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Sold under brand names like Arduino, Udoo, Raspberry Pi and others, hacker boards increasingly are serving as the foundation of technology projects found in IoT, wearables, robotics and portable devices. Starting as low as $15, these boards are part of a new manufacturing trend supported by a community of hobbyists and DIY developers that use low-cost hardware components and open-source software to create mini-computer platforms. As they move up the ecosystem from a hobbyist device to handling more advanced, commercial applications, are hacker boards an economically viable option or a costly mistake?
 
Here are the factors that lead SOMs to be a better value than hacker boards:

When selecting a System on Module (SOM) provider, ISO 13485 certification offers significant advantages that extend well beyond its medical device origins. While ISO 9001 is common in the SOM industry and provides a general framework for quality management, ISO 13485 adds crucial layers of control and validation specifically developed for medical device manufacturing – layers that benefit any project requiring high reliability, not just medical. Where ISO 9001 focuses broadly on customer satisfaction and continuous improvement, ISO 13485 implements more rigorous requirements for risk management, documentation, and process control throughout the entire product lifecycle.
 
Systematic Risk Management: Preventing Issues Before They Occur

Adding a splash screen to your product enhances the user experience by confirming successful display initialization, providing essential visual boot feedback, and delivering a professional brand presence. It creates a polished appearance and reassures users that the device is starting correctly. 
 
U-Boot for i.MX 8M Plus lacks native LVDS support, as of Yocto Scarthgap 6.6.23_2.0.0. However, NXP offers an out-of-tree patch that enables LVDS functionality. Variscite’s added patch extends this support to both the DART-MX8M-PLUS and the VAR-SOM-MX8M-PLUS System on Modules. 

When starting a new project for an embedded product, one of the most important decisions you will make, in addition to choosing the right System on Module, is choosing the most suitable operating system (OS). Just as the foundation of a building determines its resilience and longevity, your OS choice can profoundly influence the performance, scalability, and ease of use of your final product. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to weigh the trade-offs and benefits of each.
 
In this article, we summarize the key features, advantages, and disadvantages of Yocto, Boot to Qt, Debian, and Android, for use as embedded software platforms in “smart products” designs. Our goal is to offer insights that can guide and help you make an informed decision when deciding the right OS for your embedded project.

This article provides step by step instructions on how to start developing your own Machine Learning (ML) applications using Variscite’s System on Modules. It shows how to build an image using the Yocto Linux BSP with a collection of development tools, utilities, and libraries for building ML applications from the NXP eIQ™ ML Software Development Environment, how to run the default examples built with the image, and finally, how to write a simple ML example from scratch.
1.1. eIQ™ Machine Learning Software Development Environment Overview
eIQ™ allows users to easily develop a complete system-level application to solve ML problems related to vision, audio, time-series data and so on. Common examples are face recognition, pose estimation, gesture recognition, speech accents interpretation, etc.

In this guest blog post from Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS), the authors delve into the intricacies of mirroring displays with varying resolutions using Yocto on Variscite’s popular DART-MX8M-PLUS SoM based on the NXP i.MX8M Plus SoC. Navigating through the complexities of compositor choices, they emphasize the efficacy of a simplified solution.
 
By Lisandro Pérez Meyer and Michael Dingwall, ICS