Sipeed TANG Hex is a Low-Cost Xilinx Zynq-7020 Arm FPGA Board

Sipeed TANG Hex

Last year, Sipeed launched a $5 FPGA board called Sipeed Tang and based on an entry-level Gowin GW1N-1-LV FPGA. But I had not noticed the company had also worked on a more powerful, yet still low-cost Xilinx Zynq-7020 board in a business card form factor not too dissimilar from the Raspberry Pi model B form factor. Meet Sipeed TANG Hex. So far a low-cost Zynq-7010 or Zynq-7020 board met you had to spend $99 to $199 with products such as MyIR Z-Turn and Digilent PYNQ-Z1. But Sipeed Tang HEX can be purchased for as little as $73 shipping on Aliexpress,  or 439 RMB ($62) on Taobao for people based in mainland China. It might be tempting to get a low-cost board to get started, but is it worth it? Read on to find out. Sipeed TANG Hex specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7020 (XC7Z020-1CLG484) dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor and FPGA with […]

Up2stream Mini & Pro v3 Audio Boards Add Bluetooth 5.0, USB Sound Card Mode and More

Up2stream Pro v3 smart audio board

Rakoit launched Up2stream WiFi audio board in 2018, followed by Up2stream Pro board in 2019 with additional Bluetooth, Ethernet, and USB interfaces. Those boards are designed to bring network connectivity to speakers for audio streaming. The company has now launched updates with the launch of Up2stream Mini v3 and Up2stream Pro v3 connected audio boards. Both Up2Stream Mini v3 and Pro v3 have gotten similar updates with the ability to use the board as a micro USB sound card so you can directly plug it into a PC to make it work as a USB DAC. The boards also added SPDIF out, an ADC KEY input for external buttons, two I/O for extensions such as volume knobs. Up2stream Mini v3 now includes both WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. Shared key features and specifications of the boards are as follows:  Audio Output – 3.5mm audio jack and header (shared), I2S & […]

CHUWI LarkBox, the World’s Smallest 4K Mini PC, Launched on Indiegogo for $149 and Up

CHUWI LarkBox

CHUWI LarkBox would just be like many other Intel Gemini Lake mini PCs with an Intel Celeron J4115 Gemini Lake Refresh processor, 6GB RAM, 128GB Storage, as well as the usual HDMI 2.0 ports and USB ports if it were not for its size: 61 x 61 x 43 mm, making it the world’s smallest 4K mini PC. The company sent drips of news to the press in the last couple of months, but it’s getting real as the tiny mini PC has now launched on Indiegogo with rewards starting at $155. CHUWI LarkBox (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4115 quad-core Gemini Lake Refresh processor @ 1.8 / 2.5 GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD Graphics 600; 10W TDP System Memory – 6GB LPDDR4 Storage – 128GB eMMC 5.1 flash, M.2 2244 socket for SATA SSD, MicroSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60 Hz […]

TASMOTA Now Supports ESP32 Targets including some Ethernet and Camera Boards

Tasmota ESP32

TASMOTA now supports ESP32. The open-source firmware was initially designed for ESP8266 and ESP8285 based Sonoff home automation devices providing an alternative to eWelink firmware with support for MQTT protocol allowing integration with home automation frameworks like Domoticz or openHAB. It has since then expanded to support hardware from various brands, but until recently you were still limited to products with ESP8266 or ESP8285, and the good news is that TASMOTA has now gotten experimental support for ESP32 boards and products such as TTGO T-Camera. You’ll find basic documentation and well as Tasmota ESP32 (aka Tasmota32) firmware files for LilyGO TTGO T-Camera board, displays, and I2C sensor on Tasmota Github.io website. The ESP32 port is based on Jörg Schüler-Maroldt’s work. PuceBacoon also found other ESP32 boards in the source code including Olimex ESP32-PoE board in xdrv_82_ethernet.ino file and “AI Thinker” cameras in xdrv_81_webcam.ino. If you’d like to give it a […]

Raspberry Pi VideoCore IV Boards Get an Unofficial Vulkan Driver Good Enough to Play Quake 3

