SigmaStar SSD201/SSD202 powered 4G LTE industrial gateway made to run mainline Linux

SSD202 gateway board

SigmaStar SSD201 is a dual-core Cortex-A7 processor with 64MB RAM onchip that is designed for smart HD displays. We’ve previously seen it in Industio 7-inch smart display running Linux, but if you want to modify anything you’d need sign an NDA before getting the SDK. Luckily there’s an open-source community named linux-chenxing that aims to bring mainline support to those low-cost SigmaStar processor to mainline, the same way linux-sunxi is working on Allwinner processors. Daniel Palmer noticed MYZR recently launched GW300 4G LTE industrial gateway with specifications that looked familiar. GW300 specifications from manufacturer’s website: Processor – Arm Cortex-A7 dual-core processor @ 1.2GHz Memory – 64MB RAM Storage – 128MByte Flash Connectivity – Ethernet and 4G LTE with high-gain antenna Serial – RS485/ RS232 via 5-pin terminal block Misc – RTC Power Supply – 12V to 24V DC input Dimensions – 127.7 x 87.5 x 30 mm Temperature Range – […]

Mini replica of DEC PDP-11 computer runs 2.11 BSD UNIX on ESP32 SoC

ESP32 PDP-11 mini replica

The relatively popular Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11 16-bit minicomputers started selling in the 70s, and were still available in the earlier 90s. While being stuck in Europe due to COVID-19 restrictions, Jeroen Domburg (aka Sprite_tm) decided to design a tiny replica of a DEC VT102 PDP-11 terminal based on ESP32 wireless SoC and running 2.11 BSD UNIX through SimH PDP11 emulator. Jeroen had to do significant work to make SimH works on ESP32 however, with notably the need to optimize the memory footprint: Obviously, ‘just port SIMH to an ESP32’ is a bit of a understatement for the effort that was needed. Even while SIMH is a pretty nice program when it comes to not using any unique APIs, it still is a system developed for a full-blown workstation and assumes RAM is cheap and plentiful. In order to get it running on an ESP32 and still have some […]

Rotary Un-Smartphone is a rotary dial phone based on Arduino, 4G LTE module

Rotary Un-Smartphone

If you feel nostalgic and misses the days of the rotary dial phone, Sky’s Edge “Rotary Un-Smartphone” is an open-source hardware rotary dial phone controlled by an Arduino board and equipped with a multi-mode 4G/3G/2G module. It’s a bit more advanced that you old rotary phone with recent cellular technology, ePaper & OLED displays, quick dialing buttons, and the rotary dial can both be used to dial full phone number or quickly access your contact list. Key features of the Rotary Un-Smartphone: MCU board – Arduino board based on AtMega2560 MCU Storage – MicroSD card to store contacts list Displays – Front-side OLED and back-side ePaper displays Cellular Connectivity 4G/3G/2G connectivity via u-Blox TOBY-L2 module Voice calls and SMS (receive-only) supported SIM card slot Internal antenna; expansion space for user-supplied external antenna Audio Microphone and speaker 3.5mm TRRS headset jack Mechanical ringer bell made from polished brass; externally visible Misc […]

Maypole MicroSD card reader comes with ESP32 for WiFi, smart storage (Crowdfunding)

Maypole ESP32 WiFi MicroSD Card Reader

Several years ago, we covered Zsun WiFi card reader a tiny USB card reader with WiFi and a battery that allowed users to access files via USB or WiFi from any device. People managed to hack the device and run OpenWrt on the little MicroSD card reader, but this required either to open the hardware and do some soldering, or use another method that could potentially brick the hardware, so not an ideal solution. But now Akshar Vastarpara has come with a similar device. Maypole is an open-source hardware MicroSD card reader powered by Espressif ESP32 processor providing both WiFi and the resources for smarter storage. It comes with an optional battery too to access files even without having to connect it to a USB port. Maypole hardware specifications: Storage – Swappable MicroSD cards up to 32GB Wireless Connectivity WiFi 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 via ESP32 WiSoC, Up to 4 […]

Open-source VSCP IoT/M2M automation framework supports Arduino, Raspberry Pi

VSCP (Very Simple Control Protocol) is an open-source IoT framework that works on development boards like Arduino or Raspberry Pi, and lets you control IoT home automation tasks. The framework is highly scalable, has a very low footprint, and as such is specially designed for resource-limited devices. VSCP is an open-source standard protocol for m2m, IoT and other remote control and measurement applications. It enables simple, low-cost devices to be networked together with high-end computers and/or to work as an autonomous system, whatever the communication media is. The VSCP Protocol has two levels: Level 1 and Level 2. The protocol was primarily used in CAN networks (that is Level 1 for tiny microcontrollers) because CAN is cheap and reliable with high efficiency. However, VSCP can be used for faster transport layers such as TCP/IP, so here comes Level 2 which achieves better performance. We have already seen Souliss, an open-source […]

Dragonbox Pyra open source hardware handheld Linux PC is finally shipping

Dragonbox Pyra 2020

We first covered the Dragonbox Pyra in 2014 when it was described as an open-source handheld game console powered by Texas Instruments OMAP5432 SoC, or maybe AllWinner A80, Intel Bay Trail, or Qualcomm Snapdragon processors since the exact specifications were still in the works for the Pandora successor. Michael Mrozek (EvilDragon) finally decided to keep going with the OMAP5 processor due to the good documentation and software support, and pre-orders started in 2016 with a 330 to 400 Euros downpayment and no clear timeline about shipping. It eventually took over four more years, but the Dragonbox Pyra is finally getting assembled and shipping to backers has started. Since so many years have passed, you’d be forgiven  if you completely forgot or did not know at all about the specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments OMAP 5432 SoC with 2x Arm Cortex-A15 @ 1.5 GHz with NEON SIMD, 2x ARM Cortex-M4, Imagination […]

Glasgow Interface Explorer is an iCE40 FPGA based hardware debugging tool (crowdfunding)

Glasgow Interface Explorer

We’ve seen some pretty interesting boards for hardware hackers and reverse engineers in recent months with the likes of Ollie and Tigard USB debug boards that allow interfacing various hardware interfaces and/or flashing firmware to different types of target boards. Here’s another one: Glasgow Interface Explorer. Based on Lattice Semi iCE40 FPGA, the board is described as being “designed for hardware designers, reverse engineers, digital archivists, electronics hobbyists, and anyone else who wants to communicate with a wide selection of digital devices with minimum hassle”. Glasgow Interface Explorer specifications: FPGA – Lattice Semiconductor iCE40HX8K FPGA USB – 1x USB-C port connected to FX2 high-speed USB interface capable of 480 Mbps throughput I/O headers 2x 8-channel I/O banks with 16 highly flexible I/O Each I/O bank comes with A dedicated programmable linear voltage regulator, configurable from 1.8 V to 5 V and providing up to 150 mA of power A dedicated […]

Bootterm – a developer-friendly serial terminal program

There are plenty of terminal programs to access the serial console from minicom or screen to Putty. But Willy Tarreau was not quite happy with those tools, so he decided to write his own: Bootterm. I was terribly fed up with the current state of serial terminals, which either don’t cope well with errors, or take ages to start, making you lose the first characters, or don’t support non-standard speeds etc. I finally wrote mine to address all that at once, plus support for automatic port detection (the last registered one is the good one by default), waiting for the port to be ready, and also support fixed or timed captures. And a few environment variables make it possible not to type any argument at all yet have the expected behavior. If that’s something of interest to you, you can check it there: https://github.com/wtarreau/bootterm It’s still young (no support for […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case