Raspberry Pi is releasing an add-on that will let you use many of its tiny, inexpensive computers to control certain Lego robot motors and sensors. The add-on is called the Build HAT (HAT stands for Hardware Attached on Top), and slotting it onto a Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins will give you four ports that you can use to control Lego Education’s SPIKE components, which the HAT and its software are specially designed for. It’ll also connect to most other parts that use an LPF2 connector, including the components from the Lego Mindstorms robot inventor kit.

There’s also a Python library (basically a set of commands you can use to control the robot) available to go alongside the HAT, which will let you write software to control the robot parts you’ve got hooked up. Programing Lego’s SPIKE components with Python isn’t a unique selling feature from Raspberry Pi — the SPIKE kit comes with a hub that supports connecting six devices (compared to the Build HAT’s four) that can also store and run Python programs.

• Ubuntu-ready Ryzen V2000 mini-PC starts at $639

  Simply NUC has launched a $639-and-up “Cypress” mini-PC with AMD’s Ryzen V2000 plus 2.5GbE, 2x HDMI, 2x DP-ready Type-C, 3x USB 3.2 Gen2, and a 128GB SSD for one of the 2x M.2 slots.

  Simply NUC (or SimplyNUC) has launched a Cypress Long Life Mini mini-PC, named for its 7-year supply guarantee. The system offers pre-installed Ubuntu or Win 10 running on AMD’s 7nm, octa- and hexa-core Ryzen Embedded V2000.

  Pricing starts at $639 for a Cypress LLM2v5Cy SKU with the hexa-core, 2.1GHz/3.95GHz V2516, $689 for the LLM2v6CY with the hexa-core, 3.0GHz/3.95GHz V2546, and $829 for the LLM2v8CY with the top-of-the-line, octa-core 2.9GHz/4.25GHz V2748. All these prices include 4GB RAM, a 128GB SSD, 1-year support, and either no OS or pre-installed Ubuntu.

• Build A Dog Ball Launcher That Kinda Looks Like A Dog | Hackaday

  The design is straightforward. The 3D printed housing features a large funnel into which a ball can be dropped. A servo then holds the ball while a pair of rollers are spun up by brushed DC motors. After two seconds, the servo releases the ball towards the rollers which launch the ball out of the machine. A Raspberry Pi Pico runs the show, controlling the timing of the ball launch and varying the motor speed to change the distance the ball is launched on each firing.

• Arm adds virtual testing platform for Corstone Cortex-A and -M ref designs

  Arm has launched an “Arm Total Solutions for IoT” initiative that combines its Cortex-A- and -M based Corstone SoC reference designs with a new “Arm Virtual Hardware Targets” platform for virtual, cloud-based testing.

  In 2018, Arm launched an Arm Corstone subsystem product line comprising prevalidated SoC reference designs that combine its core IP with security, debug, memory subsystems, and in some cases, NPUs. Now, Arm has expanded Arm Corstone with a cloud-based Arm Virtual Hardware Targets testing and development platform aimed at IoT. Together with a new Project Centauri ecosystem initiative for Cortex-M developers, the programs are wrapped up into an “Arm Total Solutions for IoT” umbrella platform.

• 248: PinePhone Pro: Exclusive Interview with Pine64

  This week’s episode of Destination Linux, we’re being joined by Lukasz Ericenski of Pine64 for an Exclusive Interview about the new PinePhone Pro! Then we’re going to talk about NTFS improvements coming to the Linux kernel. Plus we’ve also got our famous tips, tricks and software picks. All of this and so much more this week on Destination Linux. So whether you’re brand new to Linux and open source or a guru of sudo. This is the podcast for you.

• Amazon offered me half of what I paid for my Galaxy S20 FE 5G. The phone is so awful that I’m considering it. – BaronHK's Rants

  I’m considering a Pine Phone Pro.

  My spouse laughed at me when I said it runs GNU/Linux and lets you do whatever you want. It sounds like the anti-iPhone to me. No crAPPs. No vendor lock-in. No freemium junk.

  But Samsung has been going downhill for years. Now, they don’t even want to talk to you unless you have thousands of dollars for a phone that will be obsolete or broken in a matter of 24-36 months (the Z series).

  The Pine Phone Pro is going to be $399 and Amazon is offering me a $200 gift card for this Galaxy phone.

  Which is half of what I paid for it last year, but I’m considering it.

  The stupid thing barely even works at all since T-Mobile bought Sprint and put the T-Mobile Network Experience SIM card in it. The stupid thing malfunctions the worst when I have 5G turned on, but it’s not great in LTE mode either.

  When it can get a network signal, the piece of trash is either beeping at me because it’s Samsung wanting me to agree to a new EULA or use Microsoft products that are also trash that I don’t want. (With NSA backdoors.)

  In the past 5 years, Samsung phones have gone from a couple of crapplets, just disable them, whatever, to an entire phone screaming at you that you MUST use Microsoft products.

