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January 18, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Getting started with SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 Zigbee adapter using Home Assistant

SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 review AirGuard TH MINI-ZB2GS-L

We have received a sample of the SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24 (also known as Dongle-PMG24) Zigbee/Thread USB dongle for review. As its name implies, it’s based on a Silicon Labs EFR32MG24 wireless chip, and the company claims up to 200 meters range thanks to an included 3dBi antenna. It is compatible with Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi OS, and other operating systems that support USB serial drivers. The dongle works seamlessly with popular open-source platforms, such as Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, ioBroker, and OpenHAB. In this review, we will go through an unboxing of the SONOFF Dongle Plus MG24, before connecting it to a Raspberry Pi 4 running Home Assistant. We will use two Zigbee devices from SONOFF: the AirGuard TH (SNZB-02DR2) temperature and humidity sensor with an LCD, and the MINI DUO-L (MINI-ZB2GS-L) dual-channel/2-gang Zigbee 3.0 switch to demonstrate how to use the dongle with Home Assistant. SONOFF Dongle Plus […]

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

FlashESP is an all-in-one web-based tool for ESP32/ESP8266 Arduino development and firmware flashing

FlashESP Web-based ESP32 programming tool

FlashESP is a web-based tool allowing the development of Arduino sketches and firmware flashing for ESP32 and ESP8266 hardware platforms. I initially thought it was similar to ESP Web Tools for flashing firmware from the web and used by projects like ESPHome, but it goes further than that, and it looks like an Arduino Cloud Editor for ESP32/ESP8266 instead, since users can select boards, write code, load libraries, and flash the resulting firmware from a compatible web browser without installing anything else on their computer. FlashESP key features: Cloud Compilation – Real-time compilation with live logs. Auto Configuration – Intelligent board and library detection. One-Click Flash – Web Serial integration. Connect your ESP via USB and flash directly from a compatible browser (WebSerial support needed) without any drivers or downloads. Public Explorer – Discover community projects. Flexible Visibility – Create private projects for your team, public for the world, or […]

December 2, 2025December 2, 2025 by Sponsored Post - 2 Comments

Mongoose Wizard builds professional embedded device dashboards for microcontrollers like ESP32, STM32, NXP, RPi and others (Sponsored)

Cesanta Software introduced Mongoose Wizard – a no-code visual tool that enables embedded developers to effortlessly build a professionally looking device dashboard (WebUI) and REST API without writing any frontend code, transforming the microcontroller (MCU) board into a browser-accessible web dashboard for control, monitoring, and updates. Whether for prototyping or building production devices, integrating a web dashboard into firmware gives end users intuitive and powerful control. Designed for use in Industrial, Automotive, Smart home, or any Internet of Things product (machinery, devices, appliances, etc.) that benefits from a browser-based interface. Mongoose Wizard utilises the Mongoose Library, an open source network library for C/C++. Mongoose Library provides event-driven non-blocking APIs for TCP, UDP, HTTP, WebSocket, MQTT, and other protocols. It is designed for connecting devices and bringing them online. On the market since 2004, used by a vast number of open-source and commercial products – it even runs on the International […]

November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Easily create an ESP32-C5 dual-band Wi-Fi analyzer

Chen Liang (陳亮) has found an interesting use case for the Espressif ESP32-C5: a dual-band Wi-Fi analyzer showing the signal strength of 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi access points in your area. It works like one of the Wi-Fi analyzer apps on your phone, except it relies on an ESP32-C5 board and a display support for the Arduino_GFX libraries, for example, based on the ILI9341 driver, as it’s easier for beginners since the code does not need to be changed. Here’s what it looks like. You can follow the instructions provided by Chen to reproduce the setup. It’s fairly straightforward. He specifically used an ESP32-C5-DevkitC-1 board (or one of the clones) along with an ILI9341 display (not sure about the exact model, but any should do) and wired them together using a breadboard as shown in the photo below. You’ll then need to fire up the Arduino IDE, install Arduino […]

November 9, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Using the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC as a regular Bluetooth keyboard

Using Raspberry Pi 500+ as a Bluetooth Keyboard

While the Raspberry Pi 500+ is a fully functional Linux keyboard PC, it’s also possible to use it as a regular mechanical Bluetooth keyboard. This week, I had a problem with my regular Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo, so I sent it back to the shop for repair since it was still under warranty. Then somebody forgot the RF dongle for her own combo at home, so long story short, we ended up with one third spare keyboard for two people. Not ideal. But luckily, we just completed the review of the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC, so we had a spare mechanical keyboard, and the btferret project allowed us to use it as a Bluetooth keyboard, which I’m using right now to write this article. We could have used the Pi 500+ as a Linux machine directly, but we would have had to reinstall all the software we […]

August 24, 2025August 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Getting Started with Quectel EC200U 4G LTE Cat 1 IoT board using the QNavigator and the QuecOpen SDK

Quectel EC200U development board QNavigator

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Eicut showing how to get started with a Quectel EC200U 4G TLE Cat 1 IoT development board using QNavigator and the QuecOpen SDK. In IoT projects—and across embedded systems in general—we’ve seen a growing demand for higher data exchange rates, along with broader frequency band coverage. These advancements are critical for enhancing the reliability of a device’s communication link with the network. As a result, 4G modules with fallback capability to 2G and 4G networks have emerged as a leading solution in this space. But the key question remains: Which modules should we use to leverage this technology, and what features do they offer? Exploring the Quectel EC200U LTE Cat 1 Module for IoT In this section of the EC200U tutorial, we’ll take a closer look at one of the most popular and dependable options in the IoT space—Quectel’s EC200U module. If you’ve […]

August 16, 2025August 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

AAEON NV8600-Nano AI Developer Kit Review – Part 2: Benchmarks, features testing, AI demos with Nx Meta

NV8600-Nano AI Developer Kit review with Nx Meta AI platform

In the first part of the review, I had a look at the hardware of the NV8600-Nano AI developer Kit featuring an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 8GB module, booted it to Ubuntu 22.04, checked some system information, and made sure both the USB camera and Raspberry Pi Camera Module 2 (MIPI CSI) module worked fine.

I’ve now spent much more time with the Edge AI devkit, and report my experience in the second part of the review with some benchmarks, key features testing, and AI vision demos using Network Optix Nx Meta IP video management platform with the provided USB camera and an ONVIF-capable network camera.

August 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Embedded Device Security: Protecting Linux Systems with Modern Tools

Embedded Device Security Protecting data on Linux systems

CNXSoft: This is a guest port by Erik Wierich, Senior Engineer at RISCstar Solutions, demonstrating a practical security implementation for embedded devices using standard Linux tools like dm-verity and TPM 2.0. It covers threat models, filesystem security, and TPM-based encryption with working code examples. Nowadays, it is (rightfully) impossible to put an embedded device into the market without comprehensive embedded device security measures. Most new devices store private data that we do not want to see leaked in dark corners of the Internet. We also want to avoid our device ending up as part of a botnet. Linux has a large set of tools to help us with security. What has historically been lacking is a simple, off-the-shelf way to integrate these tools into a secure-by-default configuration. This post will demonstrate how modern tools simplify deployments while ensuring strong security. Embedded Device Security Scope When talking about embedded system security, […]