CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 11, 2018July 11, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

This Soldering Pen Board with Audio Jack Supports Weller RT Tips

The 3.5mm audio jack may be slowly disappearing from new mobile phones, but I’ve recently discovered they were also used in some soldering irons such as the upcoming TS80 USB soldering iron succeeding TS100 model. I initially thought it was a custom design from the maker of TSxxx soldering irons, but this morning I’ve come across the “RT Soldering Pen” board which also features a 3.5mm (audio) jack and can be used to make your own soldering iron by 3D printing your own enclosure, adding some power source, and inserting one of the many Weller RT tips available into the jack. RT soldering pen board specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32F031 Arm Cortex-M0 micro-controller Display – 0.91″ OLED display with 128×32 resolution Compatible with all Weller RT tips with 3.5mm jack. Set-point temperature – 20°C – 400°C with about +/-5°C accuracy (calibration is planed) Maximum measurable temperature – 500°C Heating speed […]

July 10, 2018November 14, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Flashing Firmware to Rockchip Devices in Linux with rkdeveloptool Open Source Utility

It’s been possible to flash firmware to Rockchip devices in Linux with upgrade_tool command line tool for many years, but the utility is closed-source and only supports “RK Firmware” files that are also used for OTA firmware updates, but not “raw firmware” that you’d flash directly to micro SD cards for example. This week-end as I played with ROC-RK3328-CC board, I encountered some instability issues with micro SD cards, so I instead relied on an eMMC flash module. The only problem was that Firefly Team only releases “raw firmware” files, so I was unable to use upgrade_tool, and instead found out rkdeveloptool open source utility was used to flash raw firmware images in Firefly’s Wiki. The first step is to connect a male to male USB Type A cable (like that one on eBay) between the board and the host computer, and connect a USB power adapter to the board. […]

July 10, 2018July 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

SySTOR (Micro) SD Card Duplicators Can Handle Up to 200 SD Cards

So this week-end, I started to play with ROC-RK3328-CC (Renegade) board that I received from T-Chip / Firefly-Team and as always, I used Etcher to flash the firmware images to micro SD cards. Once flashing is complete, you’ll get a screen mentioning Etcher Pro, a standalone hardware solution allowing to duplicate the content of one micro SD card to 16 other cards. That’s very interesting if you need to duplicate many cards for a project, but the only problem is that the device is not available just yet. So I thought such equipment must already exist and indeed, a company called SySTOR offers such systems able to duplicate one (micro) SD card to up to 199 other (micro) SD cards. Some of the specifications & key features of the system: Processor – Multi-core processor System Memory – 256 MB DDR3 Capacity – Various models from 4 to 200 micro SD […]

July 10, 2018August 2, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Microsoft Surface Go Tablet Based on Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y Processor to Sell for $399 and Up

Microsoft Surface devices are powerful but usually expensive ($2,000+) tablets and laptops, but the company has now launched an entry-level model called Surface Go, powered by an Intel Kaby Lake Pentium processor with 4 to 8GB RAM, 64 to 256 GB storage, and a 10″ high resolution display, and selling for $399 and up. Microsoft Surface Go specifications: SoC – Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y dual core/four thread Kaby Lake-Y processor @ up to 1.6 GHz (base frequency), with 24EU Intel HD Graphics 615 @ 300 / 850 MHz; 6W TDP System Memory – 4 or 8GB LPDDR3-1866 Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, 128GB or 256GB SSD, micro SD card slot Display – 10″ 1800×1200 PixelSense display; 3:2 aspect ratio; built-in kickstand with full friction hinge that extends to 165 degrees Cameras – 8MP Rear camera, 5MP Front-facing camera with Windows Hello facial recognition Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack Connectivity – […]

July 10, 2018July 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

96-Core NanoPi Fire3 Boards Cluster is a DIY Portable Solution to Teach or Develop Distributed Software

Nick Smith has been messing around with clusters made of Arm boards for several years starting with Raspberry Pi boards, including a 5-node RPI 3 cluster, before moving to other boards like Orange Pi 2E, Pine A64+, or NanoPC-T3. His latest design is based on twelve NanoPi Fire3 boards with 8 cores each, bringing the total number of cores to 96. The platform may not be really useful for actual HPC applications due to limited power and memory, but can still be relied upon for education and development, especially it’s easily portable. Nick also made some interesting points and discoveries. It’s pretty with shiny blinking LEDs, and what looks like proper cooling, and the cluster can deliver 60,000 MFLOPS with Linpack which places it in the top 250 faster computers in the world! That’s provided we travel back in time to year 2000 through 🙂 By today’s standard, it would […]

July 9, 2018July 9, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Arm Compares Arm & RISC-V Benefits in RISCV Basics Website

Arm is a dominant force in mobile and embedded processors, but recently we’ve heard more and more about RISC-V open source and royalty-free alternatives, and for example SiFive has launched both application processors / IP with solutions like Linux capable Freedom U540 SoC found in HiFive Unleashed board, as well as RISC-V MCU Cores competing with Arm Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M0+ cores. There’s certainly a lot of activity around RISC-V, but I have not seen many commercial solutions yet, and the platform needs to mature. However, Arm apparently takes the competition seriously with the company setting up a website – riscv-basics.com – comparing Arm and RISC-V, notably through the infographics below. Arm recognizes RISC-V has no recurring license fees, but claims those fees are only a small fraction of the total investment required for a commercial processor. The company also questions RISC-V maturity, and at this stage is may be true, […]

July 9, 2018July 9, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

TTGO Micro-32 is a Tiny ESP32-PICO-D4 Module

Unveiled almost a year ago, ESP32-PICO-D4 SiP (System-in-Package) combines ESP32 wireless processor, 4MB SPI Flash, a crystal oscillator, as well as some passive components, and allows more compact or thinner designs such as found in ESP32-PICO- Kit v4 development board. However, so far I had not seen any ESP32-PICO-D4 module, but TTGO Micro-32 fills the void as a compact module based on the SiP. TTGO Micro-32 module specifications: SiP – Espressif Systems ESP32-PICO-D4 based on ESP32 dual core processor + 4MB SPI flash Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.2 LE and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 150 Mbps with chip antenna and u.FL (IPEX) connector Expansion – Castellated holes with GPIO, ADC, DAC, VP/VN, Touch, UART, I2C, and power signals Supply Voltage – 3.3V Dimensions – 19.2 x 13.3 mm (45% smaller than ESP32-WROOM-32) There’s no specific software for the module, since it should be software compatible with ESP-WROOM-32 (now called ESP32-WROOM-32). […]

July 8, 2018July 8, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Makerdiary nRF52840 Micro Development Kit Works with OpenThread, Arm Mbed OS, Zephyr OS, Mynewt, etc…

If you want to play around with Bluetooth 5, Nordic nRF52840 is probably one of the best option, and among the development board, $9/$12 Particle Xenon is hard to beat when it comes to value. But if you need a bit more storage, I/Os and features, Makerdiary nRF52840 micro development kit looks like a good candidate to evaluate, especially it supports plenty of frameworks / operating systems such as Arm Mbed OS, Zephyr Project, OpenThread, Mynewt, and others. It’s also the first MCU class board I’ve seen with a USB type C port, although I’m not sure it brings any benefits to this type of hardware. Makerdiary nRF52840 micro development kit (nRF52840-MDK) hardware specifications: SoC – Nordic nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F WiSoC with 1 MB FLASH and 256 kB RAM, Arm TrustZone Cryptocell 310 security subsystem External Storage – 64-Mbit QSPI flash Wireless Connectivity (on-chip) Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth Mesh Thread, IEEE […]