SBC News

This week's work centers on new board and SoC enablement, a broad wireless driver and firmware overhaul, and continued kernel, boot, and installer refinements. Board support expanded on multiple fronts. A new RK3562 family was introduced alongside the KICKPI K3B with mainline U-Boot and Linux, and mainline 7.2 bring-up landed for the S5P6818 platform covering NanoPC-T3+, NanoPi M3, and Fire3. The FriendlyELEC NanoPi R28S, Wildfire Lubancat 3 v2, OrangePi CM5 Base edition, and SpacemiT Musebook (current branch) were added, while the Mixtile Edge2 and Blade 3, Orange Pi 5 Max/Ultra, and Banana Pi M2 Ultra received targeted fixes for Bluetooth, eMMC, Ethernet, and thermal be…

Welcome to the latest Armbian Newsletter: your source for the latest developments, community highlights, and behind-the-scenes updates from the world of open-source ARM and RISC-V computing. Armbian 26.8 brings a major shift to the ecosystem, focusing heavily on rebuilding and refining the core tools users interact with every day. Anchored by the Linux 7.1 kernel across the tree, this milestone release introduces three major overhauls: a redesigned armbian-install utility featuring expanded boot topologies and standalone bootloader flashing, the all-new Imager 2.0, and standardized UEFI ISO images for seamless deployment across desktop and minimal environments. Paired wi…

When you download an Armbian image, flash it to your SD card or SSD, and boot your board, a huge amount of automation has already happened behind the scenes. That invisible engine is what you can see at https://actions.armbian.com. Think of it as the mission control center of Armbian’s infrastructure. It doesn’t look flashy, but it represents one of the most important parts of the project: the system that builds, tests, validates, and maintains Armbian for hundreds of boards, kernels, and configurations. Armbian isn’t just an operating system. It’s an automated production platform for embedded Linux.What is actions.armbian.com?actions.armbian.com is Armbian’s public autom…

As an active member of the freedesktop community, Collabora was busy at XDC 2025. Our graphics team delivered five talks, helped out in two more sessions, and ran a workshop for newcomers. View the full article

This week's development centered on kernel and toolchain progression, expanded board support, and substantial wireless driver cleanup. Mainline tracking advanced with kernel bumps to 7.2-rc7, Rockchip edge promoted to 7.2, and sunxi edge moved to 7.1.y. Platform work included loong64 migration from debian-ports to the main Debian archive with corresponding apt repository publishing, mainline kernel and U-Boot enablement on the Avaota A1, restored CONFIG_DWMAC_SUN8I for sunxi64, and a new RK3528 bl32/DDR blob update. Rockchip64 also received backported fixes for an 8250 DMA reopen crash and for CAN TX stalls. Board coverage grew across multiple vendors, with the NanoPi NEO…

This cycle centers on Linux 7.2/7.3 kernel enablement across out-of-tree drivers, new board support and platform fixes across Rockchip, SpacemiT, and Amlogic, and a broad documentation and CI cleanup. Kernel progression dominated the driver ecosystem, with 7.3 patch sets prepared for rockchip64, meson64, and the UEFI targets, and edge bumps to 7.2.3 landing for qcs6490, qrb2210, and sc8280xp. A wave of Wi‑Fi drivers was re-enabled and bumped for 7.3 compatibility, including rtl8189es/fs, rtl8192eu, rtl8723ds, rtl8852bs, uwe5622, and bcmdhd-dkms, most addressing the strncpy removal and the cfg80211 remain_on_channel cookie signature change. The rk35xx vendor kernel also ad…

This cycle centers on Linux 7.2/7.3 kernel enablement across out-of-tree drivers, new board support and platform fixes across Rockchip, SpacemiT, and Amlogic, and a broad documentation and CI cleanup. Kernel progression dominated the driver ecosystem, with 7.3 patch sets prepared for rockchip64, meson64, and the UEFI targets, and edge bumps to 7.2.3 landing for qcs6490, qrb2210, and sc8280xp. A wave of Wi‑Fi drivers was re-enabled and bumped for 7.3 compatibility, including rtl8189es/fs, rtl8192eu, rtl8723ds, rtl8852bs, uwe5622, and bcmdhd-dkms, most addressing the strncpy removal and the cfg80211 remain_on_channel cookie signature change. The rk35xx vendor kernel also ad…

When you download an Armbian image, flash it to your SD card or SSD, and boot your board, a huge amount of automation has already happened behind the scenes. That invisible engine is what you can see at https://actions.armbian.com. Think of it as the mission control center of Armbian’s infrastructure. It doesn’t look flashy, but it represents one of the most important parts of the project: the system that builds, tests, validates, and maintains Armbian for hundreds of boards, kernels, and configurations. Armbian isn’t just an operating system. It’s an automated production platform for embedded Linux.What is actions.armbian.com?actions.armbian.com is Armbian’s public autom…

