LPDDR4x Storage M.2 2280 socket for  NVMe SSD (PCIe 3.0 x4) up to 2,000 MB/s MicroSD card socket eMMC flash socket Video Output 2x […]

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

cnx software happy new year 2022

As per tradition, we’ll look back at what happened during the year in the last post, and see what 2022 may have in store, plus the usual statistics from CNX Software website. The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and  Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards. We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it’s getting really […]

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