AnkerMake M5 3D Printer
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AnkerMake M5 3D printer comes with AI camera, prints at up to 300mm/s (Crowdfunding)

Anker is better known for its charger and power banks, but the company has now entered the 3D printer market with the AnkerMake M5 3D printer which is said to print five times faster and comes with an AI camera for monitoring the prints. Besides the up to 300mm/s printing speed, other highlights of the 3D printer include Google Assistant & Amazon Alexa voice assistant compatibility,  and easy assembly that requires 3 steps done in about 15 minutes. AnkerMake M5 3D printer specifications: SoC – Ingenic X2000 tri-core MIPS processor with 2x XBurst cores @ 1.2 GHz plus one XBurst0 core @ 240 MHz running Linux MCU – STM32F407 running Marlin firmware Print volume (L x W x H) – 235 × 235 × 250 mm Standard speed – 250 mm/s Speed range – 50 – 300 mm/s Acceleration speed – 2500 mm/s² X-axis movement – 42 – 40 stepper […]

open-source hardware snapdragon 845 baseboard
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Antmicro releases open-source hardware Snapdragon 845 baseboard designed with KiCad

Antmicro team has released an open-source hardware baseboard for Quectel SA800U-WF System-on-Module powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor, which they designed with KiCad open-source EDA tool. The baseboard supports NVMe storage and offers Micro HDMI and MIPI DSI video interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE support, USB 3.1 Type-C interfaces, and other I/Os, plus three separate power inputs. The company expects the design to serve as a starting point for building portable smart assistants, kiosks, VR/AR or smart screens, and more. Antmicro Snapdragon 845 baseboard specifications: Supported system-on-module – Quectel SA800U-WF with: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core Kryo 385 processor (4x Cortex A75 cores + 4x Cortex-A55 cores), Adreno 630 GPU, Hexagon 685 DSP, 4K H.265/H.264 video decoding and encoding System Memory – 4 GB LPDDR4X Storage – 64 GB UFS storage 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi 5 2×2 MIMO and Bluetooth 5.0 module Board-to-board connector for connection to baseboard Dimensions – […]

Graperain Samsung, Rockchip RK3588, and Qualcomm CPU modules, SBCs, and carrier boards
Bee Motion Mini
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Bee Motion Mini board combines ESP32-C3 with PIR sensor

Designed by Smart Bee Designs, the tiny Bee Motion Mini combines an ESP32-C3 wireless RISC-V SoC with a PIR sensor for motion detection reporting over WiFi, Bluetooth LE, or Bluetooh Mesh. The board was designed to be as small as possible to fit into a 3D printed case with a LiPo battery and placed/hidden anywhere you want. Motion detection range is up to 5 meters, and the Bee Motion Mini can connect to services like MQTT, ITTT, or NodeRed to trigger other devices upon motion. Bee Motion Mini specifications: Wireless module – Espressif Systems ESP32-C3-MINI-1 module with ESP32-C3 WiFi and Bluetooth LE 5.0 RISC-V SoC up to 160 MHz, 4 MB embedded flash PIR sensor – Passive infrared motion sensor with dome lens, 5-meter range I/O- UART Tx/Rx for flashing firmware, 3.3V, and GND Misc – BOOT and RESET buttons Power Supply JST PH.20 connector for LiPo battery 3.3V via […]

Raspberry Pi Shortage
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Eben Upton expands on Raspberry Pi shortage

As you may have noticed, Raspberry Pi boards may get hard to get and/or be sold at excessive prices by some resellers. Eben Upton explains the reasons behind the Raspberry Pi Shortage and provides some recommendations to work around the shortage and high prices. Raspberry Pi Trading is still manufacturing around 500,000 Raspberry Pi boards or modules per month despite the global semiconductors shortage, and the issue they face is more of a demand shock than a supply shock with demand for Raspberry Pi products having increased sharply from the start of 2021 and remains unabated as the supply chain can not handle that extra demand at this time. That means distributors have backlogs in almost all products, and it takes time for customers to get their orders. Bots are also involved in making automatic purchases as soon as stock becomes available often in order to resell those boards at […]

