The Femtofox Pro v1 kit is a compact, low-power LoRa and Meshtastic development board running Linux specially designed for Meshtastic networks. Built around the Luckfox Pico Mini (Rockchip RV1103) SBC, this compact development platform supports USB host/device functionality, Ethernet, WiFi over USB, GPIO interfaces, I2C, UART, and a real-time clock (RTC). The most unique feature of this board is that it operates at very low power (0.27-0.4W), making it ideal for solar-powered applications. Additionally, Femtofox supports native Meshtastic client control, USB mass storage, and network reconfiguration via a USB flash drive. It also includes user-configurable buttons for WiFi toggling and system reboot, enhancing its usability. These features make Femtofox particularly useful for applications such as emergency response and off-grid messaging. Femtofox Pro v1 kit specifications Mainboard – Luckfox Pico Mini A SoC  – Rockchip RV1103 SoC CPU – Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2GHz + RISC-V core Memory – 64MB DDR2 [...]

The post Femtofox Pro v1 LoRa and Meshtastic development board runs Linux-based Foxbuntu OS on Rockchip RV1103 SoC appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

People are trying to run LLMs on all sorts of low-end hardware with often limited usefulness, and when I saw a solar LLM over Meshtastic demo on X, I first laughed. I did not see the reason for it and LoRa hardware is usually really low-end with Meshtastic open-source firmware typically used for off-grid messaging and GPS location sharing. But after thinking more about it, it could prove useful to receive information through mobile devices during disasters where power and internet connectivity can not be taken for granted. Let’s check Colonel Panic’s solution first. The short post only mentions it’s a solar LLM over Meshtastic using M5Stack hardware. On the left, we must have a power bank charge over USB (through a USB solar panel?) with two USB outputs powering a controller and a board on the right. The main controller with a small display and enclosure is an ESP32-powered [...]

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We’ve already checked out the hardware of the GEEKOM A6 mini PC with an unboxing and teardown in the first part of the review, and thoroughly tested the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H mini PC in Windows 11 Pro in the second part, so it’s now time to report our experience with Ubuntu 24.04 Linux on the mid-range mini PC. We’ve gone through features testing, system benchmarks, storage (SSD and USB) performance tests, 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 network evaluation, 4K and 8K YouTube video playback, a stress test to check out the cooling ability of the mini PC, and finally fan noise and power consumption measurements. Ubuntu 24.04 installation and system information Since we wanted to install Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS alongside Windows 11 Pro, we resized the partition by roughly half. But since the C: drive was “BitLocker Encrypted”, we knew Ubuntu installation wouldn’t be successful that way, so we went to [...]

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We’re excited to announce several key updates to the Perception Challenge for Bin-Picking aka the Bin-Picking Challenge (BPC)!

Phase 1 Submissions Open On February 14th!

Get ready to showcase your solutions! Phase 1 submissions will officially open on Friday, February 14th. Please follow the detailed submission instructions available on the challenge page. Make sure to clear caches in your browser to get the latest version of the pages.

As a reminder, the Bin-Picking Challenge is a code submission challenge. You will be submitting Docker containers structured according to the specifications in the official BPC repository.

Significantly Expanded Training Dataset!

We’ve released a 5x larger synthetic training dataset to empower your development! This expanded dataset includes the original training data. You can access the new training dataset on the IPD Hugging Face page.

Updates to the BPC Repository

We are continuously improving the BPC repository on GitHub. Please ensure you pull the latest version before preparing your submission to benefit from the most recent updates and fixes.

Introducing the New BPC CLI Tool

To streamline your workflow, we’ve developed the bpc CLI tool, which simplifies dataset downloads and submission testing. You can find detailed instructions showing how to use this new tool on GitHub.

Don’t forget to fill in your personal information! 

Many of you skipped the profile info when signing up, but please fill in the personal information on your profile page on the BPC website. This will help the competition go smoothly for everyone.

Thanks and Best of Luck!

We encourage you to take advantage of these updates and wish you the best of luck in Phase 1! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on the Slack channel.

