Khadas Tea – A MagSafe Hi-Fi headphone amplifier to play lossless audio on smartphones (Crowdfunding)

Khadas Tea magnetic headphone amplifier

From this side of the Internet, Khadas is better known for their single board computer, but the company has also made Hi-Fi audio products starting with the Khadas Tone in 2018 as an add-on board for Khadas VIM/VIM2 SBC, followed by Khadas Tone 2 Pro mini desktop Hi-Fi system in 2020. The latest audio product from Khadas is a smartphone accessory with Khadas Tea being a thin MagSafe-compatible magnetic Hi-Fi headphone amplifier based on aptX HD and LDAC capable Qualcomm QCC5125 Bluetooth SoC and ESS ES9281AC Pro DAC that sticks to the back of your phone. Khadas Tea specifications: Bluetooth Audio SoC – Qualcomm QCC5125 Bluetooth 5.0 audio chipset USB DAC – ESS ES9281AC Pro Amplifier – RT6863D (Buffer Stage) Audio I/O 3.5mm headphone jack Built-in stereo microphone for making and receiving calls over Bluetooth Sampling Rate USB: up to 32bit 384KHz @ PCM, or DSD 256 (Native) Bluetooth: up […]

10,000 mAh Graphene power bank fully charges in 27 minutes (Sponsored)

Elecjet Graphene power bank

Most power banks are made of Lithium batteries that charge in 3 to 4 hours and are good for around 500 charge cycles. But Elecjet Apollo Ultra is a different beast equipped with a 10,000 mAh Graphene battery that enables fast charging in just 27 minutes and offers a much longer lifespan with over 2,500 charge cycles. In other words that means Apollo Ultra power bank is 5x faster and lasts 5x longer than most lithium-based power banks. Another way to look at it is that this graphene-enhanced 10,000mAh power bank can gather enough power in just 7 minutes to fully charge your phone. It can fast-charge your phone up to three times, charge two devices at once, and passthrough charging lets you charge Apollo Ultra at the same time. Elecjet Apollo Ultra specifications: Battery Capacity – 10,000 mAh or 40 Wh Full Charge Time – 27 minutes USB ports […]

Goofoo Cube – A $99 easy-to-assemble 3D printer for beginners (Crowdfunding)

Goofoo Cube 3D Printer

The Goofoo Cube is a $99 3D printer that aims to be as easy to assemble as a LEGO kit, and designed for beginners who can print directly from their phone from a library of over 1000 pieces. The compact 3D printer ships in a package barely larger than a shoebox, meaning it does not take much space on your desk but the build volume is rather small (80x80x80mm), supports PLA and PCL filaments, and can print small parts in about 30 minutes with a 0.7mm nozzle. Goofoo Cube specifications: Nozzle diameter – 0.7mm Building volume – 80 x 80 x 80 mm Print speed – 10 to 20 mm/s Non-heated printing bed Supported materials – PLA and PCL Host interface – USB or Mobile phone (WiFi) Power Supply – 24V/2A Dimensions – 255 x 255 x 208 mm Weight – 1.96kg The 3D printer is comprised of five parts […]

AYN Odin – A Dockable portable game console offered with Snapdragon 845 or Dimensity 900 (Crowdfunding)

AYN Odin game console

AYN Odin is a 6-inch portable game console powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor and offered with an optional dock with an HDMI port to connect it to a large screen, various ports for controllers, and even a 2.5-inch SATA bay. It offers a much more powerful experience, a larger display, a more recent Android 10/11 OS, and better multiplayer abilities than the Amlogic S905D3 powered Powkiddy A20 portable game console we have just covered. Three models of the Odin are offered with the Lite, Base, and Pro model differing in terms of processors, and/or storage and memory: SoC Odin Lite – MediaTek Dimensity 900 octa-core processor with 2x Cortex-A78 cores @ 2.4 GHz, 6x Cortex-A55 cores @ 2.0 GHz, Mali-G68 MC4 GPU Odin Base/Pro – Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 4x Kryo Gold (Cortex A75) cores @ 2.8 GHz, 4x Kryo Silver (Cortex A55) […]