This week's work centers on new board and SoC enablement, a broad wireless driver and firmware overhaul, and continued kernel, boot, and installer refinements. Board support expanded on multiple fronts. A new RK3562 family was introduced alongside the KICKPI K3B with mainline U-Boot and Linux, and mainline 7.2 bring-up landed for the S5P6818 platform covering NanoPC-T3+, NanoPi M3, and Fire3. The FriendlyELEC NanoPi R28S, Wildfire Lubancat 3 v2, OrangePi CM5 Base edition, and SpacemiT Musebook (current branch) were added, while the Mixtile Edge2 and Blade 3, Orange Pi 5 Max/Ultra, and Banana Pi M2 Ultra received targeted fixes for Bluetooth, eMMC, Ethernet, and thermal be…

Turnip is the first Mesa driver to achieve official Vulkan conformance on Android, with stronger Android integration, shared Vulkan runtime improvements, and real-device CI testing on Qualcomm Adreno hardware. View the full article

Welcome to the latest Armbian Newsletter: your source for the latest developments, community highlights, and behind-the-scenes updates from the world of open-source ARM and RISC-V computing. JetHome boosts Armbian CIJetHome (Shenzhen JetHome Technology Co.) donated a build server for Armbian. The server compiles Armbian images, kernels and U-Boot packages. Thank you, JetHome. HW Specifications CPU 2 × Intel Xeon Gold 6148, 80 threads Memory 384 GB Storage 3.84 TB SSD, plus 20 TB of disk Network 2 × 1Sponsored Github HighlightsThis week’s work centers on Rockchip platform maturation, kernel and toolchain modernization, and board-level enablement across vendors. Rockchip r…

This week's work centers on new board enablement and platform maintenance, kernel and U-Boot refresh across Rockchip and Sunxi, and CI/build infrastructure improvements. Board support expanded with the addition of Sovol Zero, SV08, and SV08 Max on the H616 platform, alongside mainline and edge enablement for the Recomputer RK3576 devkit. BeagleY-AI features were forward-ported through kernel 7.2, the Mekotronics R58S2 gained rockusb recovery-key support, and the NanoPi R3S received an ethernet alias. Vendor logos and board imagery were also refreshed on the website. On the kernel and bootloader side, the cix-p1 edge kernel moved to 7.1.5 with refreshed patches, meson64 dr…

Kraid, the new compiler for the Panfrost driver stack, now passes all 800,000 Vulkan CTS compute shader tests. This marks a major milestone, with work continuing on additional shader stages, code quality, and performance optimization. View the full article

This week's work centers on new board enablement and platform maintenance, kernel and U-Boot refresh across Rockchip and Sunxi, and CI/build infrastructure improvements. Board support expanded with the addition of Sovol Zero, SV08, and SV08 Max on the H616 platform, alongside mainline and edge enablement for the Recomputer RK3576 devkit. BeagleY-AI features were forward-ported through kernel 7.2, the Mekotronics R58S2 gained rockusb recovery-key support, and the NanoPi R3S received an ethernet alias. Vendor logos and board imagery were also refreshed on the website. On the kernel and bootloader side, the cix-p1 edge kernel moved to 7.1.5 with refreshed patches, meson64 dr…

Modernizing SBC Storage: From Qualcomm EDL Flashing to SPI-to-NVMe Boots For years, single-board computer (SBC) storage followed a simple, predictable pattern: flash an image onto a microSD card or eMMC module, plug it in, and turn on the board. However, as modern embedded hardware approaches laptop-grade performance, that legacy approach is starting to break down. The latest quarter of Armbian development highlights a major shift toward modern storage pipelines. By combining Qualcomm Emergency Download (EDL) flashing in Armbian Imager 2.0 with a redesigned installation engine, Armbian is making high-performance hardware far easier to set up. Direct Qualcomm Flashing with…

The Holo Core aarch64 preview provides early binaries, sources, and containers for an Arch Linux-based aarch64 port, backed by tooling and CI work for reproducible rolling-release builds. View the full article

Next week we'll be in Paris for Kernel Recipes! We’re pleased to sponsor this gathering of the kernel community and contribute a talk on upstream H.264 and HEVC decoding for Rockchip RK3588/RK3576. View the full article

