CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 29, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Power Sensors and Boards with Water using 5V/12V Micro Water Turbines

I follow some online IoT groups, and many of the projects are related to smart farming and greenhouses. People may want to monitor temperature and humidity and other environmental factors using battery-powered sensors. If there are many of those sensors, this can be cumbersome to either replace or recharge batteries, and that increases maintenance costs. But since plants usually need to be watered there should be some water pipes around, and I’ve just found out some low-cost micro water turbines that can generate 5V or 12V when connected to a water pipe and water flows. Micro water turbines specifications: Output Voltage 5V model 5 +/- 0.3 VDC water flow 10+ L / min 3 to 5 +/- 0.3 VDC Water flow 4L / min 3 +/- 0.25 VDC Water flow 3.5L / min 12V model 12 +/- 0.3 VDC water flow 10+ L / min 5 ～ 12 +/- 0.3 […]

April 29, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

BashTop is a Linux Resource Monitor for the Terminal

Neil Amstrong of BayLibre recently added ODROID-C4 support to Armbian, fired up Rosetta@Home on the Amlogic S905X3 SBC, and took a screenshot of some kind of advanced htop program showing the Rosetta@Home and other processes running. And… Rosetta@Home starting ! pic.twitter.com/w10hjwppLR — Neil Armstrong @superna9999@social.linux.pizza (@Superna9999) April 27, 2020 The program used happens to be BashTop a recently released Linux resource monitor written in Bash and running in a terminal. Installing the script and running it is super easy:

git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/bashtop
cd bashtop
./bashtop

git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/bashtop

cd bashtop

./bashtop

I tried it in an AMD Ryzen 7 laptop running Ubuntu 18.04. You’ll need at least a 80×25 terminal window, but it looks much better in full screen. It shows CPU use in graphical and text forms, memory and storage usage, a list of processes, as well as network usage both in graphical and text forms. You can also select each individual process to get more information or kill it. […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Rockchip RK3588 8K TV Box Triples as 5G & WiFi 6 Router, Home Automation Gateway

Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor was only expected in the second half of 2020 for IoT and vision/AI applications, but at least one company is working on a 3-in-1 product based on Rockchip high-end processor with a “5G AIoT 8K TV box” that also works as a 5G and WiFi 6, and with features such as Zigbee can also act as a home automation gateway. “5G AIoT Android TV Box” preliminary specifications: Main SoC – Rockchip 3588 octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 and 4x Cortex-A55 cores in dynamIQ configuration, Arm “Natt” GPU (i.e. NOT Mali-G31 MP2), NPU 2.0, 8K H.265/AV1 video decoder, 4K video encoder System Memory – 4GB DDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot up to 64GB?! Video Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 8K resolutions Audio – SPDIF audio output, HDMI audio Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 via Qualcomm QCA6391 WiSoC 1x […]

April 28, 2020April 29, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

Allwinner V831 AI Full HD Camera SoC Powers Sochip V831 Development Board

In the last year or so, we’ve started to see several camera SoCs with a built-in NPU or SIMD instructions to accelerate face detection, objects detection and so on, starting with the low-resolution Kendryte K210 processor to the 2.5K Ingenic T31 MIPS video processor, or even the 4K capable iCatch V37 camera SoC. Allwinner introduces several camera processors (V3, V316, S3…) in the past, but none of them included an NPU aka AI accelerator. This has now changed with Allwinner V831 Cortex-A7 Full HD camera SoC also including a small 200 GOPS NPU. Sochip / Allwinner V831 AI Camera SoC Specifications: CPU – Single-core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ up to 800 MHz with NEON, 32KB L1 instruction cache and 32KB L1 Data cache, 128KB L2 cache AI Accelerator – 0.2 TOPS (200 GOPS) NPU for face recognition, face detection, and “humanoid detection network” System Memory – 64MB on-chip DDR2 RAM […]

April 28, 2020May 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

NANOTE 7″ 2-in-1 Mini Laptop with Intel Atom X5 Processor to Launch for $185 in Japan

