Silvio Werner writes that Banana Pi has announced the BPI-CM7, a compact compute module intended as an alternative to Raspberry Pi compute modules. It is not a standalone board and requires a carrier board, which makes it well suited for ultra-compact custom devices that only need a few breakout interfaces. It uses an Allwinner H618 with four Cortex-A53 cores and an ARM Mali-G31 GPU, and pricing and availability have not been announced.
- 55 x 40 mm form factor with two 100-pin high-density connectors
- Confirmed variant has 2 GB LPDDR4 and 32 GB eMMC
- Integrated Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0
- Supports 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and USB 2.0
- Exposes GPIO, UART, SPI and draws power from 5 V
- 55 x 40 mm form factor with two 100-pin high-density connectors
- Confirmed variant has 2 GB LPDDR4 and 32 GB eMMC
- Integrated Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0
- Supports 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and USB 2.0
- Exposes GPIO, UART, SPI and draws power from 5 V
Tim Brookes writes about seven projects you can build with the Cheap Yellow Display (CYD), an affordable ESP32 board with an integrated LCD touch screen that lets you skip soldering and breadboards entirely. The projects span a weather station, a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth penetration testing suite (ESP32 Marauder), a Bluetooth MP3 player, a retro mini TV for videos and games, a Gran Turismo 7 racing dashboard, a Home Assistant music remote, and an ESPHome smart home controller.
- The weather station pulls from both Open-Meteo and OpenWeatherMap and supports a DHT22 sensor for local temperature readings
- The ESP32 Marauder CYD port covers hardware from 1.9-inch non-touch models up to 3.5-inch touch displays
- The retro mini TV is a 3D-printed Simpsons replica combining the Anemoia-ESP32 NES emulator and MiniLegoTV video player
- The GT7 dashboard works because Gran Turismo 7 publishes telemetry over UDP on the local network, a feature shared by other racing simulators
- The CYD Jukebox pairs with Music Assistant to unify local files and streaming services like Apple Music behind one interface
- The weather station pulls from both Open-Meteo and OpenWeatherMap and supports a DHT22 sensor for local temperature readings
- The ESP32 Marauder CYD port covers hardware from 1.9-inch non-touch models up to 3.5-inch touch displays
- The retro mini TV is a 3D-printed Simpsons replica combining the Anemoia-ESP32 NES emulator and MiniLegoTV video player
- The GT7 dashboard works because Gran Turismo 7 publishes telemetry over UDP on the local network, a feature shared by other racing simulators
- The CYD Jukebox pairs with Music Assistant to unify local files and streaming services like Apple Music behind one interface
Silvio Werner writes about the OrangePi Zero 4, a compact 2.0 x 2.2-inch single-board computer positioned as a Raspberry Pi alternative. It is powered by an Allwinner A733 SoC with two Cortex-A76 and six Cortex-A55 cores, offers up to 16GB of RAM, and includes Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, Gigabit Ethernet, a mini HDMI port with 4K@60 output, USB-C with video and data, and dual-display support. Pricing and availability have not yet been announced.
- Supports lightweight machine learning inference workloads
- PCIe 3.0 FPC connector (single lane) for expansion cards
- Camera input via USB or MIPI CSI
- 26-pin GPIO header and fan connector on board
- Storage options: up to 32GB eMMC or 128GB UFS, plus microSD slot
- Supports lightweight machine learning inference workloads
- PCIe 3.0 FPC connector (single lane) for expansion cards
- Camera input via USB or MIPI CSI
- 26-pin GPIO header and fan connector on board
- Storage options: up to 32GB eMMC or 128GB UFS, plus microSD slot