The Milk-V Duo S is a very cheap and small board. It runs a Sophgo SG2000 with an Arm Cortex-A53 and a RISC-V C906, 512 MB of RAM, and a physical slide switch decides which one boots. Armbian now supports both architectures. PR #10326 landed the port (175 files) as two thin board targets – milkv-duos-arm and milkv-duos-riscv – over a single shared family include, so the bootloader pins can't drift apart. PR #10510 moved the edge branch to kernel 7.1. Standing on the shoulders of othersThere are at least 2 projects the port owes a lot to: queenkjuul/milkv-duo-ubuntu (Ubuntu on a mainline kernel 7.0, RISC-V) and Fishwaldo/sophgo-sg200x-debian (Debian sid, vendor kernel 5.10…

The Milk-V Duo S is a very cheap and small board. It runs a Sophgo SG2000 with an Arm Cortex-A53 and a RISC-V C906, 512 MB of RAM, and a physical slide switch decides which one boots. Armbian now supports both architectures. PR #10326 landed the port (175 files) as two thin board targets – milkv-duos-arm and milkv-duos-riscv – over a single shared family include, so the bootloader pins can't drift apart. PR #10510 moved the edge branch to kernel 7.1. Standing on the shoulders of othersThere are at least 2 projects the port owes a lot to: queenkjuul/milkv-duo-ubuntu (Ubuntu on a mainline kernel 7.0, RISC-V) and Fishwaldo/sophgo-sg200x-debian (Debian sid, vendor kernel 5.10…

Welcome to the latest Armbian Newsletter: your source for the latest developments, community highlights, and behind-the-scenes updates from the world of open-source ARM and RISC-V computing. Armbian 26.8 brings a major shift to the ecosystem, focusing heavily on rebuilding and refining the core tools users interact with every day. Anchored by the Linux 7.1 kernel across the tree, this milestone release introduces three major overhauls: a redesigned armbian-install utility featuring expanded boot topologies and standalone bootloader flashing, the all-new Imager 2.0, and standardized UEFI ISO images for seamless deployment across desktop and minimal environments. Paired wi…

Armbian builds for hundreds of boards. A kernel bump that is clean on one SoC can leave another unbootable and no build log will tell you. So there is a rack, and the rack boots them. Compiling is not evidence. A kernel that builds, packages that install, an image that flashes — none of it proves a board comes back after reboot. Armbian supports a very large number of boards across a dozen vendors and twenty SoC families, maintained largely by volunteers who each own one or two of them. The failure mode that hurts is not a broken build. It is a change that builds perfectly and quietly bricks the boot path on hardware nobody happened to have on their desk that week. The au…

This cycle centers on expanded board and SoC support, kernel maintenance across sunxi, rockchip, and sophgo families, and infrastructure refinements to installer, extensions, and CI tooling. New platform enablement covers a broad range of vendors and architectures. Notable additions include the EmbedFire LubanCat 3 v2 and Seeed reComputer RK3576 devkits, the TQ-Systems MBa62xx/MBa67xx TI K3 boards, the Tanix TX6s (Allwinner H616), and the ZTL A568 (RK3568). The Allwinner A733 line advances with a full HDMI display pipeline (DE33/RCQ), PCIe/NVMe, and U-Boot 2026.07 integration for sun55iw3, while the Sophgo SG200x family bumps edge to 7.2, gains TPU support for the Milk-V …

Armbian builds for hundreds of boards. A kernel bump that is clean on one SoC can leave another unbootable and no build log will tell you. So there is a rack, and the rack boots them. Compiling is not evidence. A kernel that builds, packages that install, an image that flashes — none of it proves a board comes back after reboot. Armbian supports a very large number of boards across a dozen vendors and twenty SoC families, maintained largely by volunteers who each own one or two of them. The failure mode that hurts is not a broken build. It is a change that builds perfectly and quietly bricks the boot path on hardware nobody happened to have on their desk that week. The au…

Welcome to the latest Armbian Newsletter: your source for the latest developments, community highlights, and behind-the-scenes updates from the world of open-source ARM and RISC-V computing. JetHome boosts Armbian CIJetHome (Shenzhen JetHome Technology Co.) donated a build server for Armbian. The server compiles Armbian images, kernels and U-Boot packages. Thank you, JetHome. HW Specifications CPU 2 × Intel Xeon Gold 6148, 80 threads Memory 384 GB Storage 3.84 TB SSD, plus 20 TB of disk Network 2 × 1Sponsored Github HighlightsThis week’s work centers on Rockchip platform maturation, kernel and toolchain modernization, and board-level enablement across vendors. Rockchip r…

Collabora is heading to Amsterdam! Join us at Booth A63 in Hall 14 to see GStreamer Analytics with machine learning, standalone XR remote rendering, and our MediaTek Genio-powered Magic Mirror for virtual clothing swaps. View the full article

