CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 3, 2026July 3, 2026 by Debashis Das - No Comments

HALO TOUCH V2 – A customizable desktop USB hub with rotary encoder fitted with round touchscreen display

Designed by Innoelement in Guangzhou, China, the HALO TOUCH V2 is a multifunctional desktop USB hub with a round touchscreen and a rotary encoder designed as an interactive desk companion. It integrates system monitoring, media playback, and productivity features for workstations, home offices, and desktop setups. The device features a USB 2.0 hub with two USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, two microSD card readers, and a 100Mbps Ethernet port with per-port power monitoring. Its 360 × 360 IPS touchscreen supports a Pomodoro timer, photo and animation viewer, MP3 player, audio spectrum visualizer, and an AIDA64 system monitoring dashboard. A rotary encoder provides Microsoft Surface Dial-compatible controls on Windows, while 2.4GHz Wi-Fi enables clock synchronization and OTA firmware updates. It also supports USB PD power input and customization for themes, media, and animations using files on a microSD card. MAHOGANY HALO TOUCH V2 specifications: MCU – Unspecified (potentially ESP32-S3) […]

July 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

ESP32-C5 dual-band WiFi 6 and Bluetooth LE IoT board features 1.47-inch color LCD

We’ve covered plenty of connected displays based on ESP32 chips over the years, but the Waveshare ESP32-C5-LCD-1.47 is a little different, since it’s the first to feature an ESP32-C5 chip for dual-band WiFi 6 connectivity. It’s basically based on the ESP32-C6-LCD-1.47 design, but replaces the ESP32-C6 supporting 2.4 GHz WiFi 6 with an ESP32-C5 capable of handling both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi 6. Other features mostly remain the same: a 1.47-inch 262K-color display with 320 x 172 resolution, 4MB of flash, an RGB LED, a microSD card slot, and two 9-pin headers for GPIO expansion. Waveshare ESP32-C5-LCD-1.47 specifications: Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-C5FH4 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ 40 MHz acting as the main processor for power-sensitive applications Memory – 384 KB SRAM on-chip Storage – 320 KB ROM, 4MB flash Wireless Connectivity Dual-band (2.4GHz/5 GHz) 802.11ax WiFi […]

NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano/NX-based Mekotronics AI Box targets humanoid robots, Smart Cities management, transportation applications

Mekotronics AI Box NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano NX

Better known for its unique Rockchip industrial PC designs, Mekotronics has now launched an “AI Box” based on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 4GB/8GB or Jetson Orin NX 8GB/16GB for humanoid robots, smart transportation (V2X) applications, Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture, medical imaging, and more. While the company often provides niche features on its Rockchip systems, its Jetson embedded computer offers pretty standard interfaces with an HDMI video output, six USB Type-A ports, two Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports (one with PoE), a 40-pin GPIO header, two camera connectors, a terminal block for CAN Bus and UART, and a system connector for LEDs, power button, etc… Mekotronics AI Box specifications: Compatible modules NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 4GB up to 34 TOPS NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 8GB up to 67 TOPS NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 8GB up to 117 TOPS NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 16GB up to 157 TOPS Storage 2x M.2 Key-M […]

July 2, 2026July 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Titan Mini is a smaller Renesas RA8P1-based Edge AI board for RT-Thread RTOS development

The Titan Mini is a smaller and somewhat cheaper version of the RA8P1 Titan board introduced in 2025 for AIoT applications and RT-Thread RTOS development. It still features a Renesas R7KA8P1 Cortex-M85/M33 microcontroller with an Arm Ethos-U55 NPU, but comes with lower-capacity memory and storage chips (32MB SDRAM and 8MB QSPI flash), drops the RJ45 Ethernet ports with a single FPC Ethernet connector, among other cost-saving measures. The only benefit I see besides the smaller size and slightly lower price is the presence of a microphone and a speaker connector for audio applications. Titan Mini specifications: SoC – Renesas RA8P1 (R7KA8P1) MCU cores Arm Cortex-M85 clocked at 1 GHz with Helium MVE (M-Profile Vector Extension) with 32KB I/D caches; 7300+ CoreMarks Arm Cortex-M33 clocked at 250 MHz with 32KB I/D caches GPU – D/AVE 2D drawing engine NPU – Arm Ethos-U55 NPU delivering 256 GOPS at 500 MHz Memory – […]