• Arduino Brings USB Mouse to Homebrew computer

  When building your own homebrew computer, everything is a challenge. Ultimately, that’s kind of the point. If you didn’t want to really get your hands dirty with the nuts and bolts of the thing, you wouldn’t have built it in the first place. For example, take the lengths to which [rehsd] was willing to go in order to support standard USB mice on their 6502 machine.

• Canon Faces Lawsuit for Disabling Printer Features after Ink Runs Out

  A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Canon for disabling the scan and fax features of select all-in-one printers when the ink has run low or is out. The lawsuit filed in New York on October 12 alleges that Canon has misled customers by not informing them that this will happen.

• Canon Concealed that ‘All-in-One’ Printers Can’t Scan, Fax When Ink Is Low or Empty, Class Action Claims

  A proposed class action alleges Canon U.S.A. has falsely advertised its All-in-One printers in that the products, touted as able to print, copy, scan and, in some cases, fax documents, are unable to scan or fax when their ink cartridges are low or empty.

  The 26-page lawsuit contends that Canon has intentionally failed to inform consumers that ink is needed to use all functions of the “3-in-1” or “4-in-1” printers. As a result, buyers must bear the “unexpected and unnecessary” burden of buying costly ink or otherwise lose the ability to scan or fax from their printers, the case claims.

• Canon Slapped With Lawsuit For Killing Scanner Function When Printer Ink Runs Out

  The claim says that it is a “design issue” by Canon and not a precautionary step. People purchase Canon products because of their excellent reputation and quality and Canon should have either designed the printer to not disable the other functions when the ink was out (the “design issue”) or made it clear that this would be the case.

• Man files class-action lawsuit against Canon, seeking more than $5 million in damages over printers that won't scan documents when ink cartridges are low

  David Leacraft filed a class-action complaint in federal court on Tuesday.

• Alibaba T-head RVB-ICE dual-core RISC-V SBC supports Android 10, Debian 11 - CNX Software

  The very first RISC-V single board computer with a 3D GPU reveals itself with “Alibaba T-head RVB-ICE” SBC available for pre-order for $399 together with a 7-inch display. The board is based on Alibaba T-Head “ICE” dual-core XuanTie C910 RISC-V processor with a Vivante GC8000UL GPU, and follows the announcement of Android 10 being ported to a RISC-V board earlier this year.

  Besides the dual-core RISC-V processor clocked at 1.2 GHz, the board is equipped with 4GB LPDDR4, 16GB eMMC flash, and offers Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, as well as a 48-pin GPIO header. But it lacks HDMI output, relying on an LCD interface instead, as well as full-size (Type-A) USB ports with only one micro USB 3.0 OTG port, and a USB-C port for serial console.

• PCIe adapter adds four USB 3.2 ports to Raspberry Pi CM4 IO board

  Waveshare has introduced a non-standard PCIe adapter that adds four USB 3.2 ports to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 IO carrier board in a way that does not take too much height.

  It’s non-standard as it can not be inserted directly into a typical computer PCIe slot, and Waveshare recommends a PCIe extension cable to connect it to a motherboard. Having said that It looks much better on the IO board.

• Raspberry Pi 4, Rockchip RK3399 SBC’s get Arm SystemReady IR certification

  The first hardware platforms getting Arm SystemReady IR certification for IoT Edge applications were announced a few months ago with namely NXP i.MX 8 Mini evaluation kit and Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8 gateway being able to run off-the-shelf operating system images such as Fedora IoT, OpenSuSE Leap 15.3, and Debian 11 thanks to UEFI firmware.

• OAK-D Depth Sensing AI Camera Gets Smaller and Lighter

  The OAK-D is an open-source, full-color depth sensing camera with embedded AI capabilities, and there is now a crowdfunding campaign for a newer, lighter version called the OAK-D Lite. The new model does everything the previous one could do, combining machine vision with stereo depth sensing and an ability to run highly complex image processing tasks all on-board, freeing the host from any of the overhead involved.

  [...]

  Since the vision processing is all done on-board, even a Raspberry Pi Zero can be used effectively as a host.

• Single board computer features AMD processors and graphics

  The IB952 offers hardware-based security and high-speed peripheral support.

• The Pi 400 As A PC Peripheral | Hackaday

  The Raspberry Pi 400 all-in-one computer is a neat little unit that is powerful enough to take on most humdrum computing tasks while doing an excellent job of freeing up valuable desktop space. But what about those moments when both the Pi and a PC are needed on the same desktop? How can the Pi and the bulky PC keyboard share the same space?

  [Gadgetoid] may have the answer, with a clever bit of software that presents the Pi’s mouse and keyboard as peripherals on its USB-C power port. If your PC has a high-power USB socket that can run the Pi then it can use the small computer’s input devices just as well as the Pi itself can. It’s fair to say that the Pi 400’s keyboard is not it’s strongest point, but we can see some utility in the idea.

• Simply NUC® Launches Cypress Long-Life Mini PC Powered by Latest AMD® Ryzen™ Embedded Processors

  Offering a variety of operating systems, Cypress can support custom needs on Windows 10, Ubuntu, and Fedora.

• Simply NUC® Launches Cypress Long-Life Mini PC Powered by Latest AMD® Ryzen™ Embedded Processors