Wpisy

Raspberry Pi 4 is well known for its size and value, but will soon start to be seen for it’s significant performance. A few months ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the development of Vulkan support on Raspberry Pi 4. Today, the team published demonstration photos showing updates and progress in the current state of the project.

When we announced the effort back in January we were at the point of rendering a coloured triangle, which required only minimal coverage of the Vulkan 1.0 API in the driver. Today, we are passing over 70,000 tests from the Khronos Conformance Test Suite for Vulkan 1.0 and we have an implementation for a significant subset of the Vulkan 1.0 API.

Source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/vulkan-update-now-with-added-source-code/

Rasbperry Pi 4 upgrade of ModBerry M500

In 2019, with the premiere of Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE upgraded their ModBerry M500 device with the latest revision of this popular SBC, further enhancing the performance of their device. New 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor (approximately 3 times better performance than previous Cortex-A53 powering Raspberry Pi 3+ Model B and Compute Module 3 and 3+). ModBerry M500 can now be configured from 2GB / 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM options.

Revised ModBerry M500 features Gigabit Ethernet, USB3.0, two microHDMI ports supporting OpenGL ES 3.x and 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video. The device is fully compatible with previous versions of Rasbperry Pi based Industrial IoT devices and accessories from TECHBASE.

Arduino or Raspberry Pi? Pros and cons in IoT use.

Some people consider the Arduino platform to be the best for beginners, however, the novice will handle both Arduino and Raspberry Pi board. The choice between platforms should mainly depend on the characteristics of the project.

The origin of both platfoms

The founder of Arduino is Massimo Banzi, a lecturer at the now-defunct Italian Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, who developed a microcontroller in cooperation with students from this university. The Arduino programming language, based on the Wiring environment and basically on the C/C++ language, was designed by Hernando Barragán, a student of Banzi. The site prepared by Hernando Barragán presents exactly all the work on the project, which clearly shows that this success has more than one father.

In the case of Rasberry Pi, the project also had its source at the university. More specifically, at the University of Cambridge. Three lecturers: Jack Lang, Alan Mycroft and Robert Mullins came up with the idea of ​​developing a simple and above all cheap computer for learning programming. The first prototypes were created between 2006 and 2008. In the next step, seeing the potential of their solution, the men established cooperation with Pete Lamas, an integrated circuit designer at BroadCom, and David Braben, one of the developers of the Elite game, and together they founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

As a result, both platforms, which were originally intended to be used for learning by students, due to their low price and simplicity of use, became extremely popular among amateur users of consumer electronics and control, and appeared in mass sales.

So what should you choose – Arduino or Raspberry Pi?

The answer is basically simple – Arduino is ideal for simpler projects. Raspberry Pi will be useful for solutions that require more computing power. Arduino has only 2 kilobytes of RAM. Raspberry Pi has a RAM size of 1 GB. So Arduino is a simple microcontroller, meanwhile Raspberry is actually a small computer. Not without significance is the fact that the Arduino IDE is easier to use than Linux. So if you need a simple control of watering your garden, Arduino will work perfectly. Several sensors and a few lines of code will do the trick. For Raspberry Pi, to achieve the same effect, you will first need to install the system and the necessary libraries. There will be a lot more work and the effect will be the same – watering the garden at a specific time.

So choose Arduino when you need to use a simple solution for frequently repeated activities, e.g. controlling the watering of the garden, switching on and off the external lighting at a specific time, opening the gate, etc. However, because Raspberry can run many tasks at the same time, it is a computer, work simultaneously as a home printer server and operate the monitoring system. Home weather stations are popular and Raspberry will be perfect for this application because of the need to collect information from several sensors (temperature, wind strength, humidity). Raspberry Pi will therefore be a good choice for anyone interested in IoT, i.e. the Internet of Things at home. Examples of ready projects can be found here: https://modberry.techbase.eu/

Why not both?

Nothing prevents you from starting with Arduino and continuing with Raspberry Pi. By using Arduino or ESP32-based solutions you will learn the basics and you will get the effect quickly and relatively easily. But only Rasbperry Pi will allow you to make much more difficult projects. And both platforms can be combined with each other. Arduino/ESP32 can be used to read information from sensors and control e.g. motors (for example a garage door). Raspberry Pi will control all devices and send the collected data, e.g. to a mobile phone. You can do more together.

