giveaway News - Page 5 of 14 - CNX Software

November 4, 2020November 6, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 150 Comments

Giveaway Week – MINIX NEO C-G USB-C Multiport Adapter

I started Giveaway Week 2020 with MINIX NEO Storage Plus USB-C Hub with 480GB SSD, but I have another USB-C hub from the company, this time without storage: MINIX NEO C-G USB-C multiport adapter. It’s a standard USB-C adapter with two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, HDMI output up to 4Kp60, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB-C pass-through port. To enter the draw simply leave a comment with your country and whatever else you’d like to say. If the country is missing, I’ll consider the entry void. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address. Contests are open for 48 hours starting at 11 am (Bangkok time) every day. Comments will be closed after 48 hours. If comments are open, the contest is still going on. Winners will be selected with random.org, and announced in the […]

November 3, 2020November 5, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 97 Comments

Giveaway Week – Miniware DT71 Smart Tweezers

Day 2 of Giveaway Week 2020 on CNX Software. What do we have here? Miniware DT71 smart tweezers that serve as LCR meter, basic signal generator, and of course actual tweezers. I found DT71 to be a useful tool for electronics enthusiasts and engineers for checking out SMT (and DIP) components, debugging boards, and even generating signals for testing. When connected to a PC, it will show as a USB storage device that you can use to adjust settings or upgrade the firmware. To enter the draw simply leave a comment with your country and whatever else you’d like to say. If the country is missing, I’ll consider the entry void. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address. Contests are open for 48 hours starting at 11 am (Bangkok time) every day. Comments will be […]

November 2, 2020November 4, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 222 Comments

Giveaway Week – MINIX NEO Storage Plus USB-C Hub with 480GB SSD

There have been “giveaway weeks” every year since 2014 on CNX Software where I send some of the samples I reviewed in the last year to seven lucky readers. With COVID-19 this year, I thought it might not happen, but it looks like shipping is working normally except for a $1.4 surcharge, so Giveaway Week 2020 will still take although I’ve tweaked the rules a bit. I’m using “Small Packet” to ship parcels at an affordable price, and if the option is not available, shipping may end up being two to four times more expensive. I’ve (naively?) assumed the Thai post office website is up-to-date, and checked “Small Packet” shipping was indeed available for the USA, France, Japan, and Australia. But out of caution, I’ll ask people to write the country where I’m supposed to ship the parcel. This will allow me to check shipping options before contacting the winners. […]

May 15, 2020July 3, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Stinger96 (NB-IoT + eMTC) and Avenger96 96Boards STM32MP1 SBCs Giveaway

96Boards, Arrow Electronics, STMicro, and Shiratech have joined hands to organize a giveaway event with up to 500 Avenger96 or Stinger96 boards going to lucky winners. I’ve already covered STM32MP1 powered Avenger96 SBC compliant with 96boards CE Extended specification, but I’ve never heard about Stinger96 board, so before going into the giveaway rules, let’s have a closer look at this new 96Boards board designed by Israel based Shiratech. Stinger96 96Boards NB-IoT + eMTC SBC Specifications: SoC – STMicro STM32MP157 dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ up to 650 MHz (4158 CoreMark) with Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ up to 200 MHz (673 CoreMark), 708KB internal SRAM System Memory – 256M x 32-bit DDR3 (1GB RAM) Storage – 8Gbit SLC NAND Flash, MicroSD card slot Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet header (via Microchip KSZ9031RNX) GPS, NB-IoT & eMTC (LTE Cat M1) IoT cellular connectivity with 2G fallback via Quectel BG96 module, SIM card slot, and […]

November 14, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Giveaway Week Winners – November 2019

We just had another of our yearly “Giveaway week” on CNX Software with 7 prizes including Arm and RISC-V development boards, NB-IoT tracker, USB-C hub, as well as development kits based on ESP32 or ESP8266 WiSoCs. People just had to comment within a 48 hours period, and we would randomly select a winner each day. We now have all confirmed winners with a strong start from Europe, Asia catching up mid-week, before with Poland and Brazil taking the week-end prizes: Balena Fin Developer Kit – Laurent H, FRANCE WisCellular NB-IoT & eMTC GPS Tracker – Jimmy, SWEDEN MINIX NEO S1 USB-C Hub with 120GB built-in SSD – Jeroen, BELGIUM Maixduino Sipeed M1 RISC-V AI Kit – Nguyen Tung, VIETNAM ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit – Bumsik Kim, SOUTH KOREA Particle Mesh IoT Development Kit – Wojciech Lubicz-Lapinski, POLAND NanoPi M4V2 SBC & Metal Case Kit – Thiago Tavares, BRAZIL I […]

November 10, 2019November 12, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 283 Comments

Giveaway Week – NanoPi M4V2 SBC & Metal Case Kit

Let’s finish giveaway week 2019 on a high with FriendlyELEC NanoPi M4V2 single board computer, and its metal case kit. The board features a Rockchip RK3399 processor with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, and the metal case kit allows the addition of an NVMe M.2 SSD as well. I tested the mini PC with FriendlyCore Desktop based on Ubuntu 18.04, since at the time, Armbian was still not working with the updated board equipped with LPDDR4 memory, and Android requires an eMMC flash module which was not part of the kits I received. NanoPi M4V2 performed fairly well in the case, but the fan is quite noisy, and somehow the RAM bandwidth was almost half of the one in the earlier NanoPi M4 board with DDR3 memory, which is the opposite one would expect. Probably related to some software tweaks as explained in the comments section of the review. I received two […]

November 9, 2019November 11, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 135 Comments

Giveaway Week – Particle Mesh IoT Development Kit

In early 2018, Particle introduced three nRF52840 Bluetooth 5 boards, also supporting the company’s Particle Mesh technology, and selling for as low as $9. Later that year, the company send me what they call Particle Mesh IoT development kit with several of those boards to get started with their mesh networking solution. That’s what I’m offering as the 6th prize of this giveaway week. With this kit on hand, I wrote a Particle Mesh networking getting started guide showing how to configure the board in Particle.io dashboard, and easily push a new program to multiple Xenon Bluetooth 5 + Mesh boards using an Argon WiFi & Bluetooth 5 + Mesh as the gateway. I’ll give away the full kit shown in the top picture which includes: The Argon kit (ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth + Mesh) A Grove and Particle Sensor Kit with various modules and a shield An Adafruit Featherwing […]

November 8, 2019November 10, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 97 Comments

Giveaway Week – ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit

Leon ANAVI makes from fun little boards for home automation, either ESP8266 based, or pHAT for Raspberry Pi boards. Earlier this year, I wrote about my experience getting ANAVI Gas Detector with Home Assistant. Now that’s I’m done, I’m giving away the starter kit that includes the ESP8266 board, an acrylic case, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, and MQ135 air quality sensor. The board is open-source hardware, meaning everything is open source from the KiCAD files to the Android sketch running on the board. It’s very easy to get started, as you can just connect a USB cable for power, and after configuring WiFi you can see the air quality – either Poor, Moderate or Good – displayed on the OLED display, and you can easily see the data in a web dashboard after setting up Home Assistant. Everything shown in the top photo will be given […]