The post Important Updates: Bin-Picking Challenge Phase 1 Submissions Open & More! appeared first on OpenCV.

We’re excited to announce a different type of competition than we’ve done in the past: The Perception Challenge For Bin-Picking, sponsored by Intrinsic, a new computer vision themed competition designed to tackle real-world robotics problems. This is your opportunity to compete and showcase your skills to a global audience, all while competing for a share of $60,000 in prizes! Read on to find out the rules and deadlines.

What is bin-picking? Bin picking is a robotics task that involves a camera and robotic arm or manipulator selecting individual objects from a container (often referred to as a bin) and moving them to a specific location or orientation. It is widely used in industries such as manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing to automate processes like sorting, assembly, and packaging.

Why Join?

This challenge is about putting your computer vision, AI, and robotics expertise to the test in real-world scenarios. Unlike previous OpenCV competitions, the goal here is well-defined, with your task being to create the most accurate results. Using Intrinsic’s open-source datasets and a remotely operated robotic workcell powered by the Intrinsic platform, you’ll develop cutting-edge solutions for challenging 6DoF pose estimation.

Unlike traditional competitions, we’re evaluating your algorithms being used live with a robot-in-the-loop, offering a more realistic and industrial type assessment of their success.

• Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with this type of vision task. We’ll explain more and provide example code in advance to people who register for the competition of the February 1st official opening for submissions. Don’t miss out: register today!

The Prizes

• 1st (Grand Prize Winner): $18,000
• 2nd (Grand Prize Runner-Up): $12,000
• 3rd Place: $8,000
• 4th Place: $4,000
• 5th Place: $3,000
• 6th to 10th Place: $1,000
• Special Prize for Best One-shot Solution: $10,000

Key Dates

All deadlines are 11:59 pm (Pacific Time)

• Today — Competition Registration Begins
• February 1, 2025 — Competition Begins
• May 1, 2025 — Top 5 Teams Announced (Elite Phase Begins)
• May 22, 2025 — Live Bin-Picking Challenge on OpenCV Webinar
• June 10, 2025 — Final Winners Awarded

How It Works

Participants will submit their solutions as Docker images for evaluation in test environments. Leaderboards will update in real-time via EvalAI, tracking accuracy and efficiency metrics. 

This challenge is open to teams of up to 10 members. Please note: participation is restricted to countries not subject to sanctions from the United States of America.

Be Part of the Action

Looking for teammates to join the OpenCV Perception Challenge For Bin-Picking (sponsored by Intrinsic)? Connect with fellow participants on the official OpenCV Slack channel and OpenCV forum.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a new student in robotics and AI, this is your chance to make a mark. Join the competition, engage with the OpenCV community, and bring your ideas to life.

Visit bpc.opencv.org to learn more and register your team.

The challenge runs in partnership with the BOP benchmark and we encourage participants to submit their results to the associated BOP-Robotics challenge, which will be announced soon.

The post Announcing the OpenCV Bin Picking Challenge, sponsored by Intrinsic – Use AI To Win Big Prizes! appeared first on OpenCV.

CWWK X86-P6 is a pocket-sized mini PC and NAS powered by either an Intel Processor N150 or Core 3 N355 Twin Lake processor, and equipped with four M.2 Key-M sockets slot for NVMe SSDs or AI accelerators. The Twin Lake mini PC supports up to 48GB DDR5 memory, features two 2.5GbE ports, two HDMI 2.0 video output, and two USB 3.0 ports, and can take Intel AX211 or BE200 WiFi 6/7 wireless modules. CWWK X86-P6 specifications: Twin Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Processor N150 quad-core processor @ up to 3.6 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD graphics @ 1.0 GHz; TDP: 6W Intel Core 3 N355 octa-core processor @ up to 3.9 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 32EU Intel UHD graphics @ 1.35 GHz; TDP: 15W System Memory – Up to 48GB DDR5 4800 MHz via SO-DIMM socket Storage – 4x M.2 M-key 2280 (PCIe 3.0 [...]

