Posted on

MotherBone PiOne is a 3.5″ Industrial MotherBoard for the Raspberry Pi and the BeagleBone Black (Crowdfunding)

Many people are currently using low cost development boards such as the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black in real products, and 3.5″ single board computers are commonly in industrial applications, so APlus Mobile, a US based company specialized in rugged industrial PCs, has decided to combine the two and designed MotherBone PiOne, a 3.5″ motherboard that can be used in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi and/or the Beaglebone Black for industrial projects. Let’s go through the specifications: SoC / Memory / HDMI and Ethernet – Via BeagleBone Black and/or Raspberry Pi single board computers (usable simultaneously) I/Os: 16-bit GPIO – 5V TTL level 16-bit GPIO (I2C Slave) I2C, I2C2 Bus – Individual BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi 5-pin I2C Master access with additional BeagleBone Black 5-pin I2C2 voltage isolated port Analog Inputs – 7x wide range analog voltage inputs with trim adjust for voltage range select PWM Output – Two […]

Posted on

Stealth Nighthawk F-117A is a Raspberry Pi-in-a-Stick Preloaded with XBMC

Stealth Nighthawk F-117A was a “single-seat, twin-engine stealth ground-attack aircraft formerly operated by the United States Air Force (USAF)”, but it’s now an HDMI dongle based on the same processor as the Raspberry Pi, namely Broadcom BCM2825, software compatible with the Raspberry Pi, and preloaded with an XBMC OS, which turns out to the Raspbmc. The main hardware differences with Raspberry Pi are that you lose Ethernet, composite output, and all headers used for hardware hacking, but you gain Wi-Fi, a casing, and an even smaller form factor. Here are the specifications of the device: SOC – Broadcom BCM2835 @ 700mhz with Video Core IV GPU/VPU System Memory – 512MB Storage – micro SD card slot (up to 32GB) USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port + micro USB port for power Video Output – HDMI (up to 1080p) Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11n Power – 5V/1A via microUSB port Dimensions – […]

Graperain Samsung, Rockchip, and Qualcomm CPU modules, SBCs, and carrier boards
Posted on

Coocox Embedded Pi is an STM32-Based MCU Board That Connects to Arduino Shields and Raspberry Pi

Embedded Pi is a platform capable of interfacing the Raspberry Pi with 3.3V and/or 5V Arduino shields, based on an 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 STMicro STM32 MCU. It can also be used in standalone mode as an Arduino compatible ARM MCU evaluation board. Embedded Pi Hardware Specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32F103RBT6 Cortex M3 @ 72MHz with 20KB SRAM and 128KB flash. Raspberry Pi Connector with I2C, SPI, UART, PWM and GPIOs Arduino Interfaces – 1x SPI, 1x I2C, 4x PWM, 1x UART, 6x Analog Input Extended Interfaces – 1x SPI, 1x I2C, 1x UART with flow control, 2 pairs PWM, 6x Analog Input, and 1x CAN 3 Power Sources – Micro USB port, external DC adapter, and 5V from the Raspberry Pi Depending on the jumper placement on the Embedded Pi, you can select each of the three modes of operation: STM32/Standalone Mode – The Embedded Pi works as an […]

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024
Posted on

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

de next-TGU8 SBC
Posted on

Business card-sized SBC ships with Intel Core Tiger Lake or AMD Ryzen V2000 processor

We’ve recently reviewed the UP 4000 SBC as a more powerful x86 alternative to Raspberry Pi 4, but if it still does not cut it, AAEON de next-TGU8 or de next-V2K8 should, as the business card-sized single board computers (SBC) are equipped with respectively an Intel Tiger Lake processor up to a Core i7-1185G7E, and an AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 SoC up to Ryzen Embedded V2516. But the comparison stops at the size, as both SBCs offer sets of features different from the usual Raspberry Pi form factor with notably up to 16GB RAM, SATA and NVMe storage, dual Ethernet (1x 2.5GbE, 1x Gigabit Ethernet), dual 4K display output via HDMI and eDP, some USB 3.2 ports, as well as serial and I/O interfaces via headers. de next-TGU8/V2K8 SBC specifications: SoC de next-TGU8 Intel Core i7-1185G7E quad-core/octa-thread processor @ 1.80GHz / 4.40GHz with Intel UHD graphics; TDP: 15W (TPD up: […]

cnx software happy new year 2022
Posted on

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

As per tradition, we’ll look back at what happened during the year in the last post, and see what 2022 may have in store, plus the usual statistics from CNX Software website. The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and  Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards. We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it’s getting really […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
CNX Software Year 2021
Posted on

Year 2020 in review – Top ten posts and stats

It’s this time of the year when we look back at what happened, and what may be next. 2020 did not pan out as planned in more ways than one, but there were still some interesting developments. Based on 2019 announcements, 2020 was promising to be an exciting year for Amlogic and Rockchip with the expected launch of RK3588 and S908X high-end processors for 8K capable devices,  but we’ll have to wait for 2021 for this to happen. Instead, the most interesting processor of the year from the Allwinner, Amlogic, and Rockchip offerings was probably Amlogic S905X4 processing adding AV1 hardware decoding. As pointed out in our “RISC-V 2020 highlights” post, it was a fairly eventful year for RISC-V architecture, although there’s still a long road ahead, especially for application processors. We had seen some general-purpose and Bluetooth RISC-V MCUs in 2019, but 2020 saw the launch of the first […]

HardROCK64 SBC
Posted on

HardROCK64 SBC with Rockchip RK3399 Processor to Launch in April for $35 and Up

If you thought we didn’t have enough Rockchip RK3399 SBCs already, Pine64 is working on a smaller and cheaper version of the RockPro64 single board computer with HardROCK64 SBC powered by RK3399 processor and following Raspberry Pi form factor. HardROCK64 specifications: SoC –  Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 1.8 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.4 GHz, a Mali-T864 GPU, and a VPU with 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 decoding System Memory – 1GB, 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – SPI flash, eMMC flash socket, MicroSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0, AV port, MIPI DSI connector Audio – Analog stereo audio via AV port, digital audio via HDMI Camera – MIPI CSI connector Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band WiFi 5 (802.11ac) and Bluetooth 5.0 USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header […]

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