Raspberry Pi CM4 boards offer dual Ethernet, 4G LTE

Raspberry Pi CM4 Dual Ethernet

Since the launch of Raspberry Pi CM4 and CM4Lite systems-on-module last October, we’ve seen carrier boards bring their own set of features including industrial communication interfaces, a stereoscopic camera, four SATA ports to build a NAS, a DIN-rail based industrial controller, and more. But so far, I have not seen a Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board with dual Ethernet ports. Seeed Studio’s “Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4” was brought to our attention this morning, but there’s another one with 4G LTE connectivity, Fast+Gigabit Ethernet ports, and extra I/Os courtesy of MCUZone’s CM4-4G IO board. Let’s have a look at both of them. Dual Gigabit Ethernet Carrier Board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Specifications: Supported SoMs – Raspberry Pi CM4 and CM4Lite with up to 8GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash, optional WiFi & Bluetooth Storage – MicroSD card slot to load OS on CM4Lite […]

H2 Net Card adds four 2.5 GbE ports to ODROID-H2/H2+ SBC

H2 Net Card

ODROID-H2+ is already a cool single board computer with an Intel Gemini Lake Refresh processor, up to 32GB RAM, dual 2.5GbE networking, support for SATA and NVMe storage, dual 4K video output, and more. But in recent days, I’ve read people complaining recently announced WiFI 6 or WiFi 6E routers only had one 2.5 Gbps or 5 Gbps Ethernet jack and wanted all/more RJ45 connectors to be 2.5 GbE ports or greater. But if even the two 2.5GbE ports on ODROID-H2+ are not quite enough for your needs, Hardkernel H2 Net Card triples that amount by adding four extra 2.5 GbE to the x86 SBC. It also works on ODROID-H2, meaning you’d get the existing dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus the four 2.5GbE ports from the M.2 card. There’s no much in the way of specifications for H2 Net Card: 4x Ethernet ports up to 2.5 GbE via RTL8125 controller. […]

Xiaomi Mi AX6000 WiFI 6 “Enhanced” Router sells for $92 (in China)

Xiaomi Mi AX6000

Yesterday, I wrote about Linksys AXE8400 WiFi 6E router which the company claimed was the world’s first, but it was pointed out to me that Xiaomi Mi AX6000 router was outed a few days earlier, and is even available right now in China or, while the Linksys router is scheduled to launch in spring or summer. Another big difference is the price with the Xiaomi router offered for 599 CNY (about $92) while the Qualcomm Networking Pro 1210 based Linksys router will sell for $450. That can partially be explained by the speed for WiFi (6000 Mbps vs 8000 Mbps), and Ethernet (2.5 Gbps WAN vs 5 Gbps WAN), but the Xiaomi router should still offer decent performance. Another reason for the cheaper price, as pointed by some smart people on OpenWrt forums is that the Xiaomi router goes not support 6 GHz, so it’s NOT a WiFi 6E router […]

Linksys AXE8400 may be the world’s first WiFi 6E router

WiFi 6E router Linksys AX8400

WiFi 6E is a new standard using the 6 GHz unlicensed spectrum to expand the bandwidth available for Wi-Fi. We previously covered some embedded boards with optional WiFI 6E cards, but so far, we had not seen any consumer-grade WiFi 6E routers. This about to change, as Linksys unveiled the AXE8400 WiFi 6E router at CES 2021, which the company claims is the world’s first WiFi 6E router. The router is based on Qualcomm Networking Pro 1200 SoC and can achieve up to 8400 Mbps speed. The company has done a poor job providing details about the router, but here are what the Linksys AXE8400 router specifications should look like: SoC – Qualcomm Networking Pro 1210 quad-core Cortex A53 processor with WiFi 6E, WiFi 5, WiFi 4 connectivity System Memory – TBD DDR3 or DDR4 Storage – TBD Connectivity 1x 5Gbps Ethernet (WAN) 4x Gigabit Ethernet ports (LAN) Tri-band WiFi […]