Modernizing SBC Storage: From Qualcomm EDL Flashing to SPI-to-NVMe Boots For years, single-board computer (SBC) storage followed a simple, predictable pattern: flash an image onto a microSD card or eMMC module, plug it in, and turn on the board. However, as modern embedded hardware approaches laptop-grade performance, that legacy approach is starting to break down. The latest quarter of Armbian development highlights a major shift toward modern storage pipelines. By combining Qualcomm Emergency Download (EDL) flashing in Armbian Imager 2.0 with a redesigned installation engine, Armbian is making high-performance hardware far easier to set up. Direct Qualcomm Flashing with…

Running Gemma 4 E2B on a Mali GPU with LiteRT-LMThis guide should work on any armbian minimal/console (trixie) system with a working Mali-g610 GPU. DO NOT USE DESKTOP Verified on: Orange Pi 5 Max (Rockchip RK3588, Arm Mali-G610 MC4), Armbian/Debian 13 (trixie), aarch64, 8 GB RAM. Status summary: Both CPU (XNNPACK) and GPU (WebGPU/Dawn → Vulkan → panvk → panthor) work on the mainline panthor kernel — numbers below. The GPU path needed one line of local patching in Mesa's panvk driver (raise maxImageDimension3D 512 → 2048 to meet the WebGPU minimums that LiteRT's Dawn library enforces; recipe in §5, rationale in §7.1). The model is multimodal (Text + Vision + Audio): the …

This week's work centers on Rockchip platform maturation, kernel and toolchain modernization, and board-level enablement across vendors. Rockchip received the largest share of attention, with RK3528 gaining a thermal driver, cooling-map refinements, and cleanup of legacy PCIe and pmdomain workarounds. The Radxa E24C now stores its U-Boot environment in SPI flash and reads switch port MAC addresses from EEPROM, while device trees for the Mixtile Blade 3, Core3588E, and Edge 2 were corrected. New board support was added for the Boardcon SBC3568, and the Rock 5T now ships an edge kernel. On the configuration side, hyphenated LINUXFAMILY handling was fixed in both the kernel …

Next week we'll be in Prague for a packed Open Source week! We’ll speak at the Linux Plumbers Conference and GStreamer Conference, and present two demos at the ELC Technical Showcase. View the full article

This week's work centers on Rockchip platform maturation, kernel and toolchain modernization, and board-level enablement across vendors. Rockchip received the largest share of attention, with RK3528 gaining a thermal driver, cooling-map refinements, and cleanup of legacy PCIe and pmdomain workarounds. The Radxa E24C now stores its U-Boot environment in SPI flash and reads switch port MAC addresses from EEPROM, while device trees for the Mixtile Blade 3, Core3588E, and Edge 2 were corrected. New board support was added for the Boardcon SBC3568, and the Rock 5T now ships an edge kernel. On the configuration side, hyphenated LINUXFAMILY handling was fixed in both the kernel …

Tyr’s latest Rust GPU kernel driver work puts GPU memory management in place, from VM binding and GPUVM to GEM-backed buffers and firmware boot, moving key pieces upstream before tackling synchronization next. View the full article

This cycle centers on expanded board and SoC support, kernel maintenance across sunxi, rockchip, and sophgo families, and infrastructure refinements to installer, extensions, and CI tooling. New platform enablement covers a broad range of vendors and architectures. Notable additions include the EmbedFire LubanCat 3 v2 and Seeed reComputer RK3576 devkits, the TQ-Systems MBa62xx/MBa67xx TI K3 boards, the Tanix TX6s (Allwinner H616), and the ZTL A568 (RK3568). The Allwinner A733 line advances with a full HDMI display pipeline (DE33/RCQ), PCIe/NVMe, and U-Boot 2026.07 integration for sun55iw3, while the Sophgo SG200x family bumps edge to 7.2, gains TPU support for the Milk-V …

This week's work centers on expanded board and SoC support, build and repository infrastructure modernization, and refinements to user-facing tooling and documentation. On the hardware side, mainline support arrived for the Radxa Rock 2A/2F and the Toradex Verdin iMX8M Mini, while the KickPi K2B V2.2 DDR3 gained a full board definition including a new Maxio MAE0621 PHY driver. The Allwinner sun60iw2 platform saw substantial advancement on the Orange Pi 4 Pro with GPU, desktop, and hardware video decode enablement, alongside kernel configuration refinements. The Amlogic C400-plus received U-Boot repacking and Mali-T820 stabilization, the Rockchip armhf edge kernel was bump…

A look at the USB-PD, PHY, hotplug, and DRM changes involved in making USB-C DisplayPort Alternate Mode work on RK3588/RK3576, and where they stand on the way to mainline Linux. View the full article

