CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Silicon Labs BG22 Secure Bluetooth 5.2 SoC Promises 10-Year Coin-Cell Battery Life

Yesterday, we wrote about the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard which promises smaller Bluetooth audio devices, or longer battery life, as well as support for multi-stream and broadcast audio. But there has been some other Bluetooth developments with the release of Bluetooth 5.2 specification on December 31st, and the announcement of the first Bluetooth 5.2 SoC courtesy of Silicon Labs. Bluetooth 5.2 Main Changes Bluetooth 5.2 builds upon Bluetooth 5.1 with the following key changes: Enhanced Attribute Protocol (EATT) – Improved version of the Attribute Protocol (ATT), which supports concurrent transactions, allows the interleaving of L2CAP packets relating to ATT packets from different applications and allows the ATT Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) to be changed during a connection. This can reduce latency and improves the responsiveness of Bluetooth LE applications. LE Power Control – Devices can dynamically optimize the transmission power used in communication between connected devices with BLE receivers […]

January 8, 2020June 10, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Arduino Portenta H7 STM32H7 Cortex- M7/M4 Industrial Board Runs Arduino Code, Python and JavaScript

Arduino is now at CES 2020 promoting its Arduino Pro all-in-all IoT solution for professionals with the Arduino Pro IDE, Arm Pelion IoT platform for device management, and a new Portenta industry-grade board family starting with Arduino Portenta H7 board powered by STMicro STM32H7 dual-core Arm Cortex-M7/M4 microcontroller. Arduino Portenta H7 Specifications: Microcontroller – STMicro STM32H747XI Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz + M4 @ 200 MHz MCU with 2MB dual-bank Flash memory, 1 MB RAM, Chrom-ART graphical hardware accelerator System Memory – 2MB SDRAM (upgradeable up to 64MB) Storage – 16MB QSPI NOR Flash (Upgradeable up to 128MB) Connectivity 2.4GHz WiFi 802.11b/g/n up to 65 Mbps and Bluetooth 5.1 BR/EDR/LE via Murata 1DX module On-board 10/100M PHY Video I/F – MIPI DSI & 8-bit camera interfaces via 80-pin expansion connector, DisplayPort over USB-C port USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port for power (PD), programming, and DisplayPort output I/Os Arduino MKR […]

January 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Bluetooth LE Audio Supports LC3 Codec, Multi-stream & Broadcast Audio, Nordic Semi Evaluation Kit Unveiled

I first heard about Bluetooth LE (Low Energy)- part of Bluetooth 4.0- in 2013 with RFDuino board, and it came to prominence once Android 4.3 added support later this year. Bluetooth LE is using to transmit messages using as little as energy as possible for example to synchronize data between a smartphone and a smartwatch. But if you ever had to transmit audio, you had to rely on Bluetooth Classic which, albeit considering low power, consumes more energy. But you should soon have much longer battery life on your Bluetooth headphone or battery-operated speaker, as the Bluetooth SIG has just announced Bluetooth LE Audio which adds a new codec and support for multi-stream and broadcast audio. The new high-quality, low-power audio codec used in the new Bluetooth standard is called the Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3). The chart above shows the results of listening tests between LC3 and SBC codecs […]

January 7, 2020August 11, 2020 by Ayo Ayibiowu - No Comments

MYIR Launches SoM & Development Board based on STM32MP1 Microprocessor

MYIR, the Chinese based company that has developed several ARM-based hardware solutions, has introduced a new SoM powered by the ST’s STM32MP1 microprocessor called the MYC-YA157C CPU Module with an accompanying development board known as the MYD-YA157C development board. Early last year, STMicro announced the introduction of the STM32MP1, the first STM32 MPU (Microprocessor Unit) that features one or two Arm Cortex-A7 cores running Linux, as well as an Arm Cortex-M4 real-time core making it possible to use previous STM32 codes on the new unit. Although, less than 1-year-old, the STM32MP1 microprocessor has since be deployed on a couple of development boards like the STMicro’s own discovery kits and evaluation platform, Emtrion emSBC-Argon, PanGu single-board computer, and even octavo systems unveiled the OSD32MP15x system-in-package. One primary observation with these other developments boards is their relatively steep cost, and something MYIR aims to address. MYiR MYC-YA157C STM32MP1 CPU Module The MYC-YA157C […]

January 7, 2020January 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Raspberry Pi 4 Powered Open Source Hardware Robot Paves the Way for Robot Maids

Raspberry Pi 4 Open Source Hardware Robot

Eventually, we all expect robots to do chores and other manual tasks performed by humans such as preparing and serving food at restaurants, carry objects over rough terrain as opposed to just inside the warehouse with a flat floor, or even moves pieces on a chessboard when other humans are no here to play with us. I’m fully expecting to eventually own a robot maid of sorts to wash dishes, mop the floors, and perform other tasks on my behalf. We are not there yet, but Raspberry Pi 4 powered Pollen Robotics’ Reachy open source-hardware robot is getting us closer to the goal as it can handle small objects and via two robotic arms and a dual-camera head, and can also interact with humans using a microphone and a speaker. Key features and specifications of Reachy robot: Main body SBC – Raspberry Pi 4 SBC with 2GB according to a […]

January 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

NXP i.MX 8M Plus Processor Targets AI Applications with a 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit

NXP has just announced its first i.MX processor with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) at CES 2020. The NXP i.MX 8M Plus SoC is built upon the existing i.MX 8M Nano family with a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor running at up to 2GHz, an independent real-time Cortex-M7 microcontroller @ 800MHz, and a Vivante 3D GPU, but adds a 2.3 TOPS NPU to the mix. The NPU will enable advanced machine learning inference at the industrial and IoT (Internet-of-Things) edges for applications such as people and object recognition for public safety, industrial machine vision, robotics, hand gesture, and emotion detection with natural language processing. NXP i.MX 8M Plus key features and specifications: CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with 512KB ECC cache Real-time MCU – Arm Cortex-M7 @ up to 800 MHz GPU – Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU DSP – HiFi […]

January 7, 2020January 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Acer Swift 3 (SF314-42) AMD Ryzen 4700U Laptop to Launch in March for €599 and Up

AMD just announced its 15W Ryzen 4000-U series processors for laptops aiming to compete against Intel Ice Lake processors, and one of the first ultrathin laptop based on AMD Ryzen 4700U processor will be Acer Swift 3 (SF314-42) equipped with a 14″ display, up to 16GB LPDDR4x memory, and up to 512GB PCIe SSD storage. Acer Swift 3 (SF314-42) specifications: SoC – Up to AMD Ryzen 4700U octa-core/octa-thread Zen 2 processor @ 2.0 GHz / 4.1 (Boost) and 7-core Radeon graphics; 15W TDP; 7nm process System Memory – Up to 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM Storage – Up to 512 GB PCIe SSD Display – 14″ Full HD display Video Output – HDMI Audio – Stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack Camera – 720p webcam Connectivity – WiFi 6 (802.11ax) USB – 1x USB Type-C port, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, Dimensions – 32.25 x 21.8 x 15.95 mm Weight – […]

January 7, 2020May 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

AMD Announces 15W Ryzen 4000-U Series and Athlon 3000-Series Mobile Processors

Intel makes plenty of processors with 6W to 10W TDP suitable for entry-level products or mid-range laptop that require long battery life, but there’s less of a choice from AMD, especially at the low-end, and the most recent AMD processors with a low power budget start at 12W+ with AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 and Ryzen Embedded R1000-series both of which mostly targets industrial and embedded applications. But with CES 2020 about to kick off, the company has now unveiled several 15 Watts processors wit the Ryzen 4000-U series targetting ultra-thin laptop, and Athlon 3000-series for entry-level notebooks. AMD Ryzen 4000-U Series AMD Ryzen 4000-series are actually comprised of two sub-families with the 45W Ryzen 4000-H series for higher performance gaming laptops, and the 15W Ryzen 4000-U series for ultra-thin laptops, and I’ll focus on the latter in this post. MODEL CORES/ THREADS cTDP (Watts) BOOST/ BASE FREQ. (GHz) RADEON GRAPHICS […]