Mini laptops have been a thing for the last 2 or 3 years thanks to companies such as GPD and OneNote. However, most of the models rely on fairly powerful and expensive low-power processors from Comet Lake and Amber Lake families, and that may be fine if you want a versatile, ultra-portable machine as your main driver, but not everybody wants to spend $700-$1,000 on this type of device. In the recent past, we’ve seen a couple of cheaper Intel Cherry Trail mini laptops such as Pretech F700mi and Peakago. But the former does not appear to be for sale, and the latter was offered for $269 and the company decided to upgrade it to an Intel Celeron N4100 processor. Peakago is still not available, as Indiegogo backers are still waiting for their perks. So if you’re looking for an entry-level mini laptop NANOTE appears to be a better option as […]

April 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ESP32-Korvo AI Development Board Leverages ESP-Skainet Voice Assistant

Last September, Espressif Systems unveiled ESP-Skainet voice assistant optimized for ESP8266 and ESP32 wireless SoC with support for WakeNet wake word engine and MultiNet speech commands recognition with the former requiring just 20KB RAM for one word, and the latter supporting up to 100 offline commands as long as you had 4MP SPI flash or more. At the time, it only supported the Chinese language and worked on the upcoming “LyraT-Mini audio board“, now available for $26.99 shipped but only including one microphone. Espressif Systems has now announced a better AI development board with ESP32-Korvo AI development board includes featuring a mainboard with ESP32 processor and an audio ADC, and a subboard equipped with a 3-mic array, RGB LEDs, and various buttons. ESP32-Korvo specifications: Mainboard Wireless module – ESP32-WROVER-B with ESP32 dual-core Wi-Fi / BT processor, 128 Mbit SPI flash, and 64 Mbit PSRAM Storage – MicroSD card slot Audio […]

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

April 27, 2020April 28, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

$9 Ebyte E180-ZG120B-TB Zigbee 3.0 Evaluation Board Features Silicon Labs EFR32MG1B Zigbee/Thread SoC

Ebyte E180-ZG120B-TB is a Zigbee 3.0 evaluation/development board based on the company’s E180-ZG120B module itself powered by Silicon Labs EFR32MG1B Series 1 Zigbee/Thread Arm Cortex-M4 SoC. Ebyte E180-ZG120B-TB specifications: Zigbee Module – Ebyte E180-ZG120B powered by Silabs EFR32MG1B Arm Cortex-M4 @ 40 MHz with 256 KB flash, 32KB SRAM; IPEX antenna connector; dimensions: 18 x 11.5mm Connectivity 2.4GHz Zigbee 3.0 & Thread Tx Power: 18 to 20dBm Range up to 1.3 km USB – 1x Micro USB port for power and programming via CP2102G serial chip Expansion 2x 14-pin headers plus 9-pin header giving access to module I/Os including GPIO, UART, PWM, ADC, TouchLink, Wake, RESET, DBG, 3.3V, and GND 6-pin header for power, 1x UART for CP2102G, 1x UART for module; Fitted with 3 jumpers by default to connect both Tx/Rx, as well as 3.3V power pins. Removing the jumper should allow you to connect directly to the module, […]

April 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Banana Pi BPI-F2P Industrial Control Board Adds PoE, RS-232 and RS-485 Interfaces

At the end of Last year, we covered Banana Pi BPI-F2S Industrial SBC powered by Sunplus SP7021 “Plus1” SoC with four Cortex-A7 core, an Arm A926 microprocessor, an 8051 core, as well as 128MB to 512MB built-in DDR3 RAM. The company has now unveiled Banana Pi BPI-F2P with the same processor and many of the same features, but with the addition of PoE support on one of the Fast Ethernet ports, as well as an RS-232 DB9 connector, and RS-485 terminal blocks. The expansion connector for an FPGA board found in BPI-F2S is however gone. Banana Pi BPI-F2P 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 – […]

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