Pironman review – A Raspberry Pi 4 enclosure with M.2 SATA, safe power off, RGB LED strip, and more

Pironman review

SunFounder Pironman is a Raspberry Pi 4 enclosure inspired by Michael Klement’s DIY Raspberry Pi 4 mini server with an OLED display and ICE Tower cooling solution, as well as some improvements such as an aluminum alloy and acrylic enclosure, support for an M.2 SATA SSD, a power button for safe shutdown,  an IR receiver, and an RGB LED strip. The company sent me a Pironman kit without Raspberry Pi 4 for review. I’ll check the package content, go through the assembly, software installation, and testing of the unique features listed above. Pironman unboxing Some of the main specifications are listed on the side of the package. The enclosure comes fully disassembled with the Pironman board, metal and acrylic panels, RGB LED strip, OLED display, heatsink, fan, adapters, flat cables, screws, standoffs, and so on. The top of the Pironman board (JMS580-V1.8) comes with a JMicron JMS580 USB 3.2 Gen […]

ROCK 3C SBC – A $39+ Raspberry Pi 3 lookalike with Rockchip RK3566-T AI SoC, M.2 NVMe SSD support

Radxa ROCK 3C

Radxa ROCK 3C, also called ROCK 3 Model C, is a Rockchip RK3566-T Arm SBC with up to 8GB RAM and WiFi 5. It mostly follows the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B form factor, but also adds an M.2 PCIe socket for NVMe SSDs. The single board computer also comes with a MicroSD card slot and eMMC flash module socket to boot the OS, a 4Kp60 capable HDMI 2.0 port, a MIPI DSI connector, a MIPI CSI camera connector, a 3.5mm jack with microphone, four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 40-pin color-coded GPIO header. ROCK 3C specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566-T quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.6 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 GPU, 0.8 TOPS NPU (AI accelerator) System Memory – 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4 2112MT/s Storage MicroSD card slot eMMC module socket M.2 Key-M PCIe socket for 2230 NVMe SSD Video Output HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 2-lane […]

ASUS unveils Tinker V RISC-V single board computer, Tinker board 3 SBC with Rockchip RK3568 SoC

ASUS Tinker V RISC-V SBC

ASUS IoT has added two new members to the Tinker board family with the Tinker V and Tinker Board 3 single board computers powered by respectively Renesas RZ/Five single-core RISC-V SoC and Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor. ASUS Tinker V RISC-V SBC Tinker V specifications: SoC – Renesas RZ/Five single core AndesCore AX45MP RISC-V processor clocked at 1.0 GHz System Memory – 1GB DDR4 Storage – MicroSD card slot, optional 16GB eMMC flash, optional SPI flash Networking – 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports USB – 1x Micro USB port, 1x Micro USB (OTG) port Serial – 2x CAN Bus via 6-pin terminal block 2x COM RS232 via 5-pin terminal block Expansion – 20-pin GPIO header with up to 2x UART, 2x I2C, 4x GPIO, 2x ADC, 1x SPI, 3.3V, and GND Debugging – JTAG pin header Power Supply – 10 to 24V DC via 5.5/2.5 mm DC barrel jack […]

DFI PCSF51 – An 1.8-inch industrial SBC with AMD Ryzen R2000 processor

1.8-inch SBC AMD Ryzen Embedded R2000

DFI PCSF51 is a 1.8-inch single board computer (SBC) powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded R2000 processor with up to 8GB DDR4 memory and 128GB eMMC flash designed for space-constraints industrial applications, robotics, edge computing, AI vision systems, and more. The business card-sized board comes with HDMI 1.4 video output, Gigabit Ethernet networking, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and an M.2 Key-E socket for wireless expansion, as well as eight digital I/Os. Other features include a watchdog and an RTC, and the SBC takes 12V DC input on a 2-pin terminal block.   DFI PCSF51 specifications: AMD Ryzen Embedded R2000 SoC (one or the other) AMD Ryzen Embedded R2514 quad-core processor  @ 2.1/3.7 GHz (Turbo) with 2MB Cache, 8 CU AMD Vega GPU; 12W TDP AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314, quad-core processor  @ 2.1/3.5 GHz (Turbo) with 2MB Cache, 6 CU AMD Vega GPU; 12W TDP AMD Ryzen Embedded R2312 […]

