CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 13, 2019February 19, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

GOWIN GW1NRF FPGA Comes with Bluetooth 5.0 LE Radio & 32-bit ARC MCU

I first heard about GOWIN Semiconductor last month when I found out about Sipeed Tang Nano FPGA board going for $5 and featuring GOWIN GW1N FPGA. The company has now announced what it claims is the first Bluetooth FPGA on the market with GW1NRF FPGA integrating a Bluetooth 5.0 LE radio and a 32-bit ARC microcontroller beside FPGA fabric. GOWIN GW1NRF-LV4N uSoC FPGA key features and specifications: FPGA Fabric – 4.6K LUTs, 180 Kb block SRAM, and 16 multipliers MCU – 32-bit ARC microcontroller with 48KB IRAM, 48KB DRAM 136KB block ROM, 128KB block OTG Security – AES-128, RNG, Key GEN Power Management – Wake-up timer, pin monitoring Wireless – Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) 5.0 Transceiver with PHY & MAC Power Supply – 3V or 1.5 V with battery support via on-chip LDO regulator and step-up/step-down DCDC regular Power Consumption – 5nA power disable mode Package – 6x6mm QFN48 package […]

November 13, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Moving Your Arduino Project to a Final Product: 8 Useful Tips

This article was written in collaboration with Jonathan Bara from Neoden USA Using Arduino to create your own tailor-made electronics equipment is a preferred method of thousands of electronics manufacturers worldwide, big and small. Arduino projects effectively start at the software to inform the Arduino microprocessor as to what to do, and then from there, move to the prototyping stage. An Arduino prototype is typically a very rough-looking machine whose only main goal is to prove that the concept at play is functional and worthy of refinement. After this stage, thought then goes into how to create a finished product that’s efficient, properly made, and ready for mainstream use. However, it isn’t always extremely easy to know when your prototype should go to the final design stage, or if there are still some kinks to be worked out. To make this process easier, here’s a list of ten tips when […]

November 13, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Gen 3 Intel Movidius “Keem Bay” VPU Introduced at 2019 Intel AI Summit

Intel made announcements about upcoming AI solutions at 2019 Intel AI Summit. Those include Intel Nervana Neural Network Processors (NNP) for training (NNP-T1000) and inference (NNP-I1000) for cloud and data center customers, as well as Gen 3 Intel Movidis “Keem Bay” VPU. We’ll focus on the latter in this post with Intel claiming similar performance as NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier at much lower power consumption with claims of up to 4.7 times more power efficiency when using ResNet-50 benchmark inference measurement using INT8 with a batch size of 1. Considering Jetson Xavier AGX has a ~30W power budget, that would mean Movidius “Keem Bay” consumes around 6 Watts. Compared to Myriad X MA2085, the new Gen3 VPU is said to have more than 10 times the inference performance. Intel did not provide any TOPS figure, but considering the company announced 1 TOPS of neural compute performance for Myriad X, one […]

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-F2S SBC is Powered by SunPlus SP7021 Processor, Supports Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA Add-on Board

BPI Tech, a spinoff from SinoVoIP, has introduced a new single board computer with Banana Pi BPI-F2S powered by SunPlus SP7021 “Plus1” SoC with four Cortex-A7 cores, one older ARM9 real-time core, and one even older 8051 IO controller. The chip also embeds up to 512MB DDR3 memory. The board comes an 8GB flash, dual Fast Ethernet, HDMI, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO header, as well as headers for an optional Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA expansion board. Banana Pi BPI-F2S SBC Specifications: SoC – Sunplus SP7021 “Plus1” with a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.0 GHz, one Arm A926 microprocessor, an 8051 core to handle I/Os, and 128MB or 512MB DDR3 DRAM. Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output Camera I/F – MIPI CSI connector Connectivity – 2x 10/100M Ethernet USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB port Expansion 40-pin GPIO […]

November 12, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

IEI ITG-100AI DIN-Rail Rugged mini PC Comes with a Myriad X AI Accelerator Module

Intel Myriad X vision processing unit was first introduced in 2017 as an upgrade to Myriad 2 VPU delivering up to 1 TOPS of neural compute performance. The new chip was eventually integrated into Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 launched late last year. We previously wrote about AAEON Boxer 8310AI family of Apollo Lake mini PCs featuring a Myriad X mPCIe module, but there’s now another company, namely Taiwan-based IEI, that has launched its own Myriad X powered rugged mini PC. Meet IEI ITG-100AI fanless AI embedded system. IEI ITG-100AI DIN-Rail Rugged mini PC Specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-E3930 dual-core Apollo lake processor @ 1.3GHz / 1.8 GHz (Turbo) with 12EU Intel HD Graphics 500; TDP: 6.5W System Memory: – 1x 204-pin DDR3L SO-DIMM slot pre-installed with 8 GB memory Storage – 128GB SATADOM, MicroSD slot, optional eMMC 5.0 flash up to 32GB. Display – 1 x VGA Connectivity […]

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Fingerprint Identification with STM32 MCU and Serial TFT LCD Module

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Amy working for STONE Technology, a company specializing in industrial liquid crystal display modules This month, I planned to develop a fingerprint door lock project. When I selected the fingerprint identification module, the project was suspended. However, I thought that since the fingerprint identification module had been purchased, I would simply test it. This fingerprint module can be easily purchased online, connected over UART to an MCU board. It supports fingerprint scanning, fingerprint entry, fingerprint comparison, and fingerprint deletion. Since the fingerprint module manufacturer provides a demo program for STM32F103 series microcontrollers, I bought a small development board based on STM32F103C8T6. The demo program of the fingerprint module uses LED lights to prompt the user to enter the fingerprint and compare the status (success or failure). But I want to use an LCD display, so I chose a 480×272 resolution serial LCD display. […]

November 12, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux Capable Smarphones Database Launched with over 200 Models

Recently there have been companies working on smartphones that ship with Linux with Purism Librem 5 and Pine64 PinePhone being the most popular. But it has been possible to install Linux on various other (Android) phones thanks to projects like PostMarketOS or UBports’ Ubuntu Touch. But to make it easier to find out whether your phone is supported, the guy(s) at Tuxphones have created a database of phones that can run Linux. There are currently over 200 devices listed. The database is not updated manually, and scripts are used to scrape websites and wikis of open source projects such as PostMarketOS, UBports, Asteroid OS, or Maemo Leste. Some Linux operating systems such as Tizen or Sailfish OS are not included because they are not fully open-source nor independent. The use of scripts means the database does not only contain phones, but all some SBC’s, smartwatches, and TV boxes. If you […]

November 11, 2019November 11, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Firewalla Gold Intel-based Ubuntu Router Enables Multi-Gigabit Cyber Security (Crowdfunding)

We covered Firewalla based on NanoPi NEO board in mid-2018. The device is a tiny firewall, parental control, ad-blocker, and VPN appliance for end-users. Since then they’ve launched Firewalla Blue based on NanoPi NEO2 SBC with Gigabit Ethernet and a faster processor, and now the company has just introduced the even more powerful Intel-based Firewalla Gold. Firewalla Gold specifications: Processor – Unnamed intel 64-bit quad-core processor System Memory – 4GB RAM Storage – 32GB flash Connectivity 4x Gigabit Ethernet ports supporting over 3 Gbps in total, and up to 10 VPN connection at up to 120 Mbps aggregated bandwidth. WiFi 6 module (not sure optional or included) Misc – RTC Power Supply – DC barrel jack They may have designed a custom board this time, as I’m not sure which off-the-shelf SBC they may have used in their new product. The device runs Ubuntu Linux so the users will have […]