CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 21, 2021June 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

$3.5 RV-Debugger Plus UART & JTAG debug board comes with BL702 Zigbee & BLE RISC-V SoC

USB to UART debug boards are a necessity for anyone playing with single board computers, at least when using bleeding-edge bootloader or Linux kernel where the target board may not always boot, or when troubleshooting booting problems. Those are often based on FDTI or WCH chips, but Sipeed RV-Debugger Plus features Bouffalo Lab BL702 Zigbee & Bluetooth LE RISC-V SoC instead and offers both UART and JTAG interfaces. So let’s have a look at both the board and SoC. Sipeed RV-Debugger Plus USB to TLL debug boards are meant to be simple and that’s the case for Sipeed latest BL702 board as it comes with a 12-pin connector with Tx/Rx for UART, 8 signals for JTAG, plus 5V, 3.3V, and GND power signals. We can also see pads for Tx/Rx/CTS, a boot button, a crystal oscillator, and a USB-C port to connect to the host computer. What I don’t see […]

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

10BASE-T1L Ethernet chips enable up to 1.7 kilometer long Ethernet cables

The maximum length of Ethernet cables used to be 100 meters. While that may be more than enough for most applications, it does not cut it for industrial communication applications. So the 10BASE-T1L Ethernet physical layer standard (IEEE 802.3cg-2019) was approved by the IEEE on November 7, 2019 to allow for cables over one kilometer using a single twisted-pair cable. Analog Devices has launched two 10BASE-T1L Ethernet chips with ADIN1100 Ethernet PHY and ADIN1110 Ethernet MAC-PHY that allow for up to 1.7 kilometer long Ethernet cables. Let’s check out ADIN1100 specifications for reference: 10BASE-T1L IEEE Std 802.3cg-2019 compliant Cable Reach 1700 meters+ with 1.0 V pk-pk 1700 meters+ with 2.4 V pk-pk Auto-Negotiation capability Supports intrinsic safety applications MII, RMII & RGMII MAC interfaces MDIO Management Interface Unmanaged configuration using pin strapping including: Master/Slave selection Transmit amplitude PHY address 25 MHz crystal oscillator/25 MHz external clock input (50 MHz external […]

June 21, 2021July 12, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

RasPad 3 Review – Part 2: A Raspberry Pi 4 mini PC with integrated display

I started RasPad 3 review last week with an unboxing of the tablet shell for Raspberry Pi 4, together with assembly instructions, and a first boot after flashing Raspad OS to the system. In the first part of the review, I mentioned that I’d probably focus the remainder of the review on Ezblock Studio visual programming IDE, as the rest of the software is almost the same as using a standard Raspberry Pi 4, the other difference being the touchscreen-friendly RasPad launcher. But Sunfounder explained to me it would be hard to check out Ezblock as it’s designed to control robots and other hardware platforms, and requires an extra HAT (see Kickstarter campaign) to allow the Ezblock APP to connect through Bluetooth (it cannot be directly linked to Raspberry Pi through the built-in Bluetooth). Here’s an example of a robot that is compatible with Ezblock Studio: Picar-X. Finally, I was […]

June 20, 2021June 20, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Royole RoKit – A flexible display development kit with a Snapdragon 660 board

Snapdragon 660 flexible display development kit

The Royole RoKit is a flexible display development kit with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 board running Android 10 operating system. The kit includes a 7.8-inch “fully flexible” display and corresponding touchscreen module. The mainboard is also equipped with on-board wireless connectivity, a gyroscope, a speaker, and more, and the kit ships with modular extension boards, data and power cables all packed into a suitcase. Royole RoKit content and main specifications: 7.8-inch fully flexible AMOLED display module (FFD); 1440 x 1920 @ 60Hz; 16.7M colors, 300 nits, connected via MIPI DSI connector 7.8-inch fully flexible touch-capacitive sensor module (FFS) connected via I2C. Android 10 development mainboard with SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 octa-core processor at 2.2GHz System Memory – 3GB RAM Storage – 32GB flash Audio – 0.7W speaker Connectivity – On-board 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 5.0 USB – USB Type-C for System Data Sensor – Gyroscope HDMI transfer board […]