Nowadays, mobile Internet offers are becoming more and more popular. They are often cost-effective for those who do not download too much from the web. Usually you don’t even need to sign a contract – some operators offer fairly favorable pre-paid internet offers. Anyway, even if we want an Internet contract, sometimes the monthly fee is lower if we do not take the device.

In that case, how will we receive this Internet? The solution is simple – unfortunately we have to invest some money in the LTE modem. As a router separating the signal we will use Raspberry Pi. For a ready and complete solution we can choose ModBerry Industrial IoT devices already equipped with modem of our choosing

ModBerry M500 modem configurability

ModBerry M500 added wide range of I/Os to the board, including RS232/485 serial ports, digital and analog I/Os, 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, USB, 1-Wire and optional CAN. ModBerry series also offers additional wired interfaces and wireless communication modules with their proprietary modules called ExCard. The range of wireless modules include 3G/LTE, NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT), Wireless M-Bus, ZigBee, LoRa, Sigfox, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and many more.

Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.7 with this announcement:

So we had a fairly calm last week, with nothing really screaming “let’s delay one more rc”. Knock wood – let’s hope we don’t have anything silly lurking this time, like the last-minute wifi regression we had in 5.6..

But embarrassing regressions last time notwithstanding, it all looks fine. And most of the discussion I’ve seen the last week or two has been about upcoming features, so the merge window is now open  and I’ll start processing pull requests tomorrow as usual. But in the meantime, please give this a whirl.

We’ve got a lot of changes in 5.7 as usual (all the stats look normal – but “normal” for us obviously pretty big and means “almost 14 thousand non-merge commits all over, from close to two thousand developers”), So the appended shortlog is only the small stuff that came in this last week since rc7.

Go test,

Source: https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/31/326

Linux 5.7.1 changes from 5.7

  • New, higher-quality exFAT file system from Samsung replacing the exFAT implementation added to Linux 5.4.
  • Thermal Pressure in the task scheduler – Thermal Pressure makes the task scheduler more aware of frequency capping, and leads to better task placement among available CPUs in event of overheating, which should lead to better performance numbers. See more details on LWN.
  • Tiger Lake enablement – Graphics, thermal & power management, Ethernet
  • Coding-style – Deprecate 80-column warning

MIPS Linux 5.7 changes

A few changes came also to MIPS:

  • loongson64 irq rework
  • dmi support loongson
  • replace setup_irq() by request_irq()
  • jazz cleanups
  • minor cleanups and fixes

Ubuntu 19.10 for latest Raspberry Pi applications

With 19.10 release of Ubuntu Server, Canonical announced official support for the Raspberry Pi 4. The latest board from the Raspberry Pi Foundation sports a faster system-on-a-chip with a processor that uses the Cortex-A72 architecture (quad-core 64-bit ARMv8 at 1.5GHz). Additionally, it offers up to 4GB of RAM. We are supporting the Raspberry Pi 4 to give developers access to a low-cost board, powerful enough to consolidate compute workloads at the edge. 

The Raspberry Pi has established itself as a most accessible platform for innovators in the embedded space. Canonical is dedicated to empowering innovators with open-source software. Consequently, Canonical endeavors to offer full official support for all the boards in the Raspberry Pi family. Canonical will therefore enable both Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Core for existing and upcoming Pi boards.

Ubuntu Roadmap. Source: https://ubuntu.com/blog/roadmap-for-official-support-for-the-raspberry-pi-4

Industrial use of Raspberry Pi 4

A year ago, TECHBASE released an updated version of the ModBerry M500 industrial IoT computer, replacing the aging Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3B+, giving it better performance. With the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE has yet again, announced another upgrade to the M500, which now packs the latest single-board computer.

Raspberry Pi 4

Over 10 million Raspberry Pi’s have been sold and the Raspberry Pi is likely to stay as a new standard in the industry. Official Raspbian OS is free operating system based on Linux Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation. ModBerry devices are compatible with Raspberry Pi accessories, supported by Raspberry Pi Foundation. ModBerry M500 now with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ / Raspberry Pi 4 Model B support.

Raspberry Pi 4 is well known for its size and value, but will soon start to be seen for it’s significant performance. A few months ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the development of Vulkan support on Raspberry Pi 4. Today, the team published demonstration photos showing updates and progress in the current state of the project.

When we announced the effort back in January we were at the point of rendering a coloured triangle, which required only minimal coverage of the Vulkan 1.0 API in the driver. Today, we are passing over 70,000 tests from the Khronos Conformance Test Suite for Vulkan 1.0 and we have an implementation for a significant subset of the Vulkan 1.0 API.