Raspberry Pi 3 Vulkan VideoCore IV GPU

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is collaborating with Igalia to work on everything related to graphics support for VideoCore VI GPU found in Raspberry Pi 4’s Broadcom BCM2711 SoC. This lead to OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance at the beginning of the year, and good progress with Raspberry Pi 4 Vulkan support. There’s no plan to work on an official Vulkan driver for earlier Raspberry Pi  boards with VideoCore IV GPU, but since the Raspberry Pi Foundation released open-source VideoCore IV driver and documentation several years ago, it’s, in theory, possible for skilled developers to improve on it. That’s exactly what Martin Thomas, an NVIDIA engineer, has done in his spare time, and after two years of work, a Vulkan driver for Raspberry Pi VideoCore IV board – RPi-VK-Driver – has been released on Github. Pi-VK-Driver implements a subset of the Vulkan, and since it is not fully conformant to the standard […]

Pandauino 644/1284 Narrow are Compact ATmega644/1284 Arduino Boards (Crowdfunding)

Pandauino Narrow Pinout Diagram

Pandauino 644 Narrow and 1284 Narrow boards powered by Microchip ATmega644 and ATmega1284 8-bit AVR MCU in a compact form factor slightly larger than the official Arduino Nano. The Pandaunino boards also come with up to eight times more RAM, more flash, as well as ten extra digital I/Os compared to Arduino Nano while keeping software compatibility. Pandauino 644/1284 Narrow boards specifications: MCU 644 Narrow – Microchip ATmega644 8-bit AVR microcontroller with 64KB flash, 4KB SRAM, 2KB EEPROM 1284 Narrow – Microchip ATmega1284 8-bit AVR microcontroller with 128KB flash, 16KB SRAM, 4KB EEPROM USB – 1x Micro USB port for power and programming I/Os – 24x digital I/Os including up to 8x PWM (6x max for 644 Narrow), 8x analog I/Os, 1x SPI, 2x USART, 1x I2C Power Supply – 5V input with on-board 5V and 3.3V regulators. Max current – USB: 500 mA limited by a PTC. Vin: 800 […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025

Orange Pi 4 Metal Enclosure Launched for $10

Orange Pi 4 Metal Enclosure

Orange Pi 4 and Orange Pi 4B, the latter further adding a Gyrfalcon 2801S AI accelerator chip, were launched in late 2019 for as little as $50 with 4GB RAM making those some of the most affordable Rockchip RK3399 SBC’s on the market. Since then, Shenzhen Xunlong Software launched some extra accessories for the board including a PCIe expansion board with a mini PCIe socket, and a SIM card slot, and very recently a Rockchip RM310 4G LTE modem to go along. The latest addition is a metal enclosure made of aluminum alloy and suitable for either version of the board. The enclosure is fairly compact with fins on top for cooling and openings for the 40-pin GPIO header and PCIe connector. Talking about PCIe, it would have been nice if they also make a case capable of taking their PCIe adapter board, but that would be for another time. […]

ESP32 Board Features mini PCIe & SIM Card Sockets for 4G LTE Connectivity

ESP32 SIM Card T-PCIe Board Pinout Diagram

LilyGO has launched yet another ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth IoT board. As its name implies, TTGO-T-PCIe board includes a mini PCIe socket that coupled with a SIM card socket allowing users to insert a 4G LTE mPCIe card to add cellular connectivity. The company also offers optional SIM7000 2G or SIM7600 4G LTE modems that come with LTE and GPS antennas. You should probably be able to add other cellular mini PCiE, as well as other wireless mPCIe modems for LoRa, Satellite communication, etc… (Finally most probably not) TTGO-T-PCIe board specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROVER-B with ESP32 dual-core wireless SoC with 520KB SRAM, WiFi and Bluetooth with on-board antenna, as well as 4MB flash, and 8MB PSRAM Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 150 Mbps (ESP32) Bluetooth 5.1 LE (ESP32) Optional wireless cards via mPCIe socket (I2C and UART), SIM card slot for 2G and 4G LTE cellular networking […]

Boardcon LGA3576 Rockchip RK3576 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications