Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 4, 2014June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Novena Open Source Hardware ARM Laptop Gets Crowdfunded for $1995

In 2012, Andrew Huang (“Bunnie”) decided to build an open source hardware and software laptop codenamed Novena powered by Freescale i.MX6 as a side project. The goal of the project was to be fully open source, both in terms of hardware and software, and the components have been selected so that the datasheets can be downloaded without NDA. Design has now been completed, and a crowdfunding campaign has now been launched on Crowd Supply, but since finding low cost part was not priority, you’ll have to fork $1,995 to get the complete laptop, $1,195 will get you the desktop version, and $500 the motherboard only. There’s also a version of the laptop called “Heirloom Laptop” with a hand-crafted wood and aluminum case that goes for $5,000. Let’s go through the board specs first: SoC – Freescale iMX6 Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz. – NDA-free datasheet […]

April 4, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

New ARM Set-Top Box SoCs – Sigma Designs SMP8734 / SMP8756, STMicro STiH312 / StiH412, and Entropic EN7310 (Videos)

Broadcom and STMicro has the two companies that dominate the set-top box SoC market with respectively 44.7% and 34% market share by revenue in 2012, followed by Ali, a distant third at 6.9%. Other companies include Entropic, who has acquired Trident Systems, (4.4%) and Sigma Designs (1.4%) which has suffered in recent years. MIPS was the predominant architecture in the STB SoC market, but with the advent of Android, most companies have announced ARM based STB SoC for better compatibility with Android apps. TV Connect 2014, an event gathering stokeholder involved in Connected TV such as STB manufacturers, content providers, and SoC vendors, took place on March 18-20 in London, and Charbax, armdevices.net, interviewed three companies who promoted their latest ARM based STB SoCs: Sigma Designs with their SMP5734 & SMP8756/58 SoCs featuring single or dual cores Cortex A9 and a Mali-400 GPU STMicro with their STiH312 Cannes and STiH412 Monaco […]

April 3, 2014April 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Amazon Launches $99 Fire TV Android Media Player Powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon Quad Core SoC

After few months ago, news broke that Amazon was working on an Android STB. The company has now launched Amazon Fire TV media player featuring Qualcomm Snapdragon 8064 quad core Krait processor with 2GB RAM, and supporting Amazon Prime Video, as well as a host of other popular online video and audio streaming services such as YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, Pandora, and more. Let’s go through the specifications first: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 8064 quad core Krait 300 processor @ 1.7 GHz with Adreno 320 GPU. (Part of Snapdragon 600 family) System Memory – 2GB LPDDR2 @ 533 MHZ Storage – 8 GB internal Video Output – HDMI 1.4b output, w/HDCP. Resolution: 720p and 1080p up to 60fps Audio Output – HDMI, optical SPDIF Video Codecs – H.263, H.264, MPEG4-SP, VC1 Audio Codecs – AAC, AC-3, E-AC-3, HE-A, PCM, MP3, Dolby Digital Plus, 5.1 surround sound, 2ch Stereo and HDMI […]

April 2, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Ingenic Newton Platform for Wearables is Powered by MIPS Based JZ4775 SoC

Imagination Technologies has published a blog post about Newton, a tiny reference design for wearables based on Ingenic JZ4775 MIPS SoC found in some recent smartwatches such as SmartQ Z1 (The CPU not the module). This module targets wearables, IoT, healthcare, home appliances, security, industrial control, consumer electronics and more. Newton Specifications: SoC – Ingenic JZ4775 MIPS Xburst processor @ 1 GHz with 2D GPU, and VPU supporting 720p@30fps for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, H.264, VP8, and RV9 codecs. System Memory – Up to 3GB mobile DDR3/DDR2/LPDDR1 Storage – Up to 32 GB eMCP eMMC flash Display Support – LCD or EPD, with touch panel and backlight Audio – Digital MIC and Speaker Connectivity – 4-in-1 combo with Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n at 2.4/5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR (including Bluetooth LE support), NFC, and FM Sensors – 3-axis gyroscope, accelerometer magnetometer, pressure, humidity and temperature, bio-signal detection and processing USB – USB […]

April 2, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

pcDuino3 Development Board Features AllWinner A20 SoC, Arduino Headers

The first pcDuino board powered by AllWinner A10 has been available for about a year, later last year pcDuino V2 was released with a built-in Wi-Fi modules and mechanically and software compatible Arduino headers, and now pcDuino3 has been announced in a form factor similar to pcDuino V2 board but replacing AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 SoC with AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7, and improving overall specs such as faster Ethernet, the addition of a SATA port, and LiPo support. pcDuino3 specifications: SoC – AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.0 GHz, with Mali 400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, SATA connector, and microSD card slot (up to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with HDCP support, LVDS header Audio Out – 3.5mm analog audio interface, I2S stereo digital audio interface Connectivity – WiFi, 10/100M Ethernet USB – 1x USB host, 1x […]

April 1, 2014April 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

$99 MinnowBoard MAX Development Board Powered by Intel Bay Trail-I SoC

When Intel released the original MinnowBoard which was a step in the right direction, but there were some complains, as the company had chosen to use an older Intel processor, and the price was much higher than most high performance low cost ARM development boards. MinnowBoard MAX (aka Minnow2 Board) fixes all that, as it features the latest Intel Bay Trail-I (E3800 series) processor, and costs as low as $99 for the single core version, and $129 for the dual core version. Let’s jump directly to the specifications: SoC – 64-bit Intel Atom E3815 (single-core, 1.46 GHz) or Atom E3825 (dual-core, 1.33 GHz) both with integrated Intel HD Graphics coming with Open Source hardware-accelerated drivers for Linux OS System Memory – 1GB ($99 model) or 2GB ($129 model) DDR3 RAM Storage – 1x Micro SD card slot, 1x SATA2 3Gb/sec, 8 MB SPI Flash for firmware (UEFI) Video Output – micro […]

April 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux Kernel 3.14 Release

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.14 yesterday: So we had a few fairly late changes that I could have done without, but the changelog from -rc8 is still pretty small, and I’m feeling pretty good about it all. If we did end up with any last-minute problems due to the final spurt of patches, they’ll be pretty specific, and it really didn’t make sense to me to delay the release without anything known pending. Much of the final spurt were either marked for stable or known regressions. So 3.14 is out there, and the merge window for 3.15 is thus open. Please do spend the time to test out 3.14, though, even if you might otherwise be in a hurry to send me your pending queue for the next release. Linus Kernel 3.13 brought a scalable block layer for high-performance SSDs, nftables, NFC payment support, squashfs performance […]

April 1, 2014April 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Official Android 4.4 Firmware for RK3188T HDMI TV Sticks Released

At the very end of last year, a beta Android 4.4.2 firmware for Rockchip RK3188 mini PCs was released, and yesterday, GeekBuying announced an official Android 4.4.2 firmware for Rockchip RK3188T (notice the T) mini PCs with AP6210 Wi-Fi modules,with bug fixes from the beta version. This should work with device such as MK908II and MK809III. There are at least two caveats however. First, I understand it will only work on RK3188T, not RK3188, and hopefully an official RK3188 mini PC firmware will be released soon, but since manufacturers may have changed from RK3188 to RK3188T for the same model during manufacturing, you have to make sure which version you are using. You can do so by installing CheckRK3188 app on your device, and check if you have the slower RK3188T SoC, or the older, but faster RK3188. The second issue is that Google Apps (Play store, gmail) are not pre-installed. You […]