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SliTaz armhf: 46MB Linux Distribution for Raspberry Pi

SliTaz armhf is a minimal Linux distribution based on SliTaz Linux, that uses the hard-float ABI for the Raspberry Pi. The compressed SD card image is 46M, the rootfs 18.6 MB, and Slitaz uses just about 7 MB RAM after boot. Slitaz armhf rootfs comes pre-loaded with the following packages: busybox 1.20.2 dropbear 2012.55 – Light SSH client and server. nano 2.2.6 – GNU Nano Text Editor. retawq 0.2.6c –  Text mode Web browser. tazpkg 5.0 – SliTaz packages manager (Tiny autonomous zone packages manager). ytree 1.97 – file manager for file and archives. Slitaz armhf comes with tazpkg package manager which allows to install packages just like you would do with apt-get in Raspbian. There are over 3,300 packages available for Slitaz (x86), and for now, over 250 packages are available for Slitaz armhf. Let’s get try it out. First, download slitaz-armhf-mini-2012-12-14.zip, extract it, and copy it to an […]

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SONOFF POW Ring Review – A WiFi CT Clamp power meter tested with eWelink and Home Assistant

The trend of measuring the energy usage of household electrical devices has become increasingly popular among Smart Home users in the past few years. We have received the new SONOFF POW Ring Smart Power Meter Switch device for review from ITEAD. Unlike SONOFF’s existing energy monitoring devices such as POW Elite, SPM, DualR3, POW3, and POW Origin, this new device, also called POWCT, utilizes a current transformer (CT) to measure the current flow, or total power being consumed. This method provides no physical contact with live wires and reduces the risk during installation. Additionally, it can measure currents of up to 100A, which is significantly higher than previous models. This makes it suitable for measuring electricity usage at the main circuit breaker, energy generated from solar panels, or even for Electric Vehicle (EV) home chargers. The SONOFF POW Ring, which we are testing today, is not only a Smart Power […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Entry-level Industrial Shields ESP32 PLC 14 sells for 100 Euros

Boot & Work Corp has just introduced an entry-level PLC based on ESP32 wireless microcontroller with the “Industrial Shields ESP32 PLC 14” that comes with seven inputs and five outputs, as well as I2C, RS485, Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth communication interfaces. We first covered “Industrial Shields” automation devices in 2017 when the company introduced panel PCs based on Banana Pi, Raspberry Pi, and Hummingboard (NXP i.MX 6) SBCs, as well as a few Arduino and Raspberry Pi PLCs. Boot & Work Corp then launched a Raspberry Pi 4-based PLC in 2021, and now the company has introduced the ESP32 PLC 14 part of a larger family of PLC devices as we’ll see further below. ESP32 PLC 14 specifications: Wireless module – ESP-WROOM-32U with ESP32 dual-core wireless microcontroller @ 240 MHz with 4MB SRAM, 4MB flash, 2MB PSRAM I/Os through terminal blocks 4x Digital Outputs 12/24 V DC (can also act […]

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FOSDEM 2024 schedule – Open-source embedded, mobile, IoT, robotics, RISC-V, etc..

FOSDEM – which stands for Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting – is a free-to-participate event where thousands of developers meet in Brussels on the first week-end of February to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. FOSDEM 2024 will take place on February 3-4 with 880 speakers, 818 events, and 66 tracks. Although I won’t attend, I’ve created a virtual schedule like every year with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms including “FOSS Mobile Devices”, “ Energy: Reimagining this Ecosystem through Open Source”, “RISC-V”, and others. FOSDEM Day 1 – Saturday, February 3, 2024 10:30 – 10:55 – Screen Sharing on Raspberry Pi 5 Using VNC in Weston and Wayland with the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded by Leon Anavi In 2023, embedded Linux developers received eagerly awaited news: […]

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$16 Grove Vision AI V2 module features WiseEye2 HX6538 Arm Cortex-M55 & Ethos-U55 AI microcontroller

Seeed Studio’s Grove Vision AI V2 module is based on the HiMax WiseEye2 HX6538 dual-core Cortex-M55 AI microcontroller with an Arm Ethos-U55 microNPU and features a MIPI CSI connector for an OV5647 camera. It is designed for AI computer vision applications using TensorFlow and PyTorch frameworks and connects to hosts such as Raspberry Pi SBCs, ESP32 IoT boards, Arduino, and other maker boards over I2C. We tested the previous generation Grove Vision AI module based on the 400 MHz HX6537-A DSP-based AI accelerator using the SenseCAP K1100 sensor prototype kit with LoRaWAN connectivity, and managed to have the kit perform face detection and send the data over LoRaWAN. The Grove Vision AI V2 builds on that but with a modern Arm MCU core and more powerful AI accelerator that can run models such as Mobilenet V1/V2, Efficientnet-lite, and Yolo v5 & v8 using the SenseCraft low-code/no-code platform. Grove Vision AI […]

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Linux 6.7 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.7, following Linux 6.6 LTS a little over two months ago: So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want to delay this any further. End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release. The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version – both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random […]

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2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

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Silicon Labs partners with Nabu Casa to support Home Assistant development

Silicon Labs has entered an official partnership with Nabu Casa, the company behind the popular Home Assistant home automation software, to support the development of Home Assistant open-source software and Silicon Labs-based hardware platforms. Most open-source embedded software projects start as a one-person (or a small team) effort as the vendor-provided firmware and related software may not have the features set needed by this user or group of users. So they hack existing hardware to build something that better fits their requirements often without input/help from the silicon vendor or product manufacturer. But sometimes the project becomes popular enough that large companies start to help it with support and funding. That’s apparently the case for Home Assistant project with Silicon Lans and Nabu Case entering an official partnership. The announcement does not provide details about the partnership but explains this should lead to better support and improvements for both Home […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC