PinePhone Keyboard Case
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Pine64 launches PinePhone Keyboard case, back covers with LoRa radio, fingerprint scanner, wireless charging

Pine64’s PinePhone Linux smartphone and its successor, the upcoming PinePhone Pro, are designed to be modular and extensible with a PinePhone Keyboard case prototype showcased here in April 2021 and aimed to transform the phone into what looks like a PDA. The design has now been refined, and Pine64 has just launched the PinePhone (Pro) keyboard case for $49.99, together with three back covers with either a LoRa module, a fingerprint scanner, or Qi wireless charging for $9.99 to $24.99 depending on the model. All are now available on Pine64 store. PinePhone (Pro) Keyboard Case Key features and specifications: ISO QWERTY layout with 54 keys in 5 rows. Note the key caps can be rearranged, so you could easily make an AZERTY or QWERTZ keyboard for example 180° hinge for two-hand typing on surface or thumb-typing when held Pogo pin connector to connect to PinePhone (Pro) smartphone USB – USB […]

NanoCOM-TGU
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COM Express Type 10 Tiger Lake UP3 module targets embedded mobile applications

AAEON NanoCOM-TGU is a COM Express Type 10 module powered by the 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake UP3 designed for embedded mobile applications, potentially leveraging AI and Deep Learning acceleration engines from the processor with use cases ranging from telematics, Smart Cities, and industrial automation. The NanoCOM-TGU supports up to 16GB LPDDR4x memory with in-band ECC, up to 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, and offers two SATA 3.0 interfaces, 2.5GbE networking, DDI and eDP video outputs, as well as ten USB ports and four PCI Express x1 interfaces.   NanoCOM-TGU specifications: SoC – Intel Tiger Lake UP3 “E” or “GRE” processor with Intel UHD Graphics from Celeron 6305E up to Core i7-1185G7E/1185GRE @ 1.8 GHz /4.4 GHz; 15W TDP System Memory – Up to 16GB onboard LPDDR4x-4266 memory in-band ECC supported by SoC Storage – Up to 256GB onboard NVMe SSD Networking – Intel i225-LM 2.5GbE controller COM Express Type 10 […]

Graperain Samsung, Rockchip RK3588, and Qualcomm CPU modules, SBCs, and carrier boards
Ai Thinker BU01 development board
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Indoor positioning BU01 development board can detect tiny body movements (Sponsored)

GPS is available for outdoor positioning, what about indoors? There is a positioning technology that is more accurate than GPS: UWB. The technology offers positioning accuracy within 10cm which greatly compensates for the shortcomings of the indoor RSSI positioning of past IoT products. UWB technology is a wireless carrier communication technology that uses a frequency bandwidth above 1 GHz. It does not use a sinusoidal carrier but uses nanosecond-level non-sinusoidal narrow pulses to transmit data and occupies a large frequency spectrum, hence the name “Ultra-Wideband”, or UWB for shorts. Besides positioning, UWB can also be used for data transmission with a rate of hundreds of megabits per second. BU01 development board features MCU – STMicro STM32F103 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller UWB module – Ai-Thinker BU01 module 50 I/O pins exposed for functions. Sensors – Onboard acceleration sensor, temperature, and humidity sensor Misc – User buttons and LED Power Supply – 5V […]

Sipeed Lichee RV Starter Kit
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Sipeed Lichee RV RISC-V module gets $5+ carrier board with HDMI and USB ports, optional WiFi

Sipeed introduced the Lichee RV Allwinner D1 Linux RISC-V board going for just $17 with 512MB RAM last month. While with a USB-C port it could be used as a standalone part, its dual M.2 connector makes it more like a module and we noted a tiny carrier board was in the works at the time. The baseboard is now available and known as the Lichee RV Dock adding HDMI and USB ports, as well as a 40-pin GPIO header for just $5, or $8 if you’d like to get Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity through a Realtek RTL8723DS module. Sipeed Lichee RV Dock specifications: Supported system-on-module (SoM) – Lichee RV module with Allwinner D1 RISC-V processor @ 1 GHz, 512MB DDR3, MicroSD card slot, and USB Type-C OTG port Storage – Optional SPI flash Display interfaces HDMI port up to 4Kp30 Optional RGB interface for up to 720p30 […]