Source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/vulkan-update-now-with-added-source-code/

Rasbperry Pi 4 upgrade of ModBerry M500

In 2019, with the premiere of Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE upgraded their ModBerry M500 device with the latest revision of this popular SBC, further enhancing the performance of their device. New 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor (approximately 3 times better performance than previous Cortex-A53 powering Raspberry Pi 3+ Model B and Compute Module 3 and 3+). ModBerry M500 can now be configured from 2GB / 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM options.

Revised ModBerry M500 features Gigabit Ethernet, USB3.0, two microHDMI ports supporting OpenGL ES 3.x and 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video. The device is fully compatible with previous versions of Rasbperry Pi based Industrial IoT devices and accessories from TECHBASE.

In 2017, TECHBASE Group introduced an industrial-grade automation controller, based on popular Raspberry Pi 3 board. The device called ModBerry M500 incorporated latest Raspberry Pi SBC and TECHBASE’s standard industrial board to enhance the capabilities of market RPi3.

ModBerry M500 added wide range of I/Os to the board, including RS232/485 serial ports, digital and analog I/Os, 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, USB, 1-Wire and optional CAN. ModBerry series also offers additional wired interfaces and wireless communication modules with their proprietary modules called ExCard. The range of wireless modules include 3G/LTE, NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT), Wireless M-Bus, ZigBee, LoRa, Sigfox, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and many more.

Rasbperry Pi 4 upgrade of ModBerry M500

In 2019, with the premiere of Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE upgraded their ModBerry M500 device with the latest revision of this popular SBC, further enhancing the performance of their device. New 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor (approximately 3 times better performance than previous Cortex-A53 powering Raspberry Pi 3+ Model B and Compute Module 3 and 3+). ModBerry M500 can now be configured from 2GB / 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM options.

Revised ModBerry M500 features Gigabit Ethernet, USB3.0, two microHDMI ports supporting OpenGL ES 3.x and 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video. The device is fully compatible with previous versions of Rasbperry Pi based Industrial IoT devices and accessories from TECHBASE.

M.2 SSD support for ModBerry M500

Latest software update for Raspberrry Pi 4, now available in beta, makes it possible to boot directly from USB 3.0 connected drive, without the need for an SD card. With a possibility to run the OS directly from SSD is a massive breakthrough, allowing users to improve the performance of the system and data access speed.

ModBerry M500 offers now a feature to include M.2 SSD drive in industrial-grade device. The merge of industrial interfaces and SSD-boosted Raspberry Pi 4 is a perfect solution for on-site data management and gateway application.

ModBerry M500 roadmap for 2020+

Difficult times of coronavirus outbreak in early 2020 changed the expectations for new Industrial IoT devices. Slowed market needed some adjustments to overly expanded devices with reserve of not quite necessary features for different applications – often raising the price of the device.

New addition to ModBerry M series and Industrial IoT Ecosystem offered by TECHBASE Group is the revised ModBerry M500 Lite device, to ensure the full configurability of device’s resources.

ModBerry M500 Lite features:

  • Quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 1.5GHz processor
  • 2/4GB and new 8GB LPDDR4 RAM option
  • SSD M.2 support for mass storage boot
  • Industrial-grade enclosure with DIN-rail mount
  • RTC

ModBerry M500 Lite optional resources:

  • Serial RS232/422/485 ports
  • Digital and Analog I/Os
  • Relays
  • 10/100Mbps Ethernet
  • CAN, 1-Wire
  • M-Bus Master / Slave
  • TPM Security chip
  • OLED 0.96” screen
  • SuperCap UPS

New ModBerry M500 Lite not only is a versatile device with wide array of available optional resources, but also incredible fast with quad 1.5GHz processor, up to 8GB RAM and last but not least, M.2 SSD bootable drive for system, applications and rapid data availability, without the need to bootstrap an SD card. RTC with watchdog option and additional TPM Security chip ensures data safety and breach protection.

Pricing and availability of ModBerry M500 Lite

Price of the device is yet to be specified, but it will be significantly lower than standard ModBerry M500, which can be configured here. Preliminary devices are available to order – please contact our sales department via contact form or Live Chat at https://iiot-shop.com/ to receive a quotation for the configuration needed.

In 2019, with the premiere of Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE upgraded their ModBerry M500 device with the latest revision of this popular SBC, further enhancing the performance of their device. New 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor (approximately 3 times better performance than previous Cortex-A53 powering Raspberry Pi 3+ Model B and Compute Module 3 and 3+). ModBerry M500 can now be configured from 2GB / 4GB and new 8GB option of LPDDR4 SDRAM.