Working closely with Google, we built the first RDK-based Chrobalt reference platform for third-party devices, enabling Chromium-based YouTube support, certification, and automation on embedded TVs and set-top boxes. View the full article

Running Gemma 4 E2B on a Mali GPU with LiteRT-LMThis guide should work on any armbian minimal/console (trixie) system with a working Mali-g610 GPU. DO NOT USE DESKTOP Verified on: Orange Pi 5 Max (Rockchip RK3588, Arm Mali-G610 MC4), Armbian/Debian 13 (trixie), aarch64, 8 GB RAM. Status summary: Both CPU (XNNPACK) and GPU (WebGPU/Dawn → Vulkan → panvk → panthor) work on the mainline panthor kernel — numbers below. The GPU path needed one line of local patching in Mesa's panvk driver (raise maxImageDimension3D 512 → 2048 to meet the WebGPU minimums that LiteRT's Dawn library enforces; recipe in §5, rationale in §7.1). The model is multimodal (Text + Vision + Audio): the …

Linux kernel 7.2 adds broad core, Rust, and hardware-support updates, with Collabora contributing 102 patches across graphics, media, virtualization, networking, power management, and SoC enablement. View the full article

This week's work centers on expanded board and SoC support, build and repository infrastructure modernization, and refinements to user-facing tooling and documentation. On the hardware side, mainline support arrived for the Radxa Rock 2A/2F and the Toradex Verdin iMX8M Mini, while the KickPi K2B V2.2 DDR3 gained a full board definition including a new Maxio MAE0621 PHY driver. The Allwinner sun60iw2 platform saw substantial advancement on the Orange Pi 4 Pro with GPU, desktop, and hardware video decode enablement, alongside kernel configuration refinements. The Amlogic C400-plus received U-Boot repacking and Mali-T820 stabilization, the Rockchip armhf edge kernel was bump…

JetHome (Shenzhen JetHome Technology Co.) donated a build server for Armbian. The server compiles Armbian images, kernels and U-Boot packages. Thank you, JetHome. HW Specifications CPU 2 × Intel Xeon Gold 6148, 80 threads Memory 384 GB Storage 3.84 TB SSD, plus 20 TB of disk Network 2 × 1 Gbit/s, bonded Build runners 40 That is about a tenth of the fleet's capacity, running up to 3 kernel or 40 full image builds at once. The server also remembers work it has already done: Compiled code is reused. A rebuild takes under a minute instead of three.Software packages are downloaded once and shared by all 40 b…

JetHome (Shenzhen JetHome Technology Co.) donated a build server for Armbian. The server compiles Armbian images, kernels and U-Boot packages. Thank you, JetHome. HW Specifications CPU 2 × Intel Xeon Gold 6148, 80 threads Memory 384 GB Storage 3.84 TB SSD, plus 20 TB of disk Network 2 × 1 Gbit/s, bonded Build runners 40 That is about a tenth of the fleet's capacity, running up to 3 kernel or 40 full image builds at once. The server also remembers work it has already done: Compiled code is reused. A rebuild takes under a minute instead of three.Software packages are downloaded once and shared by all 40 b…

Working closely with Google, we built the first RDK-based Chrobalt reference platform for third-party devices, enabling Chromium-based YouTube support, certification, and automation on embedded TVs and set-top boxes. View the full article

Wireless-Tag WT32P4C5-43S (ZX4D30CE405-V1.3) is a fully integrated 4.3-inch touch display development board that combines an ESP32-P4 MCU with an ESP32-C5 wireless module supporting dual-band WiFi 6 (2.4/5 GHz), Bluetooth LE, and 802.15.4 connectivity. Unlike previous ESP32-P4 + ESP32-C5 solutions, this one comes with a built-in touchscreen, so you don’t need to connect a separate display. Designed for industrial automation, smart control panels, and edge AI vision terminals, the board also integrates a 15-pin MIPI CSI camera interface, a microSD card slot, two USB Type-C ports (USB 2.0 High-Speed and Debug/JTAG), and a 14-pin GPIO expansion header. Wireless-Tag WT32P4C5…

This week's development centers on expanded board support and vendor kernel work, mainline kernel progression to 7.3 with CI resilience improvements, and a substantial refresh of the Armbian Imager. New hardware enablement spans multiple SoC families, including the Boardcon SBC3568 (RK3568), ELTAY RM66 (RK3566) with vendor HDMI and power-domain workarounds, the Anbernic RG Rotate on the new Unisoc UMS512 family, and the NanoPi M6 V2. The NanoPi R6S, R6C, M6/M6V2, and NanoPC T6/T6-LTS have been unified under a single image with shared aliases, reducing duplication across the FriendlyELEC RK3588 lineup. On the vendor side, an initial rk35xx-vendor-next branch based on 6.12-…

