ECSPC ADLN IE1 industrial motherboard
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ECS ADLN-IE1S – A 3.5-inch Alder Lake-N industrial motherboard with solid capacitors and 15µ gold contact

ECS Industrial Computer has recently launched the ECS ADLN-IE1S 3.5-inch industrial motherboard built around the Intel Alder Lake-N SoC family. Other than that, the motherboard supports DDR5 memory, 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, and triple display capabilities via a dual HDMI port, and an LVDS port. It also features multiple expansion slots for SSDs and WiFi modules including various I/O options including USB 3.2, serial ports, GPIO, and more. The motherboard is designed for industrial applications, so it has a wide operating temperature range making it suitable for applications including automation, control systems, digital signage, and kiosks. Previously we have written about motherboards designed for industrial applications like the DFI RPS310, the ASRock  NUC Ultra 100 motherboards, the Kontron K3931-N mITX, and many others. The main difference is that this new ESC ADLN-IE1S motherboard comes in a 3.5-inch form factor whereas the other comes in a MINI-ITX or MICRO-ATX form factor. ECS ADLN-IE1S […]

LicheePi 3A development board
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LicheePi 3A – A SpacemIT K1 RISC-V development board with SoM and carrier board

Sipeed LicheePi 3A is a development board comprised of the LM3A system-on-module based on SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V SoC and the same baseboard as found in the earlier LicheePi 4A equipped with a T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V “LM4A” system-on-module instead. The LicheePi 3A is currently offered with a 32GB eMMC flash and 8GB or 16GB LPDDR4x memory. The carrier board provides a microSD card, two M.2 PCIe sockets for storage or other expansion, two gigabit Ethernet ports, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module, HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, four USB 3.0 ports, and a 20-pin GPIO header for expansion. Sipeed LicheePi 3A specifications: Sipeed LM3A SoM SoC – SpacemiT K1 CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.2, OpenCL 3.0; 20 GFLOPS VPU – H.265 and H.264 1080p60 decoding/encoding NPU […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
Recover Bricked Raspberry Pi Pico 2 or RP2350 board with flash_nuke.uf2
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How to recover a “bricked” Raspberry Pi Pico 2 or other RP2350 board

In theory, it’s close to impossible to brick your Raspberry Pi Pico 2 or other RP2350 boards because the bootrom code (source code) is stored in the 32KB ROM of the microcontroller and is by definition “read-only memory”.  But I managed to “brick” my Raspberry Pi Pico 2 the other day, and even a blinky sample would not run on the board. So I’ll explain a simple method to recover/perform a factory reset of sorts. First, let me explain what happened. My board became unusable after I ran the following command while building RISC-V Linux for RP2035 and my Pico 2 was connected to the build machine:

At some point, it will copy a UF2 firmware binary designed for boards with PSRAM which the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 lacks:

After that, I could still see the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board as an “RP2350” drive on my computer, […]

WeAct RA4M1 board
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WeAct RA4M1 – A small board with plenty of GPIOs that’s software-compatible with the Arduino UNO R4

Last week, we covered the Maker Go RA4M1-R4 development board, an inexpensive “clone” of the Arduino UNO R4 Minima with some small modifications like support for up to 50V DC input and a 3.3V/5V switch for I/Os. But today, I’ve come across a smaller and cheaper Renesas RA4M1 board that’s also software compatible with the Arduino UNO R4. Meet the WeAct RA4M1. The WeAct RA4M1 is mostly a breakout board for the Renesas R7FA4M1AB3CFM Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller with two 30-pin GPIO headers, a USB-C port for power and programming, and three buttons. It offers a middle ground between the Arduino UNO R4 Minima and the tiny XIAO RA4M1 USB-C board. WeAct RA4M1 specifications: Microcontroller – Renesas RA4M1 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256KB flash USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming Expansion 2x 30-pin headers with GPIO, VIN, VCC, GND 3.3V or 5V […]

DietPi 9.7 Orange Pi 5 Plus
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DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 released with improved support for Rockchip, Amlogic, and Allwinner SBCs

Armbian and DietPi are two separate projects that provide Linux-based OS images optimized for Arm-based single board computers. The last time we had a look at both projects was in June with the release of Armbian 24.5.1 and DietPi 9.4, but there have been several updates since then including the releases of the latest DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 Yelt just a few days ago. So let’s check out the latest changes. DietPi 9.7 DietPi is a lightweight Debian-based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems that ships as a minimal image but users can install any packages they want, including the ones required for desktop environment, to match the requirements of the applications. It’s notably used by the Linamp project – a Raspberry Pi 4-based project that brings WinAMP to real life – that we covered a few weeks ago. DietPi 9.7 was released on August 25, 2024 with […]

SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000 E
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T1000-E Card Tracker is a thin, credit card-sized GPS tracker with Meshtastic support

Seeed Studio has introduced the T1000-E, an updated version of the SenseCAP T1000 Card Tracker, built for Meshtastic. This rugged tracker is compact, about the size of a credit card, making it easy to carry or attach to assets. It uses Semtech LR1110 RF transceiver, Nordic Semi nRF52840 wireless SoC, and MediaTek/Aihora AG3335 GPS module for precise, low-power tracking and communication. With an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance, the T1000-E is ideal for reliable asset tracking. The T1000-E supports LoRa and Bluetooth v5.1 for communication and includes a 3-axis accelerometer, an LED, a buzzer, and a button for operation. It has internal antennas for GNSS, LoRa, Wi-Fi, and BLE communication range of 2 to 5 km, depending on the environment. SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E specifications: SoC – Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 CPU – 32-bit Cortex-M4 core with FPU running at 64 MHz Flash – 1 MB RAM – 256 kB […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 RP2350 RISC-V review
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Using RISC-V cores on the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board and RP2350 MCU – From blinking an LED to building Linux

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 was released last month with a Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller equipped with two Arm Cortex-M33 cores and two 32-bit RISC-V “Hazard3” cores with up to two cores usable at any time. So in this guide, we’ll show how to use the RISC-V cores on the RP2350 MCU, compare their performance against the Arm Cortex-M33 cores, and even build Linux for RISC-V for RP2350 boards that have PSRAM. Apart from the extra memory and more powerful cores, plus new features related to security and the HSTX interface, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico will be very similar to the end user and the instructions in our article “Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Pico using MicroPython and C” remain valid. I don’t think there’s a MicroPython RISC-V image yet, so we’ll focus on running C programs on the RISC-V cores. A quick check with the Arm cores […]

LILYGO T Deck Plus handheld development board
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LILYGO T-Deck Plus – A Blackberry-like ESP32-S3 devkit with QWERTY keyboard, trackball, LoRa, GPS, battery, and more

The LILYGO T-Deck Plus is an ESP32-S3 based handheld development kit that resembles a Blackberry phone with a QWERTY keyboard and trackball. The device features a 2.8-inch IPS LCD, a GPS module, a LoRa transceiver, and a 2,000mAh battery which means you can take it outside and do some pen-testing and research. Additionally, the board features a microphone, a speaker, and a microSD card slot for storage. Just last year, LILYGO introduced the LILYGO T-Deck ESP32-S3 development board with LoRa and a 2.8-inch display, and the T-Deck Plus builds on the earlier design but also adds a GPS module and a higher capacity battery. LILYGO T-Deck Plus specifications ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 wireless module SoC –  ESP32-S3FN16R8 dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz with 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE connectivity Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 16MB SPI flash PCB antenna Storage – MicroSD card slot Display – […]

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