Almost exactly one year ago, FriendlyELEC launched NanoPi K2 board powered by Amlogic S905 processor, following Raspberry Pi 3 form factor, but adding an eMMC flash socket, Gigabit Ethernet, 4K video playback, an I2S header, more memory (2GB RAM), and doing without a camera or LCD display interface.

When I wrote about Crostini VM to run Linux apps on Chromebooks last week, I was informed about GalliumOS, described as a fast and lightweight Linux distro for ChromeOS devices - meaning Chromebooks and Chromeboxes - that is based on Xubuntu.

If you've ever visited Thailand, you may have noticed blue PVC pipes that are for water supplies, and usually visible since most of the time they are not placed underground.The pipes and fittings are very cheap, easy to find, and one person found out those could be used to make DIY cases for electronics…...

More and more use cases are being handled by smartphones, and we've recently seen smartphone stands helping with specific applications such as keyboard and mouse mobile gaming, or a flexible lazy holder allowing you to carry the phone around hands-free among other things.

Whenever you are playing videos on a machine running Linux, Android or Windows, chances the software is at least partially using code from FFmpeg, a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data.

Rak Wireless has recently launched a new products called RAK8211-NB iTracker based on a Quectel BC95-G NB-IoT module, Nordic Semi nRF52832 Bluetooth 5 chip, and Quectel L70-R GNSS module.The asset tracker module also comes with 5 different sensors to monitor motion and environmental data, and can...

Hardkernel launched ODROID-MC1 (My Cluster One) at the end of last year with four ODROID-XU4S boards powered by Samsung Exynos 5422 processor with Gigabit Ethernet,  metal cases, and a cooling fan. As the name implies it is designed for cluster of boards, but the company found out that one size (4 boards) does not fit all, so they are now offered ODROID-MC1 Solo with one ODROID-XU4S board and stackable case to provide more flexibility to their customers.

IP cameras and WiFi light bulbs are pretty common nowadays, but Alfawise JD-T8610-W2 combines both in a single device. The 3W white light bulb can be controlled with your Android/iOS smartphone to adjust the light, and a 360° camera with IR night vision is also built into the light bulb.

Intrinsyc announced their own NXP i.MX 8M system-on-module, as well as a corresponding development kit back in February 2018 for Embedded World 2018. Somehow I missed it until today when the company tweeted about the kit unboxing video, so let’s have a look, starting with the module itself.Open-X 8M SoM

Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 was introduced in late 2016 as one of the first Bluetooth 5 ready SoC, and it’s the only  part from Nordic that fully supports Bluetooth 5 longer range. But the chip is actually a multiprotocol SoC and beside Bluetooth, 802.15.4, Ant, Thread and 2.4 GHz proprietary are also supported.  The company has now announced one more wireless protocol working on nRF52840: Zigbee 3.0.

Last year, Microsoft announced they were working with Mediatek on Project Sopris Secure WiFi MCU, based on Mediatek MT7687 MIPS microcontroller with 7 properties enhancing security (Hardware-based Root of Trust, failure reporting etc…). The company has now unveiled a complete secure IoT solution with Azure Sphere comprised of three main components: Azure Sphere certified secured MCUs which combine real-time and application cores with built-in Microsoft security technology and connectivity.

Gemini Lake mini PC announcement keep on coming, with the latest from Plater Electronics which showcased their KODLIX Gemini Lake mini PC at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair 2018. What makes this model interesting is that beside the usual Celeron N4000/N4100 dual/quad core processor, it also offers the most powerful yet less common Pentium Silver N5000, and support for up to 16GB RAM via two SO-DIMM slots

Four A.I. development boards compliant with 96Boards specifications were announced at Linaro Connect HK 2018 last month: HiKey 970, Ultra96, as well as ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition. So for we only knew pricing for Ultra96 ($249), but I’ve now noticed Hikey 970 “Super Edge AI Computing Platform”  is now up for pre-order for $299.99 on Lenovator website, with shipping planned for the end of April.

Kite is an open source hardware Android phone kit specifically targeting makers which you can assemble yourself into a Kitephone.The phone is based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 mainboard (Kiteboard v2), and comes with  a 720p touchscreen display module, a 12MP camera, antennas, buttons, a 3,000 mAh...

ArmWizard forum member "-W.-" needed a cluster to test his firmware build and deployment solution for Orange Pi Zero boards which can deploy the firmware to multiple boards from one single board.So he procured 24 Orange Pi Zero boards, a 24-port switch, some USB hubs and debug board, as well as some...

After solutions such as Remix OS and Phoenix OS, PrimeOS is the latest attempt to bring Android OS to the desktop with support for a start menu, a status bar with pinned apps, multiple windows & multi-tasking, key mapping for playing games with keyboard, various power modes, and so on.

A while ago, I tested Dodocool DC30S USB type C Hub with HDMI, USB port, and a card reader, and recently the company asked me whether I wanted to review another of their accessories.My ISP has recently taken the habit of being down several hours each month, so I rely on my neighbor's WiFi…...

Ever since the first Chromebooks were released, it has been possible to run Ubuntu or other Linux distributions using Crouton (Chromium OS Universal Chroot Environment) on Chrome OS devices, but that requires to enable developer mode, which disables some of security features that come with Chrome...

Virtual reality headsets have been powered by application processors designed for smartphones, tablets, or even TV boxes. For example last year, I reviewed a low cost VR headset good enough to watch 360 / VR videos, but not gaming that was based on Allwinner H8  TV box processor.

If you have an application requiring a relatively powerful – yet low power – and compact platform, and plenty of USB and/or serial ports (COM ports), AAEON GENE-APL7 might just be ideal. The 3.5″ subcompact board is powered by an Intel Pentium N4200 or Celeron N3350 processor with a SO-DIMM slots, some video/display outputs, two USB 2.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 interfaces, and up to 10 COM ports.

Tweet hIoTron modular & enterprise IoT development kit is described by the company has a “fully pre-programmed prototyping kit for quickly building and testing your IoT concept” with plug-n-play module allowing for flexible prototyping. Beside the hardware comprises of a gateway and nodes, the kit also integrates with the company’s enterprise IoT Platform enabling easy design of custom mobile application & GUI dashboard.

TV box manufacturers should move and more more from Android to Android TV operating systems, so we can expect cheaper TV boxes offering an Android TV experience. One of those device is Nexbox A95X Pro that sells for $37.99 on GeekBuying (pre-orders shipping in about 4 days), and also happens to support Netflix HD (720p)

Flatmax Studio has launched several audio cards for Raspberry Pi boards on Kickstarter in recent years,  and their latest board is called “Audio Injector Ultra Sound Card”. The board is said to give high fidelity input and output audio @ 192 kHz, is equipped with digital output (S/PDIF) and offers dual microphone capability. An extra balanced HAT – will send and receive balanced stereo input and output – is also available.

Google launched two AIY Projects kits last year with a Voice Kit that took a Raspberry Pi 3 to create a smart speaker, and a Vision kit for hardware accelerated computer vision using a Raspberry Pi Zero W board. Google reports the kits are popular, especially for STEM education,  but educators/parents had to buy the Raspberry Pi boards and micro SD cards themselves, as well as flash the firmware to the cards.

Rockchip introduced RK3308 & Gemini quad core Cortex-A35 processors for smart AI solutions last month, and now the company has shared one more tweet about evaluation boards based on RK3308 and RK3329 (Gemini) processors for respectively smart speakers and smart displays.