The post CWWK X86-P6 Pocket NAS / PC features Intel N150 or Core 3 N355 CPU, four NVMe SSD sockets, dual 2.5GbE, dual HDMI 2.0 appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

I swear it’s not an AI-generated picture of a device, but the Mekotronics R58-PTZ is real and just another unusual Rockchip RK3588 hardware platform from the company that’s an embedded computer with a 3-inch display on the front panel and a PTZ (Pan-Tilt-Zoom) camera placed on top. Mekotronics describes it as a live-streaming box designed for video surveillance, so I assume its main use case is to leverage to built-in 6 TOPS NPU for live streaming with some real-time effect and/or surveillance applications detecting persons, masks, etc… especially it also offers two HDMI inputs for extra cameras. Mekotronics R58-PTZ specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with CPU – 4x CortexA76  cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x CortexA55 core @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan 1.2 Video decoder – 8Kp60 H.265, VP9, AVS2, 8Kp30 H.264 AVC/MVC, 4Kp60 [...]

The post Mekotronics R58-PTZ video surveillance/live streaming embedded computer features a PTZ camera, two HDMI input ports appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

In the first part of the review, we’ve already checked out the specs, gone through an unboxing and a teardown of the GEEKOM A6 mini PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H CPU with up to 32GB DDR5 and a 1TB SSD, before quickly booting the preinstalled Windows 11 Pro. We’ve now had time to test the GEEKOM A6 in detail, so we’ll report our experience with the Ryzen 7 6800H mini PC with Windows 11 Pro. We’ve tested the features, ran benchmarks, evaluated storage and networking performance, stress-tested the device to see how it performs under load, and measured fan noise and power consumption. We’ll also compare it to the previous GEEKOM A5 and A7 mini PCs. [Update: The sponsored tag was added temporarily, as GEEKOM paid for the review to be pinned at the top of the website for one week] Software Overview and Feature Testing Going [...]

The post GEEKOM A6 Review – Part 2: A sub-$500 mid-range AMD Ryzen 7 6800H mini PC tested with Windows 11 Pro (Sponsored) appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

STMicroelectronics has introduced the STEVAL-MKI109D a MEMS sensor evaluation board, designed to test and optimize STMicro’s MEMS sensors for various applications, including industrial automation, smart agriculture, and consumer electronics. Built around the STM32H563ZI Arm Cortex-M33 MCU this development board features I²C, I3C, and SPI interfaces, along with a TDM interface for high-speed sensor data communication. The board is also compatible with STMicro MEMS DIL24 adapter boards, which makes it easy for engineers to test different sensors. Additionally, it has software-adjustable power circuitry (0–3.6V), and onboard power monitoring for accurate analysis of sensor performance. STEVAL-MKI109D specifications Main MCU – STMicro STM32H563ZI Arm Cortex-M33 MCU with DSP and FPU Storage  – MicroSD card slot Sensors – Supports all STMicro MEMS DIL24 compatible adapter boards Interfaces – I²C, I3C, SPI, TDM USB – USB Type-C connector for power and programming Misc Onboard J6 connector for STM32 programming and debugging Onboard J9 connector for [...]

The post STMicro’s STEVAL-MKI109D evaluation board supports all ST MEMS sensors with a DIL24 socket appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

OpenWrt 24.10 open-source lightweight Linux operating system for routers has just been released. It’s been upgraded to Linux 6.6 from Linux 5.15 in OpenWrt 2023.05, supports TLS 1.3 by default, improves support for WiFi 6 (802.11ax), and adds initial support for WiFi 7 (802.11be). After over one year of work since the release of OpenWrt 23.05, OpenWrt 24.10 adds over 5400 commits, and the total number of supported devices is now close to 2,000 at 1,970. It’s also the first stable release supporting OpenWrt One, the router directly designed by OpenWrt developers in collaboration with Banana Pi. OpenWrt 24.10 highlights: TLS 1.3 support in default images with MbedTLS 3.6 Activate POSIX Access Control Lists and file system security attributes for all file systems on devices with big flash sizes. Needed by docker. Note this is not enabled for all targets with the small_flash feature flag, including ath79/tiny, bcm47xx/legacy, lantiq/ase, lantiq/xrx200_legacy, [...]

