CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

MutantC v3 open hardware DIY UMPC works with Raspberry Pi and compatible SBC’s

FOSDEM 2021 open-source developer event will take place online later this week, and yesterday we compiled a list of talks, with one entitled “MutantC PDA introduction – open source and hardware PDA shell” piquing my interest. The talk will be about the third revision of the hardware which allows you to create your own UMPC or handheld computer powered by a Raspberry Pi SBC or other compatible single board computers including Asus Tinker Board S, PINE H64 Model B, Banana Pi BPI-M4B, among others. MutantC v3 is versatile and highly customizable as can be seen from the specifications highlights: Supported SBCs – Raspberry Pi Zero, 2, 3, 4 and compatible. Arduino for keyboard – SparkFun Pro Micro 5v/16Mhz or SparkFun Qwiic Pro Micro – USB-C Display – 2.8-inch, 3.5-inch, or 4-inch “GPIO” LCD such as AdaFruit PiTFT 480×320 display Custom PCBs for display, mainboard, and thumbstick Expansion External 12-pin “docking” […]

February 2, 2021February 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Some really tiny USB-C boards – MangoGeek dual serial USB board and Ant2 LiPo Charger

The most touted advantages of the USB Type-C port are that it is reversible, enables more reliable and faster charging, and extra features like DisplayPort alt mode. But it’s also about as small as the micro USB port, and yesterday I came across two really small board with a USB-C connector: Ant2 LiPo charger board and a TTL to USB debug board from MangoGeek with two serial ports. MangoGeek dual serial to USB board One the dual row header, with eight pins in total, is solder to the board, it’s about as big as a MicroSD card. The board is based on Silicon Labs CP2105 USB to dual UART bridge controller., and provides two Tx/Rx interfaces, DTR, RTS, 5V, and GND signals on the top and bottom of the board. One of the UART ports could be used to access a Linux serial, and the other to transmit data. The […]

February 1, 2021February 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

FOSDEM 2021 Online February 6-7 – Hardware, Embedded & IoT talks

FOSDEM is an open-source developer event that takes place on the first week-end of February every year in Brussels, Belgium. Every year except this year, as due to COVID-19 restrictions, FOSDEM 2021 will take place online like most events these days. The schedule has been up for some time, and today I’ll look at some of the interesting talks mostly from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive “virtual devroom” but also other tracks. Saturday, February 6, 2021 13:00 – 14:00 – From Reset Vector to Kernel – Navigating the ARM Matryoshka Long gone are the times of executing the OS in-place from memory-mapped flash upon reset. A modern SoC now comes with complex mask ROM firmware, with driver, filesystem, protocol and crypto support for loading… yet another bootloader. In his talk, Ahmad follows this chain of bootloaders until the kernel is started, stopping along the way for RAM setup, peripherial initialization, […]

February 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier board

Wiretrustee SATA board Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4

Broadcom BCM2711 processor comes with a PCIe interface that is used for the USB ports on the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, but that is exposed through the board-to-board connectors of Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, aka Raspberry Pi CM4, and allows all sort of designs. So far we’ve mostly seen this PCIe interface used for M.2 expansion slots on devices ranging from industrial computers to carrier board such as Piunora or Gumstix Raspberry Pi CM4 development board. But Wiretrustee had a different idea and designed carrier board with Marvell 88SE9215 PCIe to SATA controller and offering four SATA connectors to build a 4-bay NAS with Raspberry Pi CM4 module. Wiretrustee carrier board specifications: Supported SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and 4 Lite Storage 4x SATA 2.0 via Marvell 88SE9215 (PCIe 2.0 x1 to 4 6Gb/s SATA ports, no HW RAID) chip tested at a write speed of ~220MB/s […]