Revised ModBerry M500 features Gigabit Ethernet, USB3.0, two microHDMI ports supporting OpenGL ES 3.x and 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video. The device is fully compatible with previous versions of Rasbperry Pi based Industrial IoT devices and accessories from TECHBASE.

Pricing and availability of 8GB RAM and M.2/SSD options

ModBerry M500 8GB option has been added to configurator here. SSD/M.2 option is currently undergoing testing – preliminary devices are available on demand, via Live Chat or contact form at https://iiot-shop.com/

Linux Kernel 5.5 brings changes to ARM, RISC-V and MIPS

At the end of last week, Linus Torvalds brought a complete list of Linux 5.5 changes for ARM, MIPS and RISC-V architectures. Io_uring asynchronous I/O has been improved, adding the ability to modify the set of files being operated on without starting over, user-specifiable completion-ring sizes, absolute timeouts, and support for accept() calls among others.

Also the Airtime Queue Limits (AQL) for WiFi that make CoDel work more effectively with wireless drivers that utilized firmware/hardware offloading. KUnit unit testing framework for the Linux kernel with tests can now be run locally on a developer’s workstation without any VM or special hardware. Another change is SMB rootfs and multichannel support using SMB as root file systems, and support for using multiple network connections for the same SMB session.

For more information about changes to different architectures, check out the article exploring the subject: https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/01/27/linux-5-5-release-main-changes-arm-mips-and-risc-v-architectures/

Linux 5.5 changes announcement

So this last week was pretty quiet, and while we had a late network update with some (mainly iwl wireless) network driver and netfilter module loading fixes, David didn’t think that warranted another -rc. And outside of that, it’s really been very quiet indeed – there’s a panfrost driver update too, but again it didn’t really seem to make sense to delay the final release by another week.

Outside of those, it’s all really tiny, even if some of those tiny changes touched some core files.

So despite the slight worry that the holidays might have affected the schedule, 5.5 ended up with the regular rc cadence and is out now.

That means that the merge window for 5.6 will open tomorrow, and I already have a couple of pull requests pending. The timing for this next merge window isn’t optimal for me – I have some travel and other things going on during the same two weeks, but hopefully it won’t be all that noticeable. But there might be random timezones, odd hours, and random delays because of that. I try to avoid scheduling things during the merge window, but hey, it doesn’t always work out, and I’d have to delay things by two weeks to avoid the conflicts, which just doesn’t seem worth it.

Particularly since it’s not necessarily going to be a problem to begin with. We’ll see.

Anyway. Go out and test 5.5, and start sending me those pull requests for all the new development that is ready,

Source: https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/1/26/232

Ubuntu 19.10 for latest Raspberry Pi applications

With 19.10 release of Ubuntu Server, Canonical announced official support for the Raspberry Pi 4. The latest board from the Raspberry Pi Foundation sports a faster system-on-a-chip with a processor that uses the Cortex-A72 architecture (quad-core 64-bit ARMv8 at 1.5GHz). Additionally, it offers up to 4GB of RAM. We are supporting the Raspberry Pi 4 to give developers access to a low-cost board, powerful enough to consolidate compute workloads at the edge. 

The Raspberry Pi has established itself as a most accessible platform for innovators in the embedded space. Canonical is dedicated to empowering innovators with open-source software. Consequently, Canonical endeavors to offer full official support for all the boards in the Raspberry Pi family. Canonical will therefore enable both Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Core for existing and upcoming Pi boards.

Ubuntu Roadmap. Source: https://ubuntu.com/blog/roadmap-for-official-support-for-the-raspberry-pi-4

Industrial use of Raspberry Pi 4

A year ago, TECHBASE released an updated version of the ModBerry M500 industrial IoT computer, replacing the aging Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3B+, giving it better performance. With the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE has yet again, announced another upgrade to the M500, which now packs the latest single-board computer.

Raspberry Pi 4

Over 10 million Raspberry Pi’s have been sold and the Raspberry Pi is likely to stay as a new standard in the industry. Official Raspbian OS is free operating system based on Linux Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation. ModBerry devices are compatible with Raspberry Pi accessories, supported by Raspberry Pi Foundation. ModBerry M500 now with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ / Raspberry Pi 4 Model B support.

Ubuntu 19.10 „Eoan Ermine” for Raspberry Pi 4

Many users’ favorite Linux distribution has a new version. Ubuntu 19.10 has been officially released, whose name is „Eoan Ermine”. Ubuntu 19.10 „Eoan Emine” is the latest version of the popular Linux distribution, valued for its intuitive operation, fast operation, pleasant interface and wide compatibility. Anyone interested can already update or download and install this edition manually.

This new version replaces Ubuntu 19.04 „Disco Dingo”. It will be updated for 9 months, followed by 20.04 „Focal Fossa” with extended support period (LTS).

The most important news in Ubuntu 19.10 is the Linux 5.3 kernel and the GNOME 3.34 graphical environment, which is supposed to provide faster performance, better responsiveness and the option of grouping applications in the menu along with many other functions and changes. The authors also tout „dramatically improved” performance and accelerated startup (although this has never been a major problem).

The installer of the new Ubuntu may also contain Nvidia graphics card drivers, which may not be a revolutionary change, but it is certainly something that users will welcome with open arms. The same as the appearance of USB icons in the system dock, clearer graphic themes, support for the ZFS file system or the software package in the latest versions: LibreOffice 6.3, Firefox 69, Thunderbird 68, Transmission 2.9.4 or Remmina 1.3.4.

Ubuntu 19.10 for latest Raspberry Pi applications

With 19.10 release of Ubuntu Server, Canonical announced official support for the Raspberry Pi 4. The latest board from the Raspberry Pi Foundation sports a faster system-on-a-chip with a processor that uses the Cortex-A72 architecture (quad-core 64-bit ARMv8 at 1.5GHz). Additionally, it offers up to 4GB of RAM. We are supporting the Raspberry Pi 4 to give developers access to a low-cost board, powerful enough to consolidate compute workloads at the edge. 

The Raspberry Pi has established itself as a most accessible platform for innovators in the embedded space. Canonical is dedicated to empowering innovators with open-source software. Consequently, Canonical endeavors to offer full official support for all the boards in the Raspberry Pi family. Canonical will therefore enable both Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu Core for existing and upcoming Pi boards.

Ubuntu Roadmap. Source: https://ubuntu.com/blog/roadmap-for-official-support-for-the-raspberry-pi-4

Industrial use of Raspberry Pi 4

A year ago, TECHBASE released an updated version of the ModBerry M500 industrial IoT computer, replacing the aging Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3B+, giving it better performance. With the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE has yet again, announced another upgrade to the M500, which now packs the latest single-board computer.

Raspberry Pi 4

Over 10 million Raspberry Pi’s have been sold and the Raspberry Pi is likely to stay as a new standard in the industry. Official Raspbian OS is free operating system based on Linux Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation. ModBerry devices are compatible with Raspberry Pi accessories, supported by Raspberry Pi Foundation. ModBerry M500 now with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ / Raspberry Pi 4 Model B support.



TECHBASE updates M500 devices with Raspberry Pi 4

The newest addition to TECHBASE’s Industrial IoT Ecosystem is an updated ModBerry M500 with latest Raspberry Pi 4 development board, equipped with a 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor (approximately 3 times better performance than previous Cortex-A53 powering Raspberry Pi 3+ Model B and Compute Module 3 and 3+). ModBerry M500 can be configured from 1GB / 2GB / 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM options.

Gigabit Ethernet & USB 3.0 on-board

Another new and appreciated feature is an upgrade to full-throughput Gigabit Ethernet for fast network connection and 2x USB 3.0 / 2x USB 2.0 for additional I/O, data storage extension and fast wireless modem support. ModBerry M500 with Rasbperry Pi 4 has dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 on-board. For additional wireless networks expansions, you can choose from variety of Industrial IoT modems from TECHBASE offer, incl. 3G/LTE, NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT), Wireless M-Bus, ZigBee, LoRa, Sigfox, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and many more.

Enhanced Video support for RPi4

The full HDMI port has been replaced with two microHDMI ports with dual monitor support, at resolutions up to 4K, VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x and 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video. The device is fully compatible with previous versions of Rasbperry Pi based Industrial IoT devices and accessories from TECHBASE.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Modberry M500

Raspberry Pi 4 based ModBerry M500 availability

New ModBerry M500 with three variants of Raspberry Pi 4 based devices is available for pre-orders via https://iiot-shop.com/product/modberry-m-series/ For specific delivery time please contact us via e-mail or Live Chat, directly at Industrial IoT Shop.