CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 27, 2018June 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

ACEPC GK1 is an Intel Celeron N4100 mini PC Cooled by a Fan

Last year, we shortly reviewed ACEPC AK1 mini PC powered by an Intel Celeron J3455 Apollo Lake processor, and greatly inspired from HP Elite Slice enclosure design. The company is now back with a upgraded model – ACEPC GK1 – that brings another Intel Celeron N4100 mini PC to the market, but with a 4GB/32GB RAM/storage configuration, and a detachable 2.5″ SATA drive bay. ACEPC GK1 specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N4100 quad core Gemini Lake processor clocked @ 1.10 GHz / 2.40 GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD Graphics 600; 6W TDP System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash, 2.5″ SATA bay, M.2 SSD slot, micro SD card slot Video Output – 2x HDMI 1.4 ports (but the processor supports HDMI 2.0 natively…) Audio – Via HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2 USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 2x […]

May 26, 2018May 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

UP AI Edge Enables Artificial Intelligence on the Edge with Intel CPU, GPU, VPU and FPGA Solutions (Crowdfunding)

Back in February of this year, AAEON introduced their UP AI Edge family of products with UP AI Core mini PCIe card based on Intel Movidius Myriad 2 VPU (Vision Processing Unit), and UP Core Plus board powered by a choice of Apollo Lake processors, and supporting AI Plus FPGA and AI Net Ethernet expansion boards. The company has now launched a Kickstarter campaign for those boards, and added several new products including Vision Plus with three Movidius Myriad 2 VPUs, AI Core M2 with two Movidius Myriad2 VPU in M.2 2280 form factor, as well as the Up Squared AI vision development kit for OpenVINO toolkit. I won’t go through the products announced in February, but let’s have look at the new boards and cards. Vision Plus Board Vision Plus Specifications: VPU – 3x Intel Movidius Myriad 2 VPUs with 512 MB DDR Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet USB […]

May 25, 2018May 25, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Khadas Tone High Resolution Audio Board is Designed for Khadas VIM/VIM2, PCs, and Other SBCs

Khadas VIM and Khadas VIM2 are development boards powered respectively by Amlogic S905x and S912 processors that come with decent software support. The company also provides application specific add-on boards for their SBCs, and a while ago, I reviewed VIM2 with their dual tuner board and showed how to stream videos from my satellite dish or terrestrial antenna to the local network. Their latest solution is Khadas Tone board for high-quality audio applications. Khadas Tone “VIMs Edition” specifications: Multicore MCU – XMOS XU208-128-QF48 with 8x xCORE-200 cores up to 500 MIPS DAC – ES9038Q2M 32-Bit Stereo Mobile Audio DAC THD+N – ≤ 0.000337% @1KHz SNR – ≥ 120dB @ 10Hz~20KHz DNR – ≥ 120dB @ 10Hz~20KHz Crosstalk – ≥ 127dB @ 10Hz~20KHz Frequency Response – ±0.08 dB @ 10Hz~20KHz Sampling Frequency PCM: Up to 768KHz @ 32bit DSD: Up to DSD256 @ 1bit Clock Jitter Reference Clock Jitter < 3ps […]

May 25, 2018May 25, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Xiaomi Mi Router 4 is a $60 AC1200 Router with Three Gigabit Ethernet Ports

Xiaomi Mi Router 3 AC1200 router based on Mediatek MT7620A processor was launched in 2016 for just under $40 on online retailers. It had at least one caveat however, since it only supported Fast Ethernet. The company has now launched an upgraded version – Xiaomi Mi Router 4 -, still an AC1200 router, but equipped with a faster Mediatek MT7621A processor, and three Gigabit Ethernet ports. The new router sells for 199 RMB ($31 US) in China, but it’s also found for under $60 including international shipping on sites like Banggood or GearBest. Mi Router 4 (Miwifi 4) specifications: WiSoC – Mediatek MT7621A dual core MIPS processor @ 880MHz System Memory – 128 MB DDR3-1200 Storage – 128 MB SLC NAND Flash Wi-Fi 2.4GHz – 2X2 MIMO up to 300Mbps 5GHz – 2X2 MIMO up to 867 Mbps Wireless Security – WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK encryption, wireless access control (black and white list), […]