February 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

microByte ESP32 portable game console comes with a 1.3-inch display (Crowdfunding)

microByte ESP32-portable-game console 1.3-inch display

We’ve previously seen programmable, portable game consoles powered by Espressif Systems ESP32 processor with the likes of ODROID-GO or WiFiBoy32 both equipped with a 2.4-inch display, and design to play retro games or create IoT projects with a small display thanks to I/O headers. But if for some reason, you’d like an even more compact ESP32 portable game console based on the WiFi & Bluetooth SoC, Byte-Mix Labs microByte may be what you are looking for thanks to a tiny 1.3-inch square display. microByte specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROVER-E module with ESP32 dual-core processor @ 240 MHz, 8 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash, and integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antenna Storage – MIcroSD card slot Display – 1.3-inch ST7789 IPS Screen with 240 x 240 pixel resolution, 60 Hz max refresh frequency Audio – On-board speaker powered by a MAX98357AETE+T I2S amplifier Controls – 13x onboard buttons with 8x Inductive direction […]

January 31, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

K210 AI Accelerator Raspberry Pi pHAT targets secure AIoT projects (Crowdfunding)

Kendryte K210 is a dual-core RISC-V AI processor that was launched in 2018 and found in several smart audio and computer vision solutions. We previously wrote a Getting Started Guide for Grove AI HAT for Raspberry Pi using Arduino and MicroPython, and XaLogic XAPIZ3500 offered an even more compact K210 solution as a Raspberry pi pHAT with Raspberry Pi Zero form factor. The company is now back with another revision of the board called “XaLogic K210 AI accelerator” designed to work with Raspberry Pi Zero and larger boards with the 40-pin connector. K210 AI Accelerator board specifications: SoC – Kendryte K210 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 400 MHz with 8MB on-chip RAM, various low-power AI accelerators delivering up to 0.5 TOPS, Host Interface – 40-pin Raspberry Pi header using: SPI @ 40 MHz via Lattice iCE40 FPGA I2C, UART, JTAG, GPIOs signals Security Infineon Trust-M cloud security chip 128-bit AES […]

January 30, 2021September 15, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Snapdragon 888 Mobile Hardware Development Kit ships with 12GB RAM, 256GB UFS storage

Snapdragon 888 is the latest premium mobile SoC from Qualcomm with the octa-core processor combining one Cortex-X1 core, three Cortex-A78 cores, and four low-power Cortex-A55 cores, with Adreno 660 GPU and Snapdragon X60 5G modem. The processor will likely most be found in smartphones, but Qualcomm partnered with Lantronix to launch the Snapdragon 888 Mobile Hardware Development Kit designed for Android app developers, hardware vendors, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Snapdragon 888 development board specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 (SM8350) octa-core Qualcomm Kryo 680 CPU with 1x Cortex-X1 core @ 2.84 GHz, 3x Cortex-A78 cores @ 2.42 GHz, and 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.80 GHz, Adreno 660 GPU with support for OpenCL 2.0 FP, OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1, DX12, and up to 8K 360 VR video playback, Hexagon 780 DSP System Memory – 12GB LPDDR5 PoP memory Storage – 256GB UFS 3.0 flash, 1x MicroSD/UFS card Display HDMI […]

January 29, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

SigmaStar SSD201/SSD202 powered 4G LTE industrial gateway made to run mainline Linux

SigmaStar SSD201 is a dual-core Cortex-A7 processor with 64MB RAM onchip that is designed for smart HD displays. We’ve previously seen it in Industio 7-inch smart display running Linux, but if you want to modify anything you’d need sign an NDA before getting the SDK. Luckily there’s an open-source community named linux-chenxing that aims to bring mainline support to those low-cost SigmaStar processor to mainline, the same way linux-sunxi is working on Allwinner processors. Daniel Palmer noticed MYZR recently launched GW300 4G LTE industrial gateway with specifications that looked familiar. GW300 specifications from manufacturer’s website: Processor – Arm Cortex-A7 dual-core processor @ 1.2GHz Memory – 64MB RAM Storage – 128MByte Flash Connectivity – Ethernet and 4G LTE with high-gain antenna Serial – RS485/ RS232 via 5-pin terminal block Misc – RTC Power Supply – 12V to 24V DC input Dimensions – 127.7 x 87.5 x 30 mm Temperature Range – […]