CH583 development board
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CH583 RISC-V microcontroller supports Bluetooth 5.3 LE

Following up on the CH572 RISC-V BLE microcontroller with 10KB SRAM, WCH has now introduced the CH583 RISC-V microcontroller with 32KB SRAM, 1 MB flash, and support for the latest Bluetooth 5.3 LE standard. The new microcontroller also offers a wide range of peripherals with two USB host/device interfaces, up to 40 GPIOs, four UART, two SPI, one I2C, up to 14 ADC interfaces, and more. WCH also offers CH581 and CH582 microcontrollers with a different minimum input voltage, less storage (256KB for CH581) and/or peripherals. CH581, CH582, CH583 specifications: MCU core – 32-bit RISC processor WCH RISC-V4A with RV32IMAC instruction set Memory – 32 KB SRAM Storage – 512KB non-volatile storage FlashROM: 448KB user application program memory area CodeFlash 32KB user non-volatile data memory area DataFlash 24KB system boot program memory area BootLoader 8KB system non-volatile configuration information memory area InfoFlash BLE Connectivity Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) v5.3 Integrated […]

UPS HAT for Raspberry Pi
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Raspberry Pi UPS HAT takes two 18650 batteries (Crowdfunding)

Raspberry Pi UPS solutions have been available for years with products like PiJuice Zero, PiVoyager, or LiFePO4wered/Pi+. But the team at SB Components has designed another UPS HAT for Raspberry Pi with a holder for two 18650 batteries. The HAT is designed for 5V operation up to 2.5A, connects with the Raspberry Pi SBC through the I2C bus from the 40-pin GPIO header, and is equipped with a 0.91-inch OLED for information display. UPS HAT for Raspberry Pi specifications: Power Input – 8.4V/2A via DC jack Power Output – 5V up to 2.5A through LDO chip (GPIO header and 2x USB ports) Display – 0.91-inch OLED Host interface – I2C Misc – On/Off switch Battery support 18650 Lithium battery (not included) via holder for two batteries Battery reverse indicator Charging and voltage monitoring via TI INA219 I2C chip Battery voltage balancing with Hycon HY2213 Battery protection IC (Hycon HY2120) Dimensions […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Wiretrustee open-source hardware
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Phased out Raspberry PI CM4 quad SATA carrier board becomes open-source hardware

Wiretrustee carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4 was unveiled about one year ago with four SATA connectors to help people build their own 4-bay NAS. Unfortunately, the company decided to discontinue the project due to the semiconductors market situation. The good news is the board is now open-source hardware with all resources shared publicly including the Allegro schematics and PCB layout, Gerber files, 3D models for the heatsink, and case designs for 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drives. All files are available under “CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2 – Permissive”. Here’s a quick reminder about the Wiretrustee board specifications: Supported SoM – Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and 4 Lite Storage 4x SATA 2.0 via Marvell 88SE9215 (PCIe 2.0 x1 to 4 6Gb/s SATA ports, no HW RAID) MicroSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 Networking – 1x Gigabit Ethernet port USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports […]

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Manufacturing samples of Xassette-Asterisk open-source hardware board

We covered Xassette-Asterisk open source-hardware Allwinner D1s RISC-V Linux SBC last October. But it will most likely never be mass-manufactured since SdtElectronics, the designer, has no resources and time for production. So I thought I should give it a try, and I managed to get 10 boards manufactured and assembled. Time for a little disclaimer. While the post is not sponsored in the sense I did not get paid for it, NextPCB agreed to cover all costs, aka sponsor, and manufacture ten boards. Today, I’ll report my experience manufacturing an open-source hardware board, but I had no time to check whether any of the boards worked. Manufacturing timeline Since I did not want to go through the whole process of ordering the PCB, purchasing the components, and soldering each board individually, I opted for NextPCB’s PCB manufacturing and assembly services. Here’s the detailed timeline: November 9 – Ordered 10 boards […]

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