The post OpenWrt 24.10 released with Linux 6.6, TLS 1.3 by default, and 1970 supported devices appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

Google has announced the start of the fabrication of a Nuvoton security chip featuring OpenTitan open-source silicon Root of Trust (RoT), the first such production-ready chip. It will soon be available in lowRISC’s Voyager 1 demo board, and later this year in Chromebooks and data centers. We first wrote about OpenTitan open-source Root of Trust (RoT) chips in 2020 as a collaboration between Google, Seagate, Nuvoton, Western Digital, lowRISC, as well as some other companies, projects, and universities that aimed at “building a transparent, high-quality reference design and integration guidelines for silicon root of trust (RoT) chips”.  OpenTitan itself reached commercial availability last year, after the first engineering samples were released in 2023, and Google now says the Nuvoton chip (yet to have a proper name) is the first production-ready OpenTitan chip. Hardware Root of Trust (RoT) are small secure microcontrollers that are the equivalent of Certificate Authorities (CAs) to [...]

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YOLO is one of the most popular edge AI computer vision models that detects multiple objects and works out of the box for the objects for which it has been trained on. But adding another object would typically involve a lot of work as you’d need to collect a dataset, manually annotate the objects you want to detect, train the network, and then possibly quantize it for edge deployment on an AI accelerator. This is basically true for all computer vision models, and we’ve already seen Edge Impulse facilitate the annotation process using GPT-4o and NVIDIA TAO to train TinyML models for microcontrollers. However, researchers at jevois.org have managed to do something even more impressive with YOLO-Jevois “open-vocabulary object detection”, based on Tencent AI Lab’s YOLO-World, to add new objects in YOLO at runtime by simply typing words or selecting part of the image. It also updates class definitions on [...]

The post YOLO-Jevois leverages YOLO-World to enable open-vocabulary object detection at runtime, no dataset or training needed appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

Chipsee has introduced three new panel PCs powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 (CM5), namely the EPC-CM5-070, PPC-CM5-070, and PPC-CM5-101, designed for automation, manufacturing, and industrial applications. The EPC-CM5-070 is a compact 7-inch open frame embedded panel PC with armored glass, the PPC-CM5-070 is also a 7-inch panel PC but with VESA/panel mounting and a rugged metal enclosure, and the PPC-CM5-101 features a 10.1-inch touchscreen display and support for an extended temperature range. Chipsee EPC-CM5-070 – A 7-inch open frame panel PC Specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi CM5 with Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 SoC, 4GB or 8GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash Storage MicroSD card slot M.2 M-Key 2230/2242 (PCIe Gen2 x1) socket for NVMe SSD Display – 7-inch display with 1024×600 resolution, 5-point capacitive touchscreen, 500 NIT brightness Video Output – HDMI port Audio 3.5mm audio out jack Internal 2W Speaker Buzzer Camera – Optional support Networking Gigabit [...]

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I’ve already reviewed the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit with Windows 11 Home, and today, I’ll report my experience with Linux on the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V mini PC using Ubuntu 24.10 operating system. I would usually review systems with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS OS, but considering the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V SoC is so new, I installed Ubuntu 24.10 when I tested whether disabling VT-d (IOMMU) would improve Intel Arc GPU performance (it does to some extent), and it turns out it was a good decision because Ubuntu 24.04 requires lots of fixes and workarounds to work the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit, at least until Ubuntu 24.04.2 is released later this month with a more recent kernel. Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit – Ubuntu 24.10 system information My Ubuntu 24.10 installed has both Linux 6.11 (default) and Linux 6.13 kernels, but I did most [...]

The post Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.10 and the importance of power limits appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.