paperd.ink 4.2-inch ESP32-based e-Paper display ships with a 3D printed enclosure (Crowdfunding)

paperd.ink ePaper Display

We’ve covered a fair amount of connected e-Paper/e-Ink displays based on ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth SOC including several Inkplate displays, with the latest Inkplate 6Plus model including a touchscreen, TTGO T5 displays with small sizes, or even the fully enclosed M5Paper ESP32 IoT development kit with a 4.7-inch touchscreen e-Paper display. There’s also Watchy ESP32 smartwatch with a 1.54-inch display if you really need something small. But here’s another option courtesy of Rohit & Prasad, two young engineers from India, with the paperd.ink 4.2-inch ESP32-powered e-Paper display that ships with an optional 3D printed enclosure. paperd.ink display specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROOM-32 module with ESP32 dual-core processor, 4 MB SPI flash, 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 & Bluetooth LE connectivity Storage – MicroSD card slot for storing images, files, etc Display – 4.2″ monochrome e-Paper display with 400 x 300 resolution; 3s for full refresh; partial refresh supported USB – 1x […]

Nezha RISC-V Linux SBC launched for $99 and up

Nezha SBC

Last month, we wrote about Allwinner D1 SBC & processor that promised to offer a relatively low-cost RISC-V Linux solution. We were not given a name at the time, but there was a logo of Nezha, a fictional character from Chinese literature. The board is now known as the Nezha SBC and has been launched on Indiegogo for $99 and up as a board designed for IoT projects running Linux, but can also be purchased directly on Aliexpress for the same price. [Update: It can also be purchased on Taobao for 599 RMB] Nezha SBC specifications: SoC – Allwinner D1 single-core XuanTie C906 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 1.0 GHz with HiFi4 DSP, G2D 2D graphics accelerators Memory – 1GB DDR3 memory Storage – 256MB SPI NAND flash, MicroSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 port up to 4Kp30, MIPI DSI & touch panel interface up to 1080p60 Decoding – […]

JingPad A1 Arm Linux 2-in-1 tablet can run Android apps (Crowdfunding)

JingPad A1 Linux Tablet

If you are looking for an Arm Linux tablet option are limited with, for instance, the Allwinner A64 powered 10.1-inch PineTab tablet or the CutiePi tablet with a Raspberry Pi CM4 module. If you’d like more performance, the upcoming JingPad A1 2-in-1 tablet might be an option worth looking into. The 11-inch 2K tablet features an octa-core Cortex-A75/A55 processor, coupled with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, and can be transformed into a laptop with an optional detachable keyboard. JingPad A1 runs the company’s JingOS optimized for tablets, and which also happens to be able to run Android apps. JingPad A1 specifications: SoC – Unnamed octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A75 CPU cores @ 2 GHz, 4x Arm Cortex-A55 CPU cores @ 1.8 GHz, Imagination PowerVR GM9446 GPU @ 800 MHz. (I can’t find an exact match, but if it looks similar to MediaTek Helio P90 except the configuration is 2x […]

Crowdfunded “Mi Mini PC” Windows 10 Mobile PC remains undelivered after 3 years

Mi-Mini-PC-Fail

Crowdfunding can be fun, but also risky for backers, especially when backing projects from startups. There are many such examples of projects gone bad, and last year we noted TAIHE Gemini portable display was another crowdfunding campaign gone wrong despite raising over one million dollars. Today, I’d like to reiterate this warning with “Mi Mini PC“, a pocket-size Windows 10 Mobile PC that was introduced on Indiegogo and raised a cool 1.5 million dollars. Note that the “Mi” here is completely unrelated to Xiaomi, and the product was developed by a company with the now-unreachable  mipcworld.com website. There were early red flags shorting after the launch of the campaign with the developer making unrealistic claims about a free upgrade from Atom x7 to Core M3-7Y30, and no pictures of an actual prototype. But somebody just left a comment on the CNX Software article that there was still nothing. So I […]