Open Hardware/Modding: OPNsense 25.1.7, RISC-V, Raspberry Pi, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 27, 2025

• CNX Software ☛ NanoPi M5 – A Rockchip RK3576 SBC with HDMI, dual GbE, M.2 NVMe and SDIO WiFi sockets, UFS 2.0 storage support

  It feels like everybody is now launching hardware based on the Rockchip RK3576 SoC, the little brother of the RK3588 with Cortex-A72/A53 cores instead of Cortex-A76/A55 cores, 4K video output, and a  mid-range Mali-G52 GPU, while keeping most of the same interfaces. FriendlyELEC has now joined the fray with the NanoPi M5 SBC equipped with up to 4GB LPDDR4x or 16GB LPDDR5, sockets for a UFS module and an M.2 NVMe SSD, HDMI 2.0 and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB 3.0 ports, a 30-pin GPIO header, and more.

• CNX Software ☛ Rockchip RK3588 embedded computer features 3x M.2 sockets, 4x RS232, 2x RS485, 2x DI, 2x DO, and more

  Forlinx FCU3501 is a fanless embedded computer powered by the Rockchip RK3588 SoC, or the RK3588J industrial-grade variant, and offered with up to 16GB LPDDR4x, 128GB eMMC flash, and plenty of features.

• Arduino ☛ YouTuber builds robot to make boyfriend take out the trash

  This robot is a motorized, Mecanum-wheeled base that carries the standard plastic trashcan Cindy and her boyfriend own. An Arduino Mega 2560 controls the four wheel motors through H-bridge drivers. Cindy chose the Mega because the robot has a lot of sensors — 13 in total. Eight of those are ultrasonic sensors used for obstacle detection, with one on each side and corner. Then there are four PIR sensors that detect body heat, which will ideally be from the boyfriend. Finally, there is an infrared sensor at the top of the trashcan to determine when the bin is full.

• Hackaday ☛ A RISC-V Operating System Instruction Manual

  To some, an operating system is a burden or waste of resources, like those working on embedded systems and other low-power applications. To others it’s necessary, abstracting away hardware so that higher-level programming can be done. For most people it’s perhaps not thought of at all. But for a few, the operating system is the most interesting piece of software running on a computer and if you’d like to investigate what makes this often overlooked aspect of computer science interesting, take a look at this course on operating systems from Cornell University.

• Linux Handbook ☛ Why Homelab When You have Cloud Services Like AWS, Vercel, Hetzner?

  In the age of accessible and affordable cloud servers, homelab is getting popular among a section of tech enthusiasts. Here's why.

• Hackaday ☛ Vintage Intel 8080 Runs On A Modern FPGA

  If you’re into retro CPUs and don’t shy away from wiring old-school voltages, [Mark]’s latest Intel 8080 build will surely spark your enthusiasm. [Mark] has built a full system board for the venerable 8080A-1, pushing it to run at a slick 3.125 MHz. Remarkable is that he’s done so using a modern Microchip FPGA, without vendor lock-in or proprietary flashing tools. Every step is open source.

• Devices/Embedded

  • OPNSense ☛ OPNsense 25.1.7 released

    Dnsmasq DHCP is here and now it is going to be even better with multiple fixes thanks to the swift feedback we received. We are aware of the complex topic of DHCP in the recent years so keep in mind we added Dnsmasq to fill a specific need for smaller installations that other services cannot offer. There are still areas where Kea shines so having both options is the best way forward.

• Distros

  • XDA ☛ 5 things I regret about using my Raspberry Pi as a NAS

    Turning a Raspberry Pi into a budget-friendly NAS is one of the most popular projects for the SBC family, and for good reason. The Arm processor powering the Raspberry Pi consumes a fraction of the energy guzzled by power-hungry server CPUs, and you can outfit it with everything from fast NVMe SSD drives to hardcore HDDs with the right HAT. That said, the makeshift NAS has one too many drawbacks if you're planning to use it as a primary storage server – especially when there are better, cheaper options on the market.

  • Heise ☛ TrueNAS CORE lives on: Community splits off open source fork zVault

    The community has responded to the end of TrueNAS CORE with a fork. It wants to further develop the FreeBSD-based NAS operating system under the title zVault as an open-source project. Until now, users had to decide whether to continue using the largely unmaintained TrueNAS CORE, switch to the GNU/Linux-based version TrueNAS SCALE or migrate to a competitor product such as XigmaNAS. Since 2021, iXsystems has only released individual patches from 13.3 for the project based on FreeBSD 13.0 and focused on TrueNAS SCALE instead.