Morse Micro MM61xx
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Morse Micro MM6104, MM6108 Wi-Fi HaLow SoCs support up to 32.5 Mbps data rate

Australian company Morse Micro MM6104 and MM6108 Wi-Fi HaLow SoCs should offer some competition to the Newracom NRC chips found in all 802.11ah WiFi HaLow boards and devices released so far. Both MM610x chips have similar features, but the MM6104 SoC supports 1/2/4 MHz channel bandwidth for up to 15 Mbps data rate – just like the Newracom NRC7292 chip – while the more powerful MM6108 can handle a data rate of up to 32.5 Mbps thanks to 1/2/4/8 MHz channel bandwidth. MM6104/MM6108 specifications: Optional 32-bit RISC-V Host Applications Processor (HAP) Single-Chip IEEE802.11ah Wi-Fi HaLow transceiver for low-power, long-reach IoT applications Worldwide Sub-1 GHz frequency bands (850MHz to 950MHz) On-chip power amplifier with support for external PA option MM6104 – 1/2/4 MHz channel bandwidth for up to 15 Mbps data rate (Note: the datasheet reads “single-stream max data rate up to 40 Mbps”, but it appears to be a mistake […]

Bluetooth LE audio evaluation kit
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Bluetooth LE audio evaluation kit supports nRF52840 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC

Software company Packetcraft has announced the availability of its Bluetooth LE audio evaluation kit for the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 Bluetooth Low Energy SoC used to let engineers evaluate the technology and develop Bluetooth LE Audio applications. Bluetooth LE audio was first announced in January 2020 together with the LC3 audio codec, and promised to deliver a much longer battery life for your Bluetooth headphone or battery-operated speaker, as well as support for multi-stream and broadcast audio. But it’s taken some time before being adopted in chips like Qualcomm QCC305x/QCC3056 or FastConnect 7800, as well as operating systems with, for instance, Android 12 being the first version of Android with LE audio support. The kit is comprised of three Nordic Semi nRF52840-DK boards each fitted with a Packetcraft audio interface board (AIB) equipped with two 3.5mm audio jacks for microphone and speaker, plus a ground loop isolator, three 3.5mm audio cables […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
ESP32 video composite library
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ESP32 Composite Video Library outputs PAL, SECAM and NTSC, supports LVGL

It’s been possible to use the I2S for video output on ESP8266 and ESP32 chips for years, but aquaticus’ ESP32 Composite Video Library is may simplify the task of outputting PAL, NTSC, or SECAM video signals from any Tensilica-based ESP32 platforms. The library does not require any external hardware, and you can just connect an RCA connector to GPIO25 (I2S data) and GND, plus integration with the LVGL library makes it easy to create graphical user interfaces as showcased with the captures below.   The library supports grayscale video output (no color at this stage), multiple resolutions from 384×288 to 720×288 at up to 25 or 30 Hz, six different pixel clocks for PAL/SECAM and NTSC, as well as six framebuffer formats with namely RGB565, RGB332, Grey 8 bits/pixel, Grey 4 bits/pixel, Monochrome 1 bit/pixel, and LVGL monochrome 1 byte/pixel. You’ll find the source code for the ESP32 Video Composite […]

Arduino Portenta X8
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Portenta X8 is the first Arm Linux Arduino board

In simpler times, Raspberry Pi was making Arm Linux SBC’s, and Arduino MCU boards, but after Raspberry Pi got into the MCU business last year, it’s now time for Arduino to introduce its first Arm Linux board with the Arduino Portenta X8. The new board since comes with the same STM32H7 Cortex-M7/M4 microcontroller found in the Portenta H7 boards, but add a more powerful, Linux-capable NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor with four Cortex-A53 cores and a Cortex-M4 core, coupled with 2GB RAM and a 16GB eMMC flash. Arduino Portenta X8 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini Arm Cortex-A53 quad-core up to 1.8 GHz,1x Cortex-M4 real-time core up to 400MHz. Microcontroller – STMicro STM32H747AII6 Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz + M4 @ 240 MHz MCU  with 2MB dual-bank Flash memory, 1 MB RAM, Chrom-ART graphical hardware accelerator System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet interface […]

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