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December 8, 2023December 8, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

Radxa Zero 3W SBC – Rockchip RK3566 SoC, 8GB RAM, WiFi 6 in Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W form factor

More Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W lookalikes are coming to market, as after the Allwinner H618-based Orange Pi Zero 2W, the Radxa Zero 3W has now been introduced with a 1.6 GHz Rockchip RK3566 processor and up to 8GB RAM, plus WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, which makes it one of the most powerful Arm Linux SBCs in the compact Raspberry Pi Zero form factor. The board also comes with an optional eMMC flash with up to 64GB capacity, a microSD card, a micro HDMI port, two USB Type-C ports, a MIPI CSI camera connector, and of course, the usual 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO header. Radxa Zero 3W specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.6 GHz (Note the RK3566 is usually clocked at up to 1.8 GHz but may have been underclocked here due to heat issues at the higher frequency as the […]

December 6, 2023December 6, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

MINIX X100-0DB fanless Intel N100 mini PC supports 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 networking

Companies keep on releasing new Intel Processor N100 mini PCs, and the latest one is the MINIX X100-DB fanless mini PC with support for 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 networking, and dual display setups through two HDMI ports. The mini PC is said to support up to 32GB RAM, ships with up to 512GB NVMe SSD, and comes with the usual USB 3.2/2.0 ports, microSD card slot, and 3.5mm audio. The “0DB” name comes from the fact that it is a fanless system as shown on the top of the top device with the string “ZERO dB Cooling System”. MINIX X100-0DB specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N100 quad-core Alder Lake-N processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB DDDR4-3200, upgradable to 32GB Storage 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB M.2 SSD (PCIe Gen3 x4), upgradable […]

December 5, 2023December 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Robustel introduces EG5101 and EG5200 Debian 11 industrial IoT gateways with 4G LTE cellular connectivity

Robustel EG5101 EG5200 Debian 11 industrial gateways

Robustel introduced the EG5101 and EG5200 industrial IoT gateways running Debian 11 a few weeks ago, both with 4G LTE cellular connectivity, but the NXP i.MX 6ULL-based EG5101 has a more compact design, while the NXP i.MX 8M Plus-powered EG5200 provides more I/Os and resources. Expanding the earlier EG5100, EG5120, and LG5100 models from the company, the two edge computing gateways target Industry 4.0 and smart infrastructure applications and enable real-time analytics at the edge with lower latency than running workloads in the cloud. Robustel EG5101 and EG5200 SoC/Memory/Storage EG5101 NXP i.MX 6ULL Cortex-A7 32-bit processor @ 792 MHz 512MB to 1024MB DDR3 8GB eMMC flash EG5200 NXP i.MX 8M Plus quad-core Cortex-A53 64-bit processor @ 1.6 GHz with 2.3 TOPS NPU 4GB DDR4 32GB eMMC flash, microSD card socket Connectivity EG5101 1x 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port 4G LTE with 1x SMA-K antenna connector, 2x Mini SIM (2FF) EG5200 5x […]

December 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

nRF7002 Expansion Board adds WiFi 6 to Nordic Thingy:53 devkit

nRF7002 Expansion Board Thingy:53 devkit

Nordic Semi keeps adding more nRF7002 WiFi 6 boards with the launch of the nRF7002 Expansion Board adding WiFi 6 connectivity to the Thingy:53 IoT prototyping platform and transforming it into an all-in-one wireless devkit with Matter, Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, and WiFi 6 support. The new “nRF7002 EB” board follows the nRF7002 DK development kit combining the nRF7002 WiFi 6 with nRF5340 multiprotocol wireless SoCs, and the nRF7002 EK evaluation kit in Arduino UNO shield form factor adding WiFi 6 to existing Nordic development kits. nRF7002 Expansion Board specifications: Chipset – nRF7002 Wi-Fi Companion IC with support for features such as OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access), Beamforming, Target Wake Time, and SSID-based locationing Antenna – 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz ceramic antenna I/Os Castellations for all pins on nRF7002 Thingy:53 expansion connector with SPI and a 3-wire coexistence interface to allow seamless coexistence with other wireless protocols Misc […]

December 4, 2023December 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Review of GEEKOM Mini Air12 Processor N100 mini PC – Part 1: unboxing and teardown

GEEKOM Mini Air12 is a mini PC powered by the popular Intel Processor N100 CPU and coupled with 16GB DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD upgradable up to 1TB. The Windows 11 Pro mini PC also features USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB Type-C ports, HDMI 2.0 video output, gigabit Ethernet, as well as WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 via an Azureware module. GEEKOM sent us a sample of the Mini Air12 for review. Since we’ve already written about the Mini Air12 specifications, today we will go through an unboxing and look at the hardware design with a teardown, before testing the mini PC in more detail with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 in the next parts of the review. GEEKOM Mini Air12 Unboxing We received the mini PC is a retail package that protects the device and accessories inside well. The back side of the package lists some basic […]

December 1, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

GEEKOM A5 Review – Part 3: An AMD Ryzen 7 5800H mini PC tested with Ubuntu 22.04

In the first part of GEEKOM A5 mini PC review, we had a look at the hardware with an unboxing and teardown, we then reviewed the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H mini PC with Windows 11 Pro in the second part, and we’ve now had time to test the GEEKOM A5 mini PC with Ubuntu 22.04 to check how well it can work in Linux, and we’ll report our experience in this article. Installing Ubuntu 22.04 on GEEKOM A5 We shrank the Windows 11 partition by half to install Ubuntu 22.04 in dual boot configuration alongside the operating system from Microsoft. Ubuntu 22.04.3 was installed successfully using a USB drive. and everything went relatively smoothly, except WiFi didn’t work reliably (more than that later). So we had to use Ethernet for most of the review, and we used the GL.iNet Spitz AX router (GL-X3000NR) configured in repeater mode using an Ethernet […]

November 27, 2023November 27, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Radxa ROCK 3B Rockchip RK3568 SBC combines Pico-ITX and Raspberry Pi form factors

Radxa ROCK 3 Model B, or ROCK 3B for shorts, is a “PI-CO ITX” SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3568 SoC that combines the benefits of Pico-ITX and Raspberry Pi form factors in the sense that the 100x72mm board features all main ports on the rear side and supports expansion through a 40-pin Raspberry Pi-compatible GPIO header and several M.2 sockets for storage and wireless modules. The ROCK 3B is the younger, but bigger brother of the ROCK 3A business card-sized SBC introduced in 2021, still with an RK3568 CPU and up to 8GB LPDDR4, but the board features two gigabit Ethernet ports, an M.2 B Key socket for 4G LTE/5G cellular modules, an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x1 socket for an M.2 2280 SSD not necessitating an expansion board, besides the M.2 Key-E socket for WiFi 6. ROCK 3B specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568(J) CPU – Quad-core Cortex A55 processor […]

November 26, 2023November 26, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

GEEKOM Mini IT13 review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04 tested on an Intel Core i9-13900H mini PC

We published the review of the Core i9-13900H powered GEEKOM Mini IT13 mini PC in Windows 11 Pro earlier this week and have now installed Ubuntu 22.04 and tested the machine with the Linux-based operating system in detail with benchmarks, features testing, networking and storage performance tests, power consumption, and thermal performance which we will report in this third and final part of the review. Installing Ubuntu 22.04 on GEEKOM Mini IT13 I shrank the Windows partition by about 500 MB in Disk Management in Windows 11 (Disk 1) in order to install Ubuntu 22.04.3 in dual boot configuration. The installation went smoothly using WiFi 6 to retrieve newer files and I could log in to the Ubuntu 22.04 desktop. But there was a trick, as I had to go to Windows first to select “Advanced Startup” and select Ubuntu on the next boot since the GRUB menu would just […]