NanoPi R4S SBC preview with OpenWrt and Ubuntu Core

NanoPi R4S review

Rockchip RK3399 powered NanoPi R4S router SBC launched at the beginning of the month, and FriendlyELEC kindly sent a review sample to CNX Software. I intended to test thermally performance, Ethernet, and USB like I did for NanoPi R2S and NanoPi NEO3,  but Armbian is not available right now, so I could not use some of the tools I normally used right now. So instead, I tested the board/gateway with the image from FriendlyELEC. First FriendlyCore based on Ubuntu Core 20.04, but there some issues which we’ll detail in this preview, so I then switch to FriendlyWrt built upon OpenWrt 19.07 which works better, but I still encountered some problems. That’s just to say it might be better to wait a little longer until Armbian images are released, or until FriendlyELEC fixes some of the shortcomings. NanoPi R4S gateway unboxing Before testing the software, let’s see what I’ve received. NanoPi […]

Orange Pi R1 Plus router SBC features Rockchip RK3328, Dual GbE

Orange Pi R1 Plus

FriendlyELEC NanoPi R2S SBC for headless applications with Rockchip RK3328 processor and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports is getting some competition, as with Orange Pi R1 Plus board, Shenzhen Xunlong Software has updated its Orange Pi R1 board powered by an Allwinner H2+ to RK3328 processor coupled with 1GB RAM, and offering dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus one USB port for router applications. Orange Pi R1 Plus board specifications with highlights in bold or stricken through showing differences against R1 board: SoC –Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-450MP2 System Memory – 1GB DDR4 RAM Storage – MicroSD card slot, 16 MB SPI flash Connectivity – 2x Gigabit Ethernet via RTL8211E transceiver and RTL8153B USB 3.0 to Ethernet chip + 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (Realtek RTL8189ETV) with u.FL antenna connector and external antenna USB – 1x USB 2.0 port, 1x USB-C OTG port Expansion headers Unpopulated 26-pin “Raspberry Pi […]

DR6018-S is a more compact, cheaper WiFi 6 SBC with optional WiFi 6E

DR6018-S WiFi 6 Embedded Board

Earlier this year we wrote about Wallys Communications DR6018-V2 WiFi 6 embedded router board based on Qualcomm IPQ6010 processor with M.2 sockets for optional 5G and WiFi 6E cards. The company has now launched a more compact, and cheaper board with DR6018-S SBC based on the same processor with 802.11ax WiFi 6 and 802.11 b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 support, plus an M.2 socket for people wanting to add WiFi 6E cards. DR6018-S board specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ6010 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.8 GHz System Memory – 1GB (2x 512MB) DDR3L 16-bit interface with 32-bit memory bus design Storage – 256MB NAND Flash, 32MB NOR flash, optional SD card slot Networking Wired – 2x Gigabit Ethernet port including one with PoE support Wireless WiFi 2×2 2.4GHz MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11b/g/n/ax WiFi 6, max 23dBm per chain 2×2 5GHz MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11a/n/ac/ax WiFi 6, max 20dBm per chain 4x u.FL connectors […]

NanoPi R4S SBC launched with optional metal case for $45 and up

NanoPi R4S metal case

We found NanoPi R4S board in a work-in-progress Wiki last month. The tiny single board computer is designed for headless applications but comes with much better specifications compared to similar boards with a Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with up to 4GB RAM, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.0 ports. At the time we had limited information, but FriendlyELEC has now started selling the board for $45 and up, together with an optional metal case for a fanless operation that should ensure very good cooling. Here’s a reminder of NanoPi R4S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with dual-Core Cortex-A72 up to 2.0GHz,  quad-core Cortex-A53 up to 1.5GHz, Mali-T864 GPU with OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC support, 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 60fps video decoder System Memory – 1GB DDR3 or 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – MicroSD card slot Networking – 2x GbE, including one native Gigabit Ethernet, and […]