M5Stack has just introduced the ToughC5, a rugged, weatherproof outdoor IoT controller built around the ESP32-C5. The device features a bright 2.0-inch capacitive touch IPS display and RS485 connectivity. The ToughC5 is an upgrade to the ESP32-base3d M5Stack TOUGH introduced in 2021, with the upgraded model featuring a more modern ESP32-C5 MCU with dual-band (2.4/5 GHz) Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 LE, and an IEEE 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee and Thread. Other changes include faster Octal PSRAM, an upgraded RTC chip with a dedicated coin cell backup battery, a passive buzzer replacing the previous 1W speaker, and a custom power management system (M5PM1 + M5IOE1) replacing the AXP192…

Avaota F2 is the first SBC based on an Allwinner V861 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC with 128MB on-chip DDR3 memory, support for 4K cameras, H.265 video codec, and a 1 TOPS AI accelerator. It’s an update to the earlier Avaota F1 camera board based on an Allwinner V821 SoC. The new open-source hardware F2 SBC offers several benefits, including support for both Full HD and 4K camera sensors, motor control for the PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) feature, and improved audio support through speaker (one) and microphone (two) connectors. However, the F1 also included WiFi, which the Avaota F2 lacks. Avaota F2 specifications: SoC – Allwinner V861M2-XXX CPU Dual-Core RISC-V XuanTie C907 (RV64GC…

This week's development centers on expanded board support and vendor kernel work, mainline kernel progression to 7.3 with CI resilience improvements, and a substantial refresh of the Armbian Imager. New hardware enablement spans multiple SoC families, including the Boardcon SBC3568 (RK3568), ELTAY RM66 (RK3566) with vendor HDMI and power-domain workarounds, the Anbernic RG Rotate on the new Unisoc UMS512 family, and the NanoPi M6 V2. The NanoPi R6S, R6C, M6/M6V2, and NanoPC T6/T6-LTS have been unified under a single image with shared aliases, reducing duplication across the FriendlyELEC RK3588 lineup. On the vendor side, an initial rk35xx-vendor-next branch based on 6.12-…

Developed by Zed (M-Abozaid), the esp32-c3-adblock is an open-source, Pi-hole-style DNS ad blocker that runs on a $2 ESP32-C3 microcontroller board/module without requiring PSRAM. It blocks ads and tracking domains across devices on a home or small office network by filtering DNS requests. Instead of storing domain strings in RAM, the project stores them as sorted 40-bit FNV-1a hashes in flash memory and uses binary search to check DNS requests. When a UDP DNS query comes in, the C++ firmware extracts the domain, hashes it (including parent suffixes), and performs a binary search against the flash hash table. If the domain is on the blocklist, the ESP32-C3 returns 0.0.0.0…

Sipeed has just launched what they claim is the world’s first 10 Gbps USB 3.2 logic analyzer. The SLogic32U3 is the successor to the SLogic16U3 3.2 Gbps logic analyzer launched in 2025. The SLogic32U3 USB-C logic analyzer supports up to 32 channels via four mini HDMI connectors, 350 MHz signal bandwidth, up to 1400 MS/s per channel with four channels, or 200 MS/s per channel with 32 channels, and is offered with an optional ADC module. SLogic32U3 specifications: FPGA – Not mentioned (potentially from GOWIN) Input channels – 32 digital channels via 4x mini HDMI ports, each with 8 channels Sample rates 1400MS/s @ 4 channels 800MS/s @ 8 channels 400MS/s @ 16 channels 200MS/s…

ZeroWire Robotics Q8botOne is an open-source, palm-sized quadruped robot built around an ESP32-C3 MCU and ROBOTIS DYNAMIXEL smart actuators. Designed with a unique wire-free architecture, the robot integrates all components onto a central printed circuit board also used as the structural chassis. The robot is roughly the size of a smartphone and can jog, jump, and carry up to twice its 250-gram weight. The main PCB uses a dedicated 6V/16A step-down converter for motor power and includes a battery management system for two 14500 Li-ion cells. For control, the kit includes a separate ESP32-C3 controller PCB with an Adafruit Mini I2C Gamepad. Q8botOne specifications: Wireles…