May 24, 2018May 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Android 8.1 Firmware and SDK Released for Orange Pi 4G-IoT Board

When Orange Pi 4G-IoT board launched a few months ago, it shipped with a not so recent Android 6.0 operating system. But the good news is that Shenzhen Xunlong Software has now released Android 8.1 firmware for their Mediatek MT6737M quad core Cortex A53 LTE Cat 4 board, as well as the corresponding SDK. This makes it the cheapest Android 8.1 board with LTE connectivity available on the market so far as it goes for just under $50. The SDK is a large tarball (22.6 GB) split into 11 smaller files. It’s hosted on MEGA so download is fairly fast, but due to the size I had to install MEGA Sync software in order to download it easily. Once the download is complete, it’s not recognized in Nautilus, but you can extract the SDK as follows in a terminal:

cd 4G-IOT_Android 8.1 SDK
cat x* &gt; OrangePi_4G-IOT_Android8.1.tar.gz
tar xvf OrangePi_4G-IOT_Android8.1.tar.gz

cd 4G-IOT_Android 8.1 SDK

cat x* > OrangePi_4G-IOT_Android8.1.tar.gz

tar xvf OrangePi_4G-IOT_Android8.1.tar.gz

This will take a while and extract over a million […]

May 24, 2018June 2, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Beelink S2 Gemini Lake Mini PC Comes with an Intel Pentium N5000 Silver Processor, 8GB RAM, a 128GB SSD

I’ve written about Beelink S2 mini PC based on Intel Celeron N4100 Gemini Lake processor several times, simply because the motherboard appears to be used in other OEM models including Alfawise T1 and CHUWI GBox among others. However, all models I covered so far only came with 4 GB RAM, and 64GB storage, and Intel Celeron N4100 processor, so if you need something with more memory and storage, as well as a faster processor GeekBuying is now taking orders for Beelink S2 with Intel Pentium N5000, 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. Price: $299.99 including shipping. (Use GLVNTDXW coupon for discount) Specifications of the model offered on GeekBuying: SoC – Intel Celeron N5000 quad core processor up to 2.7 GHz with Intel UHD Graphics 605; 6W TDP System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4 Storage – 128GB SSD, 2.5″ SATA bay, micro SD card Video Output – 2x HDMI 2.0 ports Audio – […]

May 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ESP8266 based ANAVI Light Controller can be Programmed with Home Assistant or the Arduino IDE (Crowdfunding)

ANAVI Technology previously launched a Light pHAT allowing for RGB Light strip connection to Raspberry Pi boards, and during my review of ANAVI Light pHAT with Raspberry Pi 2, it did the job, but if that’s all you want to do, the Raspberry Pi board is clearly oversized & overpowered for the job. So Leon ANAVI got back to the drawing board and designed a similar open source hardware board – called ANAVI Light Controller – with an built-in ESP8266 module that removes the need for a fully fledged Linux board. ANAVI Light Controller specifications: Wireless Module – ESP8266MOD module based on ESP8266 Tensilica L106 32-bit processor Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Expansion Terminal block for 12 V RGB LED strip 3x I2C headers for sensors Debugging – UART header Misc – Button Power Supply – 12 V via power barrel jack Dimensions – 75 mm x 40 mm Certification […]

May 24, 2018February 8, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 Brings AI To Mid-Range Smartphones

Neural processing units (NPU) – also called Neural network accelerators (NNA) – can now be found in all premium smartphone SoCs in order to assist with artificial intelligence applications such as object recognition, face unlock, and better photography. There seems to be a trend now to add such AI accelerators into what some refers to as mid-range premium smartphones, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 mobile platform is another of those processors placing itself between mid range Snapdragon 600 series and premium Snapdragon 800 series. Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 mobile platform (SDM710) specifications: CPU – 8x Qualcomm Kryo 360 CPU @ up to 2.2 GHz (in two clusters) GPU – Qualcomm Adreno 616 Visual Processing Subsystem supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan, DirectX 12 DSP – Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP with 3rd Gen Qualcomm Hexagon Vector Extensions (HVX), Qualcomm All-Ways Aware Sensor Hub Memory I/F – LPDDR4x, 2x 16-bit up to 1866MHz, 8GB […]