We are happy to announce that third-party OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication support has now been open-sourced under the AGPL-3.0 license in Stalwart Mail Server version 0.11.5. This means that users can now configure Stalwart Mail Server to authenticate against external OIDC providers, such as Keycloak, without requiring an Enterprise subscription.

Stalwart Mail Server has supported OIDC authentication for several months, allowing it to function as either an OIDC provider or an OIDC client authenticating against an external provider. Until now, only the ability to act as an OIDC provider was included in the Open Source edition, while authentication via external OIDC providers was reserved for Enterprise users. By making this functionality freely available, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness and ensuring that more users can take advantage of modern, federated authentication without barriers.

With this change, organizations that rely on external OIDC identity providers can seamlessly integrate Stalwart Mail Server into their existing authentication workflows at no cost. Whether you are using Keycloak, Auth0, or another OIDC-compliant solution, Stalwart Mail Server now offers complete flexibility in how you manage authentication.

Why is Stalwart Not 100% Free?​

At Stalwart Labs, our goal is to provide a robust and feature-rich mail server solution. However, sustaining long-term development for a project of this scale requires significant financial resources. At present, open-source sponsorships alone do not generate sufficient funding to cover these costs entirely.

To ensure that Stalwart Mail Server continues to evolve and improve, we offer a paid Enterprise version. Revenue from Enterprise subscriptions allows our team to dedicate full-time efforts to development, ensuring the continuous enhancement of both the open-source and paid versions. This funding model allows us to introduce new features while maintaining the high standards that make Stalwart Mail Server a leading solution in the industry.

Furthermore, the existence of an Enterprise edition directly benefits the open-source community. By sustaining active development, we can periodically release new features into the open-source version, as we have done with third-party OIDC support. It is worth noting that even the community edition of Stalwart Mail Server already provides more features than any other open-source or commercial mail server available today. We are dedicated to maintaining and expanding this competitive edge.

If you would like to support open-source development and help accelerate the release of additional features as open-source, we invite you to become a sponsor. Your sponsorship plays a vital role in the project's sustainability and future growth. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Join Us at FOSDEM 2025​

To learn more about Stalwart Mail Server and its latest developments, we invite you to watch our talk at FOSDEM 2025. The session will take place tomorrow, Saturday, February 1st, at 12:00 PM Central European Time in Brussels. If you cannot attend in person, you can follow the presentation online at fosdem.org.

We look forward to sharing more about the project and engaging with the community at this exciting event!

Most mini PCs have pretty much the same features these days, but the Kidwants KN1 mini PC has a rather unique feature since it integrates a touchpad in its top cover allowing the user to interact without a mouse. The specifications are low-end with an Intel Celeron N4000 dual-core Gemini Lake processor first introduced in 2017, 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB eMMC flash. The mini PC also offers two 4K-capable HDMI video outputs, Ethernet and WiFi 5 connectivity, five USB ports, and an audio jack. Kidwants KN1 specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N4000 dual-core Gemini Lake processor @ 1.10 GHz / 2.6 GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage 128GB eMMC flash M.2 2280 SATA socket for up to 1TB SSD Video –  2x HDMI ports up to 4Kp60 Audio – 3.5mm audio jack Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port Dual-band Wi-Fi 5 [...]

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Radxa sent me a sample of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard for review. The system is powered by an CIX P1 (CD8180) 12-core Armv9 processor, equipped with 16GB RAM, and offers features like 5GbE, HDMI and DisplayPort, a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot, and more. It’s one of the most anticipated boards of the first part of 2025 since it’s powerful, offers a good performance/value ratio, and eventually promises to boot any ISO Arm64 image through an open-source BIOS / EDKII bootloader. I’ll start this review with an unboxing, NVMe SSD and WiFi module installation, and a short tutorial showing how to install Debian 12 operating systems before getting some system information and running a few benchmarks. In a few weeks, I’ll publish a more detailed review with features testing and more benchmarks to see what works and what doesn’t at this very early stage. Radxa Orion O6 unboxing I received [...]

The post Radxa Orion O6 Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Debian 12 installation, and first benchmarks appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News.