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Notecard LTE Cat-M / NB-IoT M.2 modem sells for $49+ with 10 years of connectivity

If the IoT is ever going to take off, it needs low-cost hardware and connectivity. LoRaWAN is free, apart from the hardware costs, but for projects that need wider coverage and/or higher bitrate cellular connectivity is the way to go and we’ve seen in the past that Hologram offers a free developer SIM card for global IoT projects plus some low-cost cellular IoT plans, as well as 1CNE plans to offer a 10-year plan for 10 Euros. Blues Wireless has taken a different approach as they combine hardware and cellular connectivity with their Notecard LTE-IoT modems (LTE Cat 1/Cat M or NB-IoT) shipping for 10 years of connectivity for up to 500MB data. Notecard has four variants with the following key features and specifications: MCU – Arm Cortex-M4 MCU with 2MB flash Cellular connectivity NOTE-NBGL-500 – Narrowband Cat-M/NB-IoT/GPRS (Global) via  Quectel BG95-M3 modem NOTE-NBNA-500 – Narrowband Cat-M/NB-IoT (North America) via […]

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Sipeed MaixCube is a Fully Integrated AI Development Platform Powered by Kendryte K210 RISC-V SoC

Sipeed has made several boards and kits based on Kendryte K210 RISC-V processor for low-power AI workloads such as face detection or object recognition including Maixduino board and Grove AI HAT that ship with camera and display. The company has now come up with MaixCube all-in-one development platform that houses Sipeed M1 module, a display, a camera, and a battery into a plastic case that’s somewhat similar to MStack M5StickV but with a larger display, and variations in the form factor and features. Sipeed MaixCube specifications: SoC – Kendryte K210 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 400 MHz (overclockable to 600 MHz) with FPU, 8MB SRAM, KPU AI accelerator, APU audio processor, and FFT accelerator Storage – 128 Mbit flash, MicroSD card slot Display – 1.3″ TFT screen with 240×240 resolution Camera – OV7740 sensor (VGA camera) Audio – Built-in microphone, external speakers support; ES8374 audio codec USB – 1x USB […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Year 2019 in Review – Top 10 Posts and Stats

2019 is closing to an end, or you may already be into 2020 while reading this post. In any case, that means it’s time to look back at 2019 and look forward to the events and new products to take place next year. While 2018 was a boring year for new processors, 2019 brought us some interesting new chips such as Amlogic S922X / A311D, or the first Arm Cortex-A55 only processors such as Amlogic S905X3. Rockchip RK3399Pro was promising when it was announced last year, but it never really took off. It was a pretty quiet year for Allwinner as well. RISC-V architecture has been ramping up with the first general-purpose RISC-V MCU: GD32V, WCH CH572 Bluetooth LE MCU, the launch of more SiFive RISC-V cores, and Kendryte K210 RISC-V AI processor announced last year has found its way into more and more boards. There have also been the […]

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Some Interesting Talks from FOSDEM 2020 Schedule

We wrote about IoT devroom call for proposals for FOSDEM 2020 a little while ago, and as the free open-source developer meetup is getting closer, FOSDEM 2020 organizers released the schedule. So I’ll look at some of the talks in the relevant devrooms such as the Internet of Things, hardware enablement, Embedded, Mobile and Automotive, as well as RISC-V and others to compose my own little virtual schedule for the 2-day event. Saturday, February 1 10:30 – 10:50 – How lowRISC made its Ibex RISC-V CPU core faster – Using open source tools to improve an open-source core – by Greg Chadwick Ibex implements RISC-V 32-bit I/E MC M-Mode, U-Mode, and PMP. It uses an in-order 2 stage pipe and is best suited for area and power-sensitive rather than high-performance applications. However, there is scope for meaningful performance gains without major impact to power or area. This talk describes work […]

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Z-Wave Open Standard to Enable Third-Party Z-Wave Silicon and Stack Suppliers

Roughly one year ago, Silicon Labs released a publicly available Z-Wave SDK and a Raspberry Pi 3 Image to make it easier to work with the wireless protocol targetting home automation. But Z-Wave specifications were still closed, which meant Z-Wave chips could only be purchased from Silicon Labs, a bit like LoRa chip can only be purchased from Semtech. The advantage of being closed is that you’re the only supplier, but this will limit market adoption, and customers may be wary of relying on a single partner for their long term plans. That must be why The Z-Wave Alliance and Silicon Labs have now decided to open Z-Wave specifications to Silicon and Stack suppliers. That paves the way to third-party software platforms and Z-Wave radios from some of the 700+ companies which are members of the Z-Wave Alliance. The Z-Wave specification release is scheduled for H2 2020, and will include […]

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LPWAN Market Update – An Interview with RAK Wireless CEO

CNX Software interviews Ken Yu, RAK Wireless’  founder & CEO, to learn  more about the company and the current & future state of the LPWAN (Low Power WAN) market especially with regards to NB-IoT and LoRaWAN. CNXSoft: We’ve already covered several products from RAK Wireless on CNX Software, starting with WiFi IoT boards several years ago, and more recently LPWAN products based on NB-IoT or LoRa. But for readers who may not be familiar with RAK Wireless yet, could you provide a short description of what the company does? Ken Yu: RAKwireless was founded in 2014. The core founder team consists of professionals coming from established leaders in the Networking industry as Qualcomm, H3C, etc. Because our engineers have more than 10 years of experience designing Wi-Fi solutions, this was the core of our business in the beginning. RAKwireless is working towards a vision of a connected world and In […]

Intel Arc Graphics Technology
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3 Ways to Power Devices with PoE: Wall Plug, Multi-port Injectors, and Injector/Splitter Cables

I regularly browse new arrivals feeds of popular websites to look out for interesting products, and I’ve noticed Banggood has several inexpensive PoE plugs and injectors going for around $6, which is quite cheaper than I would have expected. Apart from MatchX LoRaWAN gateway, I’ve never really used PoE to power devices, but I may soon have another look on Raspberry Pi 4 board with a third-party PoE HAT. PoE is mostly interesting if you need to run long cables to your boards or IP cameras since using a single Ethernet cable for data and power saves on cabling. 24V/48V PoE Plugs for the European market Banggood had three PoE plugs with prongs made for the European market: 48V/0.5A (24W) PoE Wall Plug 12V/1A (12W) PoE Wall Plug 24V/1A (24W) POE Wall Plug All three plugs are visually identical with a LAN port to connect to your router, and a […]

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Arm Techcon 2019 Schedule – Machine Learning, Security, Containers, and More

Arm TechCon will take place on October 8-10, 2019 at San Jose Convention Center to showcase new solutions from Arm and third-parties, and the company has now published the agenda/schedule for the event. There are many sessions and even if you’re not going to happen it’s always useful to checkout what will be discussed to learn more about what’s going on currently and what will be the focus in the near future for Arm development. Several sessions normally occur at the same time, so as usual I’ll make my own virtual schedule with the ones I find most relevant. Tuesday, October 8  09:00 – 09:50 – Open Source ML is rapidly advancing. How can you benefit? by Markus Levy, Director of AI and Machine Learning Technologies, NXP Over the last two years and still continuing, machine learning applications have benefited tremendously from the growing number of open source frameworks, tools, […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC