XIAO ESP32S3 Sense

XIAO ESP32S3 board gets some senses with a camera and microphone module, plus a round touchscreen display

Last week, we wrote about the new XIAO ESP32S3, a tiny ESP32-S3 board from Seeed Studio. The company has now launched the XIAO ESP32S3 Sense adding a camera and microphone module connected through a board-to-board connector, as well as the Round Display for XIAO that can help people easily create wearable devices with a touchscreen based on any board from the XIAO family. XIAO ESP32S3 Sense XIAO ESP32S2 Sense specifications: Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3R8 dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller @ 240 MHz with 512KB SRAM, 8MB PSRAM, Wi-Fi 4 & Bluetooth 5.0 dual-mode (Classic + BLE) connectivity Storage – 8MB SPI flash, microSD card slot Antenna – External u.FL antenna USB – USB Type-C port for power and programming Camera – OV2640 camera sensor up to 1600×1200 resolution Audio – Built-in digital microphone Expansion I/Os 2x 7-pin headers with 1x UART, 1x I2C, 1x SPI, 11x GPIO (PWM), 9x […]

Linux 6.2 release

Linux 6.2 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.2 has just been released with Linus Torvalds making the announcement on LKML as usual: So here we are, right on (the extended) schedule, with 6.2 out. Nothing unexpected happened last week, with just a random selection of small fixes spread all over, with nothing really standing out. The shortlog is tiny and appended below, you can scroll through it if you’re bored. Wed have a couple of small things that Thorsten was tracking on the regression side, but I wasn’t going to apply any last-minute patches that weren’t actively pushed by maintainers, so they will have to show up for stable. Nothing seemed even remotely worth trying to delay things for. And this obviously means that the 6.3 merge window will open tomorrow, and I already have 30+ pull requests queued up, which I really appreciate. I like how people have started to take the whole “ready for […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
Hydra3D+ high-resolution ToF sensor

Teledyne e2v releases Hydra3+ high-resolution ToF sensor with 832 x 600 resolution

Teledyne e2v Hydra3D+ is a high-resolution Time-of-Flight (ToF) CMOS image sensor with 832 x 600 resolution, designed for real-time 3D detection and measurement without motion artifacts. The first ToF sensor I used was an STMicro VL53L0X ranging sensor that could measure distances accurately and quickly up to 2 meters away, then the company started to launch multi-zone ToF ranging sensors such as the VL53 that enabled new features such as touch-to-focus, multiple-target identification, flash dimming, or video tracking assistance, and one variant used for human detection. But the 832×600 resolution of Hyrdra3D+ brings even more interesting use cases with the ability to create 3D maps in real time. Hydra3D+ ToF sensor specifications: Sensor Resolution – 832 x 600 pixels Aspect Ratio – 4 : 3 Size type – 2/3″ (10.3 mm diagonal) Pixel type/size – square – Three-tap global shutter – gated global shutter / 10 μm Maximum frame rate […]

FindBoard parametric search

FindBoard is another single board computer database

Hackerboards.com single board computer database has been around for several years starting as Board-DB, but I noticed another one called FindBoard while browsing on Aliexpress with some more exotic boards. Hackerboards’ database currently features 467 SBCs and MCU boards, while FindBoard has 453 boards. There are some overlaps, but also boards that are not found in the first database. Many of the boards on FindBoard are Linux-capable, but they are also some microcontroller boards as we can see from the screenshot above. If Chinese is selected, the “Buy now” will redirect you to Taobao, and if it is English they will be a link to an Aliexpress page. There’s a parametric search function for FinderBoard single board computer database but it’s really only useful when selecting one single parameter because the system use “OR” instead of “AND”. So if select 01Studio and Linux as above, it will show results for […]

Lattice Avant

Lattice Avant mid-range FPGA platform features up to 500K logic cells, 25 Gbps SERDES, Hard PCIe Gen4