June 19, 2021 by Saumitra Jagdale - 2 Comments

Digi ConnectCore 8M Mini SOM and Mini Development Kit for Industrial IoT Applications

Digi International has announced the Digi ConnectCore 8M Mini System-on-Module (SOM) which is an addition to its ConnectCore family modules. We saw the Android application development kit featuring earlier Digi Wireless modules based Freescale i.MX51 (ConnectCore Wi-i.MX51) and i.MX53 (ConnectCore Wi-i.MX53) in early 2012. The new Digi ConnectCore 8M Mini comes with a built-in Video Processing Unit specialising in vision use cases. The Digi ConnectCore 8M Mini SOM is an industrial i.MX 8M Mini quad-core system-on-module that comes with Arm Cortex-A53 cores, one Cortex-M4 core, and the Cortex-M0-based Digi Microcontroller Assist. This enables optimal power consumption while simultaneous maintenance of highly efficient performance. Main benefits of Digi Connect Core 8M Mini SOM Digi SMTplus form factor (40 x 45 mm) for flexibility and reliability while designing. Power management with both hardware and software support for low-power designs. Display and camera capabilities with graphics and video hardware acceleration make it suitable […]

June 18, 2021August 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

KloudNote 10.3-inch E-reader supports WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular connectivity

Geniatech used to be better known for their Amlogic TV boxes, before expanding their business to development boards and systems-on-modules. But the company has now introduced KloudNote, a 10.3-inch E-reader running Android 8.1 on a quad-core Cortex-A35 processor. The device is equipped with 2GB of RAM and a 16GB eMMC flash, supports WiFi 5 and Bluetooth, as well as optional 2G/3G/4G LTE cellular connectivity, and comes with a USB-C port and a headphone jack. KloudNote (sometimes written Kloud Note) specifications: SoC – Unnamed quad-core Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.2 GHz System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 16GB or 32GB eMMC flash Display – 10.3-inch E-Ink flexible screen with cover-lens, 1872×1404 resolution, capacitive touch and electromagnetic touch with support for a stylus with 4096-level of pressure sensitivity Connectivity 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi 5, Bluetooth 4.2 Optional 2G/3G/4G Audio – Earphone jack, built-in speaker & microphone USB – 1x USB-C port for charging Documents […]

June 18, 2021December 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

TI AM64x 7-core processor is made for PLC’s, motor drives, industrial robots

Texas Instruments AM64x is a family of 64-bit Arm processors with functional safety designed for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), motor drives, remote I/O, and industrial robots. The top-end processor of the family, AM6442, comes with seven cores including two Cortex-A53 application cores, four Cortex-R5F real-time cores, and one Cortex-M4F isolated core. AFAICT, while the documentation is dated January 2021 and TI announced the processor in February in a blog post with a cryptic title, it was only first picked up by Embedded Computing in early May. Besides the processor itself, TI also provides an AM64x starter kit and a full-featured AM64x evaluation kit, and several companies are already preparing development boards and modules as we’ll see further below. TI AM64x processor AM64x key features & specifications: CPU cores Dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.0 GHz with 256KB L2 shared cache with SECDED ECC, 32KB L1 D-cache, 32KB L1 I-cache Up […]

June 18, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

paperd.ink 4.2-inch ESP32-based e-Paper display ships with a 3D printed enclosure (Crowdfunding)

We’ve covered a fair amount of connected e-Paper/e-Ink displays based on ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth SOC including several Inkplate displays, with the latest Inkplate 6Plus model including a touchscreen, TTGO T5 displays with small sizes, or even the fully enclosed M5Paper ESP32 IoT development kit with a 4.7-inch touchscreen e-Paper display. There’s also Watchy ESP32 smartwatch with a 1.54-inch display if you really need something small. But here’s another option courtesy of Rohit & Prasad, two young engineers from India, with the paperd.ink 4.2-inch ESP32-powered e-Paper display that ships with an optional 3D printed enclosure. paperd.ink display specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROOM-32 module with ESP32 dual-core processor, 4 MB SPI flash, 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 & Bluetooth LE connectivity Storage – MicroSD card slot for storing images, files, etc Display – 4.2″ monochrome e-Paper display with 400 x 300 resolution; 3s for full refresh; partial refresh supported USB – 1x […]