• EasyOS Dunfell 2.6.1 released for the Raspberry Pi4

  The very first release of EasyOS Dunfell-series for the Raspberry Pi4 was version 2.6, released on January 19. See announcement:
  https://bkhome.org/news/202101/easyos-dunfell-26-released-for-the-raspberry-pi4.html
  Since then, some package version bumps: SeaMonkey is now version 2.53.6 and includes the IRC chat module, ffmpeg is 4.3.1. LibreOffice is still a somewhat old version, 7.0.1.2, but I recompiled it with PDF-import support, which seemed like a good thing to have.
  Version 2.6.1 also has Samba, which had been left out of 2.6. Also added package 'smbnetfs'. Oh yes, also added package 'tigervnc', that Forum member rufwoof reported as very fast. Added package 'libvdpau-va-gl' though don't really know why.
  There were some performance issues with 2.6, that have mostly been fixed. SeaMonkey was often temporarily freezing, which seems to have been fixed by changing to 'kyber' IO scheduling. Plugging in a USB-stick, the kernel now consistently recognizes it first go -- due to version bump of the kernel from 5.10.4 to 5.10.9 and update of the device-tree.

• Build a programmable light display on Raspberry Pi | Opensource.com

  This past holiday season, I decided to add some extra joy to our house by setting up a DIY light display. I used a Raspberry Pi, a programmable light string, and Python.

  [...]

  Each light can be individually programmed using an RGB set of integers or hex equivalents. These lights can be packaged together into matrices, strings, and other form factors, and they can be programmatically accessed using a data structure that makes sense for the form factor. The light strings I use are addressed using a standard Python list. Adafruit has a great tutorial on wiring and controlling your lights.

  [...]

  The neopixel_controller Flask application, in the neopix_controller directory of the github repository (see below), offers a front-end browser graphical user interface (GUI) to control the lights. My raspberry pi connects to my wifi, and is accessible at raspberrypi.local. To access the GUI in a browser, go to http://raspberrypi.local:5000. Alternatively, you can use ping to find the IP address of raspberrypi.local, and use it as the hostname, which is useful if you have multiple raspberry pi devices connected to your wifi.

• OnLogic Elkhart Lake fanless mini PC's are made for IIoT applications

  OnLogic mini PCs can be configured to meet the specific requirements, and run a range of Windows or Linux operating systems. The company also offers custom branding, software imaging, custom fulfilment services, and lifecycle management support.

• Elkhart Lake embedded PC quartet deliver triple 4K displays

  OnLogic is adding to its line of Helix and rugged, higher-end Karbon embedded PCs with four new Helix 300 and Karbon 400 models that run Linux or Windows on Intel’s Elkhart Lake.

  OnLogic has announced four fanless embedded systems built around Intel’s 10nm-fabricated, MCU-equipped Elkhart Lake Atom, Celeron, and Pentium processors. The smaller Helix 310 (HX310) and Helix 330 (HX330) and more expandable and rugged Karbon 410 (K410) and Karbon 430 (K430) all run Linux or Windows and will ship in the second quarter.

• Arduino Create Agent 1.2.0 is finally here

  It’s been a while since the last release of the Arduino Create Agent.

  We tried to give some love to this awesome tool, in order to enhance the experience with the Create ecosystem.

• Arduino Blog » Portenta Vision Shield now available with LoRa® module

  What better way to announce the availability of the Portenta Vision Shield LoRa than at The Things Conference 2021 – a global showcase for all the top-notch LoRaWAN products and services.

  The LoRa® module option of the Portenta Vision Shield is specifically designed for edge ML applications, enabling low-power, long distance communication over LoRa® wireless protocol and LoRaWAN networks. It’s the perfect addition to the powerful Arduino Portenta H7 which makes possible machine learning on-device, thereby greatly reducing the communication bandwidth requirement in an IoT application.

• Qsync fixed on the Pi4 and FF compiled

  The Raspberry Pi4 does not have a hardware battery-backed clock, so relies on getting the date and time from an Internet time server. In EasyOS, Qsync is the utility that does that.

  At first bootup, QuickSetup has a checkbox to enable getting time from the Internet, which will launch Qsync. At first bootup on the Pi4, if you are going to connect to Internet via wifi, not ethernet, then there won't be an immediate Internet access. No problem, Qsync will run once the Internet connection is established.

  Qsync will run just once at bootup and after Internet connection. That's fine, but I couldn't understand why it would suddenly stop working. Then discovered that /etc/init.d/qsync was getting its executable-flag cleared.

• Arduino Blog » This children’s console looks like something straight out of a superhero’s lair

  Kids have wonderful imaginations, and to help students at a primary school have a super time, creator “palladin” was asked to construct a console for them to use.

  The device features a variety of lights and sci-fi additions, including glowing “reactor” tubes that diffuse light using hair gel and a “memory bank” that emits flashing patterns for a 1950s supercomputer look.

• Arduino Blog » This pen plotter draws detailed maps the size of walls

  Christopher Getschmann wanted a wall-sized map of the world. He soon realized, however, that it’s tough to actually buy such a map that’s both beautiful and detailed enough to satisfy his cartographic tastes. While many would simply move on to the next “thing,” Getschmann instead took things into his own hands, and built a pen plotter specifically to draw massive 2×3 meter map for his wall.

• New training course: embedded Linux boot time optimization

  For many embedded products, the issue of how much time it takes from power-on to the application being fully usable by the end-user is an important challenge. Bootlin has been providing its expertise and experience in this area to its customers for many years through numerous boot time optimization projects, and we have shared this knowledge through a number of talks at several conferences over the past years.

  We are now happy to announce that we have a new training course Embedded Linux boot time optimization, open for public registration. This training course was already given to selected Bootlin customers and is now available for everyone.

The camera module runs Linux, and it supported by Rockchip RKNN toolkit working in Windows, Linux (64-bit x86 and Arm), and Mac OS. The AI camera module connects to a host platform such as an Android tablet. Considering the cameras are all fixed focus with a 80 cm focus distance, the main application is face recognition and detection. There’s no documentation in English for now, but the Chinese version of the Wiki has plenty of information and resources to get started.

Last quarter Intel began upstreaming their open-source Alder Lake S graphics support for Linux. It hasn't been too big of a feat or revealed many details since it's still Gen12 / Xe graphics seen since Tiger Lake. But it's been coming along and over the past month is now wired up into Intel's open-source Media Driver stack too.

Merged back on Christmas was the initial decode patch for Alder lake S (ADL_S) that was just a few hundred lines of code thanks to largely re-using the existing Gen12 driver code paths.

Also: Intel Alder Lake S Graphics Support Nearing The Mainline Linux Kernel - Phoronix