Lattice Avant is a new low-power and small form factor mid-range FPGA platform, manufactured with a 16nm FinFET process, and equipped with 25 Gb/s SERDES, hardened PCI Express, external memory PHY interfaces, a high DSP count, and a security engine. Lattice Semi is better known for its entry-level FPGAs such as the iCE40 which is popular in the community thanks to low-cost hardware and support for open-source tools, but the Avant platform marks the company’s entry into the mid-range FPGA market, defined by chips with 100k to 500k logic cells (LCs). Lattice Avant highlights: FPGA fabric – 200K to 500K logic cells up to 350 MHz DSP – 700 to 1,8000 18×18 multipliers @ up to 650 MHz to support the latest AI algorithms Memory 14-36 Mbit embedded memory up to 650 MHz DDR3L/DDR4/LPDDR4 and DDR5 support I/Os 4x to 28x 25 Gbps multi-protocol SERDES Hard PCIe Gen4 200 to […]

Unihiker STEM education platform China

UniHiker education platform teaches STEM with Mind+ and Jupyter

DFRobot UniHiker is a STEM education platform with a 2.8-inch touchscreen display, a Rockchip RK3308 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor, a GD32V RISC-V microcontroller, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, as well as various headers for expansion, and a BBC Micro:bit compatible edge connector. The UniHiker runs Debian 10 Linux and can be used to teach programming using Mind+ visual programming IDE or Jupyter open-source interface, as well as IoT and AI basics thanks to tutorials and lessons available in Chinese only as the platform clearly targets the education market in mainland China at this point in time.   Unihiker specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3308 Quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.2GHz without GPU MCU – Gigadevice GD32VF103C8T6 RISC-V microcontroller @ 108MHz with 64KB flash, 32KB SRAM System Memory – 512MB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card socket Display – 2.8-inch touchscreen color display with 320×240 resolution Connectivity – 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi & […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Home Assistant SkyConnect

Home Assistant launches SkyConnect USB stick with Zigbee, Thread, Matter support

The Home Assistant SkyConnect is a USB stick with support for Zigbee, Matter, and Thread connectivity designed to work with the popular Home Assistant open-source home automation solution, and enables users to bring Home Assistant Yellow (previously known as Home Assistant Amber) functionality to any platform running Home Assistant. The USB dongle is based on a Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 Gecko Series 2 Arm Cortex-M33 wireless microcontroller with an 802.15.4 multi-protocol 2.4 GHz radio that can concurrently run both Zigbee 3.0 (EmberZNet/EZSP) and Thread/Matter (OpenThread/Spinel) stacks/protocols at the same time by using firmware in RCP RCP (Radio Co-Processor) mode. Home Assistant SkyConnect specifications: MCU – Silabs EFR32MG21 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller @ up to 80 MHz with DSP and FPU, up to 1024 KB flash, up to 96 KB RAM, 2.4 GHz radio Wireless Protocols – Zigbee, Matter, Thread TX Power – up to +20dBm RX sensitivity – -104dBm (250kbps) 2.4 GHz […]

Allwinner V851S camera board

Allwinner V851S/V851SE low-cost camera SoC embeds 64MB DDR2, a 0.5 TOPS NPU

Allwinner V851S/V851SE is a single-core Arm Cortex-A7 SoC with a RISC-V core, an H.265/H.264 video encoder, and a 0.5 TOPS NPU designed for Smart IP cameras with support for features such as human detection and crossing alarms. Both processors ship with 64MB DDR2 memory, and feature USB, Ethernet, and SDIO interfaces, but the V851S is designed for systems with a display, while the V851SE targets traditional headless IP cameras. Both processors are pretty similar, but here are the key differences between Allwinner V851S: Networking – 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port with RMII interface GPIO – 6x ports (PA, PC, PD, PE, PF, PH) Display LCD Parallel RGB, Serial RGB, i8080, BT656 2-lane MIPI DSI SPI – 4x SPI and Allwinner V851SE: Networking – SIP 100 Mbps EPHY GPIO – 5x ports (PA, PC, PE, PF, PH) Display – Not supported SPI – 3x SPI That means the Allwinner V851S requires an […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications