Challenger RP2040 WiFi board
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Challenger RP2040 WiFi board marries ESP8285 with Raspberry Pi RP2040

We’ve already seen Raspberry Pi RP2040 getting WiFi connectivity with boards like Pico Wireless Pack, Wio RP2040 mini, and Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect in ways that do not always make technical and commercial sense as in many cases, the WiFi microcontroller (e.g. ESP32) is more powerful than the Raspberry Pi microcontroller. But Invector Labs’ Challenger RP2040 WiFi board does make more sense, as the company combines Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU with an entry-level ESP8285 WiFi microcontroller, and also offers LiPo battery support, all that in the Adafruit Feather form factor. Challenger RP2040 WiFi board specifications: Main microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 133MHz with 264KB SRAM Storage – 8MB flash Network microcontroller – Espressif ESP8285 2.4GHz WiFi 4 SoC with 1MB on-chip flash pre-flashed with Espressif’s AT command interpreter, connected to the main MCU over UART at up to 921600 bps; I/Os via Adafruit Feather […]

Minimal Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
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MinCab is the smallest Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board ever

Carrier boards for Raspberry Pi CM4 modules are all over the place for routers, NAS, industrial gateways, and more. Here’s another one with the Minimal Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, or MinCab, that powers the RPi CM4 module via a USB Type-C port. That’s about all it does, although you would also be able to access some GPIOs, 5V,  3.3V, and GND signals via pads on the carrier board. Specifically, eight GPIOs are accessible with IO14, IO15, IO2, IO3, IO4, IO12, IO13, and IO18. Ivan Kuleshov explains this can be useful for Smart Home systems for instance, but it could be anything that requires WiFI and/or Bluetooth connectivity, a powerful Linux capable processor (as opposed to something like ESP32), and a few I/Os. The MinCab might be a good alternative to the upcoming (and delayed) Raspberry Pi 4 Model A for people wanting to use Broadcom BCM2711 […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
IoT Development Platforms
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Microsoft Azure IoT, Balena, Particle, or Toit – Choosing the Right IoT Development Platform

With the ongoing fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), IoT technologies are playing a major role in automating industrial processes. Integrating existing systems with IoT results in an intelligent solution that focuses more on providing better adaptability and resource efficiency. If you start building such systems from scratch while ensuring reliability and other factors, it will surely take a lot of research and time. This is where an IoT development platform steps in to save your time and makes things a lot easier. The main idea behind these platforms is to avoid reinventing the wheel and to provide standardized functions and features, so you don’t waste your time implementing something that someone has already done for you. You can collect data, control and manage apps and connect to their cloud services for better machine-to-machine communication. This article will look at some modern IoT development platforms and finally compare them to help […]

Seeduino XIAO RP2040
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Tiny Seeeduino XIAO board gets Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU

Seeeduino XIAO is a tiny Arduino Zero compatible board with battery support that was launched last year with Microchip SAMD21G18 ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller at up to 48MHz. Seeed Studio has now launched the XIAO RP2040 board with the same form factor but upgrading to a more powerful Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller clocked at up to 133 MHz. XIAO RP2040 specifications: MCU – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex M0+ up to 133 MHz, or even 252 MHz (48MHz default) with 264 kB SRAM Storage – 2MB SPI flash USB – 1x USB type C port for power and programming Expansion I/Os 2x 7-pin headers with 11x 4x analog inputs, 11x digital I/Os / PWM, 1x DAC, SPI, UART, and I2C; 2.54mm pitch 3.3V I/O voltage (not 5V tolerant) Misc – 1x user LED, power LED, 2x LEDs for serial port downloading, Reset Button/ Boot Button, RGB LED, SWD pads […]

Pimoroni PGA2040 Breakout Board
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PGA2040 is a Compact Raspberry Pi RP2040 Breakout Board by Pimoroni

Pimoroni is known for its development boards with a small form factor. PGA2040 is another compact breakout board featuring the Raspberry Pi  RP2040 microcontroller. The board comes in the form of a Pin Grid Array (PGA) with RP2040 at its center. The PGA allows the accommodation of 48 pins around the perimeter of SoC on such a small footprint. After seeing some of the advanced RP2040 boards featuring wireless functionalities in the past few months, such as the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect board, Pico Wireless Carrier board, and Wio RP2040 Mini development board, the PGA2040 is a simple board with only necessary components, thus making it suitable for compact, simple applications. However, this increases the complexity and efforts from users for interfacing additional components to implement advanced applications. Talking more about the necessary components on the board, it comes with a Crystal Oscillator, 8MB of QSPI flash, and a 3V3 […]

Raspad 3 review
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RasPad 3 Review – Part 2: A Raspberry Pi 4 mini PC with integrated display

I started RasPad 3 review last week with an unboxing of the tablet shell for Raspberry Pi 4, together with assembly instructions, and a first boot after flashing Raspad OS to the system. In the first part of the review, I mentioned that I’d probably focus the remainder of the review on Ezblock Studio visual programming IDE, as the rest of the software is almost the same as using a standard Raspberry Pi 4, the other difference being the touchscreen-friendly RasPad launcher. But Sunfounder explained to me it would be hard to check out Ezblock as it’s designed to control robots and other hardware platforms, and requires an extra HAT (see Kickstarter campaign) to allow the Ezblock APP to connect through Bluetooth (it cannot be directly linked to Raspberry Pi through the built-in Bluetooth).  Here’s an example of a robot that is compatible with Ezblock Studio: Picar-X. Finally, I was […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Radxa Zero
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Radxa Zero SBC – A powerful quad-core alternative to Raspberry Pi Zero W

Radxa Zero SBC follows Raspberry Pi Zero W form factor, but thanks to an Amlogic S905Y2 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor clocked at up to 2.0 GHz offers much higher performance, which Radxa says corresponds to about 70% of Raspberry Pi 4 CPU performance. The tiny Arm Linux board comes with up to 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, and either AP6212 or AP6256 wireless module. plus all interfaces from Raspberry Pi Zero W, but with a twist as the mini HDMI port is replaced by a micro HDMI port, and USB-C ports are used instead of micro USB ports. Radxa Zero preliminary specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905Y2 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU System Memory – 512MB RAM, 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – MicroSD slot, optional 8GB or 16GB eMMC flash Video Output – micro HDMI port up to 4Kp60 Connectivity Ampak AP6212 […]

Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro
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Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro compact Amlogic S905X3 SBC launched for $61

Banana Pi has already designed an Amlogic S905X3 SBC with Banana Pi BPI-M5 that closely follows Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor, but they’ve now launched a more compact model with Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro that follow the design of the company’ earlier BPI-M2+ SBC powered by the good old Allwinner H3 processor. BPI-M2 Pro comes with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC storage, HDMI video output, Gigabit Ethernet, Wifi & Bluetooth connectivity, as well as two USB 3.0 ports. Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex A55 @ up to 2.0 GHz with an Arm Mali-G31 GPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4Kp60 with HDR, CEC, EDID support Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet Dual-band 802.11 b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 1×1 and Bluetooth 4.2 via Realtek RTL8821CU module USB – 2x USB 3.0 […]

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