$85+ NanoPi R6C 2.5GbE router and SBC gets M.2 NVMe SSD socket

NanoPi R6C SBC router RK3588S

FriendlyElec has come up with a low-cost version of the NanoPi R6S with the NanoPi R6C router/SBC based on the same Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor but offering just one Gigabit Ethernet port and one 2.5GbE port, and adding an M.2 NVMe SSD socket for storage. The NanoPi R6C is also offered with 4GB or 8GB RAM, an optional 32GB eMMC flash soldered on the board, a Micro SD card socket, an 8K capable HDMI 2.1, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, and a few extra features we’ll discuss further below. NanoPi R6C specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S octa-core processor with: CPU – 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with OpenGL ES3.2 / OpenCL 2.2 / Vulkan1.1 support VPU – 8Kp60 H.265/VP9/AVS2 video decoder, 8Kp30 H.264 decoder, 4Kp60 AV1 decoder, 8Kp30 H.265/H.264 video encoder AI […]

Hailo-15 quad-core AI Vision processor delivers up to 20 TOPS for Smart Cameras

Hailo-15 AI Vision Processor

Hailo-15 is a family of AI Vision processors for smart cameras that deliver up to 20 TOPS of AI inference and are able to process deep-learning AI applications such as video analytics. The Hailo-15 appears to build upon the earlier Hailo-8 AI processor with up to 26 TOPS and more limited computer vision capability. The new AI vision processor integrates a quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU sub-system, can handle 4K video streams, and features “advanced computer vision engines”. So the main differences are that the Hailo-15 is a complete SoC / standalone processor and is specifically designed for AI cameras. Hailo-15 highlights: CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor up to 1.3 GHz or 1.1 GHz (Hailo-15L) DSP – Vector DSP, 256 MACs @ 700 MHz supports up to 350 GOPs AI accelerator / NN core sub-system with dataflow architecture Hailo-15H – Up to 20 TOPS Hailo-15M – Up to 11 TOPS Hailo-15L […]

Windows 11 shown to run on Rock 5B Arm SBC (Rockchip RK3588)

Windows 11 Arm Rock 5B

Most people will probably want to run Linux on their Arm SBC, but Windows 11 could also be an option with the Rock 5B and other single board computers based on Rockchip RK3588 and other powerful Arm SoCs thanks to the Windows on Raspberry project. The project, also known as “Windows on R” is maintained by Mario Bălănică who recently tweeted a screenshot showing Windows 11 running on the Radxa ROCK 5B SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3588 Arm Cortex-A76A/A55 clocked at 1.2 GHz (instead of the usual 2.2/2.4 GHz), but with USB 2.0/3.0 and display interface apparently working just fine. PCIe appears to be detected, but not working. He also noted that virtualization worked out of the box unlike with Raspberry Pi 4 SBC showing Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2) and PowerShell in the screenshot below. Virtualization also enabled running Android apps in Windows 11 Arm as shown […]

BeaglePlay – A $99 Texas Instruments AM625 industrial SBC with plenty of communication and expansion options

BeaglePlay

The BeagleBoard.org Foundation has just launched their latest single board computer with the BeaglePlay SBC powered by a Texas Instruments AM625 Cortex-A53/M4/R5 processor with 16GB eMMC flash, 2GB DDR2, and a wide range of I/Os, wired and wireless communication options, and support for expansion module compatible with MikroBus, Grove, and Qwiic connectors. Two wired Ethernet are offered, namely a typical Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, as well as a single-pair Ethernet RJ11 port limited to 10 Mbps but with a much longer range and power over data, and wireless connectivity includes dual-band WiFi 4, Bluetooth LE, and Sub-GHz. The board also features HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces and a MIPI CSI camera interface. BeaglePlay specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM625 (AM6254) with Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.4 GHz Arm Cortex-M4F at up to 400 MHz Arm Cortex-R5F PowerVR Rogue 3D GPU supporting up to 2048×1080 @ 60fps, […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case