$165 Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro board offers 2x 10GbE SFP+ cages, 7x 10GbE/2.5GbE/GbE RJ45 ports, WiFi 7 support

The Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro is a new router board based on MediaTek Filogic 880 (MT7988A) Cortex-A73 SoC offering two 10GbE SFP+ cages/RJ45 ports combos, four 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and optional WiFi 7 support via the Banana Pi BPI-R4-MIC-BE14 dual mini PCIe module. As its name implies, it’s a Pro/upgraded version of the Banana Pi BPI-R4 board first introduced in 2023, which doubles the memory to 8GB DDR4, doubles the SPI flash’s capacity to 256MB, and adds a few networking ports, M.2 expansion slots for a total of six, and a few other minor features highlighted...

HackerBox 0119 Geopositioning Explores GPS and Mapping

HackerBox has released Issue 0119, titled “Geopositioning.” This edition marks ten years of the subscription series and focuses on satellite positioning and mapping through the ESP-WROOM-32 system-on-chip and the Thrifty Yeti Locator (TYL) platform. The kit combines hardware assembly with firmware development in the Arduino IDE to demonstrate GNSS and geolocation principles. According to the […]

RP2350 Tiny and Tiny XL boards clone Solder Party’s RP2350 stamp layouts at nearly half the price

While searching Aliexpress, I stumbled upon the RP2350 Tiny and Tiny XL, both of which are RP2350-based low-cost stamp-size development boards that look exactly like the Solder Party’s “RP2350 Stamp” modules, but are available at nearly half the price. Both modules feature the Raspberry Pi RP2350 dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller and an integrated LiPo charging circuitry. The RP2350 Tiny offers 30x GPIOs, while the larger RP2350 Tiny XL breaks out 48x GPIOs, adds PSRAM, and includes SWD/UART JST connectors. Key interfaces include USB host/device, UART, SPI, I²C, PWM, ADC, and PIO state machines, along with Secure Boot and Arm TrustZone....

Solving the NYTimes Pips puzzle with a constraint solver

The New York Times recently introduced a new daily puzzle called Pips. You place a set of dominoes on a grid, satisfying various conditions. For instance, in the puzzle below, the pips (dots) in the purple squares must sum to 8, there must be fewer than 5 pips in the red square, and the pips in the three green squares must be equal. (It doesn't take much thought to solve this "easy" puzzle, but the "medium" and "hard" puzzles are more challenging.)

I was wondering about how...

MIPI SoundWire I3S (SWI3S) targets high-bandwidth, low-latency audio applications

The MIPI Alliance has recently released the SoundWire I3S (MIPI SWI3S v1.0) specification for high-bandwidth, low-latency audio applications which unify control and data over a single, power-efficient interface. SWI3S builds upon the two-pin, multi-drop architecture of MIPI SoundWire released in 2014, and offers higher bandwidth, low power consumption, much better noise immunity, and support for scalable multi-device topologies to meet the increasing requirements of embedded audio systems. MIPI SWI3S v1.0 supports data rates up to 76 Mbps against 24 Mbps for the earlier SLIMbus and SoundWire audio interfaces, and improves noise immunity by operating in “forwarded clock” or “differential low...

Allwinner T153-based industrial SoM and SBC feature a mix of Arm Cortex-A7 and RISC-V cores

Forlinx has recently introduced the Allwinner T153-based FET153-S SoM and the OK153-S SBC. The Allwinner T153 processor features a hybrid architecture that combines a quad-core Arm Cortex-A7 CPU with an XuanTie E907 RISC-V core. The board features up to 1GB DDR3 RAM, 8GB eMMC, triple Gigabit Ethernet, dual CAN-FD, RS-485, and a Local Bus for PSRAM or FPGA expansion. Display options include support for RGB, LVDS, and MIPI DSI interfaces, and camera inputs are offered via parallel or MIPI CSI. Additional I/O include multiple UART, I²C, SPI, I²S, GPADC, and GPIO options, along with Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, a USB Type-C OTG port,...

Водородные печи в электровакуумном производстве. Что, зачем, какие

Специальные печи для высокотемпературной термообработки в контролируемой газовой среде и, в частности, в водороде, с успехом применяют при производстве особо ответственных деталей в ряде областей. Отжиг металлов в Н2 улучшает их микроструктуру, повышает однородность. В водородных печах прямым способом получают железо, спекают порошковые металлы, делают высококачественную пайку. Водородный отжиг очень способствует удалению впитанных металлами газов (обезгаживание). Последнее — крайне важный процесс в, так нас интересующем, производстве электровакуумных приборов (ЭВП), где отжиг в Н2 — стандартная мера ускорения и удешевления изготовления приёмно-усилительных ламп (ПУЛ). Печи для отжига в водороде могут быть как крупными заводскими установками, так и упрощёнными лабораторными мини и даже микровариантами,...

Чтобы дверью не зажало. Оживляем фотореверс из кабины лифта

Приветствую всех!
Замечали ли вы, что в некоторых лифтах, стоит только попасть постороннему предмету в проём, как двери немедленно открываются? Такая система, делающая поездки намного более комфортными и безопасными, есть практически в каждом современном лифте.

Что же это за устройство, не дающее нам быть зажатыми дверями? Сейчас и узнаем. Заодно посмотрим на начинку одного из таких девайсов и попробуем его запустить.

Radxa Orion O6N Brings Cix P1 Performance to a Smaller Nano ITX Form Factor

Radxa has introduced the Orion O6N, a Nano ITX single board computer designed as a smaller and more power-efficient alternative to the earlier Orion O6. Both models share the same Cix P1 SoC and overall platform architecture, but the O6N adopts a more compact 120 x 120 mm form factor compared to the 170 x […]

Google’s open-source, RISC-V-based Coral NPU is integrated into Synaptics SL2610 Edge AI SoCs

Google has very recently introduced Coral NPU full-stack, open-source RISC-V-based platform for always-on AI on low-power edge devices and wearables. The first chip to integrate the Coral NPU is the upcoming Synaptics Astra SL2610 family. Google Coral NPU The Coral NPU aims to address the software fragmentation on entry-level AI accelerators that makes them difficult to program. By releasing an open-source NPU and associated source code, Google hopes its design will be adopted by silicon vendors, reduce software fragmentation over time, and help machine learning (ML) developers bring products to market faster. Building on the works on the Coral platform,...