CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 14, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Rikomagic R6 Mini Projector Review – Part 2: Android 7.1

We’ve already quickly checked out Rikomagic R6 mini projector in the first part of the review with an unboxing and first boot, but now I’ve had more time to play with the device, so I’ll report about my experience. Android Launcher and Default Apps Here’s the launcher pre-installed in the projector. Media Center The Media Center app allows you to display images, play audio files as well as videos. It will show thumbnails of images present in the current folder… and as soon as you select one image in the folder it will start a slideshow with classic music playing the background. You’ll be able to see what it looks like in the video at the end of this review. Happy Cast It’s an app in Chinese, that apparently allows you to cast from other Chinese apps, but I have not used it. WiFi Display WiFi Display will be one […]

November 14, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Giveaway Week Winners – November 2019

We just had another of our yearly “Giveaway week” on CNX Software with 7 prizes including Arm and RISC-V development boards, NB-IoT tracker, USB-C hub, as well as development kits based on ESP32 or ESP8266 WiSoCs. People just had to comment within a 48 hours period, and we would randomly select a winner each day. We now have all confirmed winners with a strong start from Europe, Asia catching up mid-week, before with Poland and Brazil taking the week-end prizes: Balena Fin Developer Kit – Laurent H, FRANCE WisCellular NB-IoT & eMTC GPS Tracker – Jimmy, SWEDEN MINIX NEO S1 USB-C Hub with 120GB built-in SSD – Jeroen, BELGIUM Maixduino Sipeed M1 RISC-V AI Kit – Nguyen Tung, VIETNAM ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit – Bumsik Kim, SOUTH KOREA Particle Mesh IoT Development Kit – Wojciech Lubicz-Lapinski, POLAND NanoPi M4V2 SBC & Metal Case Kit – Thiago Tavares, BRAZIL I […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

November 14, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$10 HelTec CubeCell LoRa Board Features Cypress PSoC 4 MCU

HelTec CubeCell is an Arduino-compatible LoRa module based on Semtech SX1262 transceiver and a Cypress PSoC 4 mixed-signal MCU. The module itself currently sells for $6.90, but you’ll also find a more convenient board for $9.90, as well as a $13.90 IP67 “capsule” housing a battery, an antenna, and a sensor board. All three are available on the same Aliexpress page. CubeCell LoRa board specifications: SoC – ASR Microelectronics ASR6501 with MCU – Cypress PSoC 4 Arm Cortex-M0+ @ 48 MHz with 128KB flash, 16KB SRAM LoRa Transceiver – Semtech SX1262 LoRa Connectivity Bands – EU433, CN470-510, EU863-870, US920-928 Output Power – 21 dB +/- 1 dB max LoRaWAN standard protocol support USB – 1x Micro USB port for power and programming Expansion – 2x 11-pin headers with GPIO’s, UART, I2C, SPI, ADC, Reset, and VIN, 5V, 3.3V, and GND power signals Misc – User and boot buttons, RGB LED […]

November 14, 2019November 14, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - 3 Comments

Peakago 7-inch Windows 10 Fanless Mini-Laptop Launched for $269 and Up (Crowdfunding)

Peakago fanless mini-laptop Peakago Computer has started an IndieGoGo campaign for its 7″ fanless laptop and mini-PC the Peakago. The campaign has raised 831% of the original target funding on its first day. Market Similarities for Mini-Laptops The Peakago is not a new idea, as there have been a number of 7″ to 9″ display laptops that offer Windows operating systems. The advent of the pocket sized laptop has inspired a number of different versions of similar types and operating systems. The Pretech 700Mi Mini is one of those iterations that was reported on here and is a look-alike to the Peakago. In fact, Peakago and the Pretech are from the same tooling company. A Wide Viewing Angle Display The campaign does say the display has a 178° viewing area, but this unit is very portable and could easily be used in a densely populated locale, so maybe such a […]

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 […]

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

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 […]