Efinix has introduced the Sapphire RV64 SoC, a configurable 64-bit RISC-V soft-core processor designed for its Titanium and Trion FPGAs. It is based on the VexiiRiscv core and can be configured with one to four RISC-V cores running at up to 400 MHz. The Sapphire RV64 has a seven-stage pipeline, configurable L1 caches, optional 64–512 KB L2 cache, and 4–512 KB of on-chip RAM. It supports DDR3, LPDDR4x, and HyperRAM with up to 512-bit AXI interfaces and external memory from 4 MB to 8 GB. Other features include an optional FPU, branch predictor, prefetchers, SV39 MMU, up to 32 GPIOs, five I²C, three SPI, three UARTs, timers, watchdog, and up to eight user interrupts. Efinix …

DSPi is a full-featured audio DSP firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico, Pico 2, and other Raspberry Pi RP2040/RP2350 boards, which turns them into a USB sound card with an integrated DSP. It allows users to make use of essential tools like room correction, active crossovers, parametric EQ, time alignment, and more, and essentially works as a regular sound card on your computer. DSPi firmware’s capabilities: Dual-Core DSP – EQ processing is split across both cores on both RP2040 and RP2350. USB Audio Interface – Supports 16-bit and 24-bit PCM input at 44.1, 48, and 96 kHz, working on macOS, Windows, Linux, and iOS. S/PDIF Input – 24-bit PCM stereo audio at 44.1 or 48kHz. 24-…

Nuvoton has added MA35D05KH67C, MA35D05KI67C, and MA35D05KJ67C, three new LQFP128 MPUs, to the NuMicro MA35D0 series, along with the NuMaker-IoT-MA35D0-A2 (Chili Pro) evaluation board. Designed for industrial AI, smart gateways, and renewable energy systems, this heterogeneous MPU has two 64-bit Arm Cortex-A35 cores at up to 650 MHz, plus a dedicated 180 MHz Arm Cortex-M4 for real-time work. Nuvoton’s press release calls Chili Pro the “industry’s smallest Linux platform,” but the board is 45 × 45 mm, which is bigger than other boards we wrote about previously, like the VoCore2 (25.4 × 25.4 × 2.8 mm), the Milk-V Duo 256M (51 × 21 mm), NanoPi NEO (40 × 40 mm), and even the …

The XIMEA MU003TG-SY-UC is a miniature industrial Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera with a 0.3MP Sony IMX556 CMOS sensor, global shutter, 640 × 480 resolution, and a 60 FPS frame rate. Its compact 26.4 × 26.4 × 28.67 mm enclosure and 31-gram weight make it suitable for space-limited embedded vision systems, robotics, UAVs, kiosks, 3D scanning, face recognition, and other machine-vision applications. The module uses a USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface through a 14-pin I-PEX Cabline SS connector for data, power, and control. A separate 10-pin Cabline V connector provides synchronization with external VCSEL illumination. The camera does not include an illumination source or optical band-pas…

The GEEKOM A5 Pro 2026 Edition is a pocket-sized 0.47L mini PC available at a $70 discount for the company’s Prime Day Sale until October 7. Powered by the 6-core Ryzen 5 7530U (up to 4.5GHz), it handles browsing, documents, video calls, and AI-agent tasks such as drafting, summarizing, and planning with ease. Dual HDMI 2.0 and dual USB-C ports support up to four displays (or one 8K display), enabling efficient multi-window workflows. Meanwhile, dual SO-DIMM slots (up to 64GB) and dual M.2 slots (up to 5TB total) provide plenty of room for future upgrades. With 2.5GbE, Wi-Fi 6E, six USB ports, an SD card reader, and VESA mounting support, along with an aluminum body that …

The DEBIX M8391-01 is a compact industrial SBC built around the MediaTek MT8391 (Genio 720) processor, designed for edge AI, computer vision, robotics, and intelligent IoT applications. The SoC’s 9-TOPS NPU enables local AI inference without relying on cloud processing. The board features up to 16GB LPDDR4 memory and up to 64GB eMMC storage, with M.2 PCIe 2.0 NVMe SSD and MicroSD card expansion. It also offers a 4-lane MIPI CSI camera input, MIPI DSI up to 2.5K and eDP 1.4 display interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, five USB ports, and a 40-pin expansion header. With an industrial operating temperature range (-40°C to 85°C), this credit card-siz…

Geekworm, in collaboration with Mcuzone, has launched the UPS Scap 5V5A, a new supercapacitor UPS HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 designed to keep the Raspberry Pi running long enough (a few seconds to a few minutes) to save data and shut down safely, rather than provide hours of backup power. Available in 100F, 60F, and 22F versions, the HAT has a built-in PD chip that negotiates a true 5V/5A output. This gives the Raspberry Pi 5 enough power to run properly without triggering the low-voltage warnings that can happen with some power supplies. The module connects to the Raspberry Pi 5 through pogo pins to detect power loss and supports I2C for checking voltage and current in r…

