Armbian 22.05 release adds support for Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS, Radxa Zero & Rock 3A, DevTerm A06

Armbian 22.05

The latest release of Armbian, version 22.05, is now out with hundreds of Linux kernel and user space-related bug fixes, a focus on stabilizing existing platforms, while still adding four new boards with Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS (RK3328), Radxa Zero (Amlogic S905Y2), Radxa Rock 3A (RK3568), and DevTerm A06 (RK3399). The community also added two new maintainers for ESPRESSObin and Radxa Rock Pi 4 (Model A) SBCs which should mean the images for those boards will be tested more regularly and potential issues fixed more quickly. You may want to read the more detailed changelog to see if any changes may impact the board(s) you are using. The new Armbian 22.05 release succeeds Armbian 22.02 outed on February 28, 2022. If you’d like to upgrade simply run those two commands on your existing installation:

For new installation, browse the list of supported boards, select the Debian/Ubuntu image you’d […]

PICO-V2K4 – A Pico-ITX board with AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor

AAEON PICO-V2K4

AAEON PICO-V2K4 is a Pico-ITX board powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor with up to 8 cores, AMD Radeon graphics, which should make it the world’s smallest Ryzen V2000 SBC on the market. The board comes with up to 32GB soldered-on memory and a 64GB NVMe flash, supports for SATA and M.2 NVMe storage, dual Gigabit Ethernet, up to four 4K display interfaces, four serial ports, and more. Use cases range from medical imaging (x-ray and MRI scan analysis) to casino gaming machines, and industrial automation. AAEON PICO-V2K4 specifications: AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor (one or the other) Ryzen V2718 octa-core/16-thread processor @ up to 1.7-4.15 GHz (Turbo) with Radeon RX Vega 7 GPU; TDP: 10-25W Ryzen V2516 hexa-core/12-thread processor @ up to 2.1-3.95 GHz (Turbo) with Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU; TDP: 10-25W System Memory – Up to 32GB LPDDR4x 3733 MHz Storage Up to 64GB on-board […]

NanoPi R5S Rockchip RK3568 mini router launched for $59 and up

NanoPi R5S Rockchip RK3568 mini router

The Rockchip RK3568-powered NanoPi R5S SBC with two 2.5GbE ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and M.2 NVMe storage is now available for $59, or $75 with a metal enclosure. As previously mentioned, the mini router board is equipped with 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC flash, two USB 3.0 ports, as well as an HDMI output for people wanting to make use of the Rockchip RK3568 processor’s multimedia capabilities, or simply have a user interface on a monitor. NanoPi R5S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 MP2 GPU, 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator, 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoder, 1080p60 H.264/H.265 video encoder System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4X Storage 8GB eMMC flash for OS Key M socket for M.2 2280 (PCIe 2.0 x1) NVMe SSD support Optional SPI flash for network boot MicroSD card socket Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60, […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04

Khadas VIM4 Ubuntu 22.04

Here’s the last part of Khadas VIM4 review with Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish”. You may want to check out our previous parts with the unboxing and first boot, followed by Android 11 if you haven’t already done so. Ubuntu 22.04 installation on Khadas VIM4 I used the same method of installation with OOWOW firmware that can download the image directly from Khadas server, and install it to the eMMC flash. Since I already had Android 11 running on the board, I had to keep pressing the function key (middle), then shortly press the reset button,  before releasing the function key and entering OOWOW interface. From there, I selected Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome, and went ahead with the download. The download was fast with the 758.2MB compressed image downloaded in a couple of minutes, then I simply selected “Install” to go further, and replace Android 11… .. and after rebooting the board […]

DepthVista USB 3D ToF camera supports close range depth measurement, far-range object detection

DepthVista USB 3D ToF camera

DepthVista is a USB Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera designed for precise 3D depth measurement in close range mode (1.2m) and person and/or object detection in far-range mode up to 6 meters away. This ToF camera combines a 3D depth camera capable of 640 x 480 @ 30fps, and an Onsemi AR0234 color global shutter sensor supporting HD and FHD at up to 30fps, plus an 850nm VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) for safety and the ability to operate in complete darkness. e-con Systems’ DepthVista (See3CAM_TOF_25CUG) specifications: Depth camera 3D camera technology: Time-of-Flight Depth range Near mode – 0.2m to 1.2m Far mode – 1m to 6m Illumination: 850nm pulsed laser (Indoor) Accuracy: Up to 1% depending on environmental conditions Output format: Y16 (raw 12-bit) Resolutions Depth – 640 x 480 @ 30fps IR – 640 x 480 @ 30fps Depth + IR – 640 x 960 @ 30fps FOV – 84.29° (H) […]

Rockchip RK3588 CPU module exposes more I/Os through four board-to-board connectors

RD-RK3588 development board

We’ve already seen several Rockchip RK3588 modules with Firefly Core-3588J, Turing RK1, and Banana Pi RK3588_CV1, all with an edge connector to insertion into the carrier board. Rongpin RD-RK3588 system-on-module is a little different with four board-to-board connectors that enable a slightly more compact design, and should expose more I/Os than say a 314-pin MXM edge connector. The module ships with up to 16GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, a Rockchip RK806-1 PMIC, and the company also offers a development kit with RD-RK3588-B baseboard fitted with the module for evaluation and early software development. RD-RK3588 board-to-board module RD-RK3588-C core module specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores, Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan1.1, 6 TOPS NPU, 48MP ISP, 8Kp60 video decoding, 8Kp30 video encoding System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, […]

Linux hardware video encoding on Amlogic A311D2 processor

amlogic a311d2 h265 hardware video encoding sample

I’ve spent a bit more time with Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM4 Amogic A311D2 SBC, and while the performance is generally good features like 3D graphics acceleration and hardware video decoding are missing. But I was pleased to see a Linux hardware video encoding section in the Wiki, as it’s not something we often see supported early on. So I’ve given it a try… First, we need to make a video in NV12 pixel format that’s commonly outputted from cameras. I downloaded a 45-second 1080p H.264 sample video from Linaro, and converted it with ffmpeg:

I did this on my laptop. As a raw video, it’s pretty big with 3.3GB of storage used for a 45-second video:

Now let’s try to encode the video to H.264 on Khadas VIM4 board using aml_enc_test hardware video encoding sample:

The output explains the parameters used. There are some error messages, […]

$349 AMD Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit takes on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier devkit

AMD Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit

AMD Xilinx Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit features the Kria K26 Zynq UltraScale+ XCK26 FPGA MPSoC system-on-module (SoM) introduced last year together with the Kria KV260 Vision AI Starter Kit. Designed as a development platform for robotics and industrial applications, the KR260 is said to deliver nearly 5x productivity gain, up to 8x better performance per watt and 3.5x lower latency compared to Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier or Jetson Nano kits. We’ll have a better look at the details below. Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit specifications: SoM – Kria K26 module with: MPSoC – Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ custom-built XCK26 with quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor  up to 1.5GHz, dual-core Arm Cortex-R5F real-time processor up to 600MHz, Mali-400 MP2 GPU up to 667MHz, 4Kp60 VPU, 26.6Mb On-Chip SRAM, 256K logic cells, 1,248 DSP slices, 144 Block RAM blocks, 64 UltraRAM blocks System Memory – 4GB 64-bit DDR4 (non-ECC) Storage – 512 Mbit […]