July 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SONOFF NSPanel Pro Gen2 touch control panel review with eWeLink and Home Assistant

SONOFF sent us a sample of the NSPanel Pro Gen2 Smart Home control panel for review. It’s a standard 86-type controller powered by a Rockchip RK3326-S SoC, equipped with 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC flash storage, a 3.95-inch touchscreen display, and a 2-channel relay supporting up to 10A. The Android device supports dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Zigbee 3.0, and Matter, and also includes a built-in 1.5W speaker and microphone for two-way audio. It’s an update to the NSPanel Pro we reviewed in 2024. In this review, we’ll start with an unboxing and a teardown, before going through the initial setup in standalone mode, and finally use the panel with the eWelink app and Home Assistant. We’ll connect one of the relays of the NSPanel Pro Gen2 to a ceiling LED light, test Zigbee through a SONOFF AirGuard TH (SNZB-02DR2) temperature and humidity sensor, WiFi through a SONOFF AirGuard PM2.5/PM10 air […]

July 2, 2026July 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

PaperBoy Game Boy Emulator works at 60 FPS on ESP32-S3 E Ink devkit

PaperBoy E Ink ESP32-S3 Gameboy emulator

60 FPS gaming on an E Ink display? That doesn’t seem right… But that’s exactly what Wenting Zhang’s PaperBoy Game Boy emulator project does, using the M5Stack PaperS3 devkit, pairing an ESP32-S3 wireless microcontroller with a 4.7-inch E Ink display with 960 x 540 resolution. One of the tricks here is that the bottom part of the ePaper touchscreen display is used for control buttons and doesn’t need to be refreshed, while the active part only requires 160 x 144 resolution, scaled three times to represent various shades of grey. Contrary to most small Eink devkits, the PaperS3 features a screen with a raw row/column driver interface, which enabled him to drive the display while bypassing the normal waveform method, and deliver a higher refresh rate up to 60 FPS. Wenting didn’t reinvent the wheel for the Game Boy emulation part, and after testing three different emulators, he went with […]

July 1, 2026July 2, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Sipeed NanoKVM-Go – A 4K USB-C KVM with Recall-like function, AI integration (Crowdfunding)

Sipeed NanoKVM-Go is a 4K USB-C KVM designed to control any USB-C device from anywhere with one cable. It also supports “full screen memory”, a function similar to the controversial Microsoft Recall feature, which enables an AI agent to search through your screenshots. Remote control software works fine until your system freezes or BIOS access is required, and traditional KVMs do the job with HDMI, USB, Ethernet, power cables, and adapters, but that’s a bit too much when working on the go. The NanoKVM-Go aims to solve all these little issues with a small and light device that requires only one cable to the target, while the host connects to the USB KVM over WiFi 6. NanoKVM-Go and Go+ specifications: SoC – Unamed, but almost certainly the Axera Tech AX630C used in the Sipeed NanoKVM Pro 4K IP KVM. CPU – Dual-core Cortex-A53 AI accelerator – 3.2TOPS NPU System Memory […]

July 1, 2026July 1, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Raspberry Pi CM0-based industrial data acquisition gateway features RS-485, RS-232, DI, and DO interfaces

Raspberry Pi CM0 industrial data acquisition gateway

EDATEC ED-IPC1200 is an industrial data acquisition gateway powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero (CM0), designed for industrial automation and edge applications with various I/O interfaces, a fanless design, and a wide range (9–28V) DC power input. The industrial computer features RS-485, RS-232, four digital inputs, and four digital outputs for data acquisition and equipment control, and supports Ethernet, and optional Wi-Fi/Bluetooth and/or 4G LTE connectivity. EDATEC ED-IPC1200 specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi CM0 SoC – Broadcom BCM2710A1 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.0 GHz GPU – VideoCore IV GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 graphics VPU – H.264/MPEG-4 1080p30 video decoding, H.264 1080p30 video encoding System Memory – 512MB LPDDR2 RAM Storage – 8GB or 16GB eMMC flash Wireless – Optional WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 module Networking 10/100Mbps Ethernet RJ45 jack Optional Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on system-on-module 4G LTE CAT-1 with Nano SIM card slot […]