We have seen ESP32s used for everything from simple IoT devices to AI, audio, and vision projects. But while looking for a new project, I found out about ESP-SDR firmware, which turns the ESP32 into a native Software-Defined Radio (SDR) without additional hardware. This open-source firmware bypasses the ESP32’s fixed-function Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modems and taps directly into the internal ADC signal chain to capture raw I/Q baseband samples. It then sends these samples to a computer over USB or UART, where they can be processed and viewed as a radio spectrum or waterfall display, turning supported ESP32 chips into low-cost software-defined radio receivers without requiring…

Hello, today I am going to review the UUNA TEK iAuto, an automatic handwriting machine designed to reproduce physical handwriting using a real pen on real paper. It also supports wireless connectivity, spreadsheet-based mail merge, custom fonts, and font variation features that can make the writing look more natural. The machine can handle paper sizes up to A3 and supports pens with a diameter of up to 18 mm. The UUNA TEK iAuto works with the manufacturer’s free iAuto software, which is available for Windows on both x64 and Arm-based systems, as well as for macOS on Apple M1, M2, M3, and Intel-based Macs. Most of the following review focuses on the machine’s writing capab…

AAEON has introduced a new version of its UP Xtreme PTL Edge Panther Lake mini PC with the “Air” variant featuring Frore Systems AirJet solid-state active cooling solution. The company says the AirJet passive cooling technology makes the Panther Lake mini PC 35% thinner, 43% lighter, and capable of operating silently at under 21 dBA. This is mostly achieved by removing the thick (and heavy) heatsink found on the original design. The mini PC still benefits from up to an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H with 180 TOPS of AI performance, a 40-pin GPIO header, two RS-232/422/485 COM ports, and a wide 19 to 36V DC input range. UP Xtreme PTL Edge Air specifications: Intel Core Ultra Ser…

ASRock Industrial has introduced the NUC Core 300 BOX series of mini PCs and the NUC Core 300 motherboards built around Intel Core Series 3 Wildcat Lake-U processors. The lineup includes the NUC BOX-320, with the Intel Core 5 320 SoC, and the NUC BOX-304, which uses the Core 3 304 SoC. The company also offers the NUC-320 and NUC-304 as standalone motherboards for custom systems. The systems support up to 64GB DDR5-6400 with In-Band ECC, dual M.2 PCIe Gen4 storage, dual 2.5GbE, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, triple-display output, USB 3.2 connectivity, and 12–24V DC input. These features make them suitable for industrial PCs, edge computing systems, and other embedded applicatio…

LakeShark is open-source firmware by Samuel Reynolds (SAMS0N1TE) that turns the ESP32-P4-based LilyGO T-Display P4 into a handheld SDR scanner. Paired with an RTL-SDR Blog V3 or V4 dongle, it supports P25 Phase I trunking, analog FM/AM, POCSAG pager decoding, and 1090 MHz ADS-B reception directly on the ESP32-P4, without a PC, Raspberry Pi, or smartphone. It also includes an onboard SX1262 that supports LoRa and MeshCore applications. SDR devices like LimeSDR Micro, xSDR, UUGear’s VU GPSDR, and many others usually rely on a PC, Raspberry Pi, or smartphone for processing, but LakeShark shows that a powerful microcontroller can also handle many SDR tasks. We previously cove…

Raspberry Pi Smart Display Module is a CM5 carrier board compatible with the Intel Smart Display Module (SDM) specification, more specifically the SDM-L form factor (as opposed to the smaller SDM-S option). The Intel SDM standard has been around for years, and we first wrote it in 2018, covering the Axiomtek SDM300s (SDM-S) module. These cards are designed to be plugged into compatible digital signage displays, kiosks, point-of-sale systems, and so on. They feature a standard 98-pin PCIe edge connector with USB 3.0, HDMI 1.4/2.0, I2C/UART/SPI signalling, as well as Ethernet, HDMI, USB ports, and an M.2 expansion socket. Raspberry Pi Smart Display Module specifications: Co…

Tokyo-based Enactic OpenArm 2.0 is an open-source hardware 7-DOF robot arm designed for physical AI research, teleoperation, and contact-rich data collection. It uses quasi-direct-drive (QDD) backdrivable joints to support compliant motion and bilateral force-feedback control. The arm supports 4.1 kg nominal and 6 kg peak payload, features 1 kHz CAN-FD control, and a compact parallel gripper with an in-hand camera and replaceable fingers. It supports bilateral force-feedback teleoperation, gravity compensation, and compliant interaction, with an aluminum and stainless-steel structure and MISUMI-frame base. The ecosystem also includes the OpenArm Cell for standardized eval…