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

March 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 Image for Hi802 / GK802 is Now Available for Download

About 2 weeks ago, Jasbir released an Ubuntu 11.10 image and installation instructions for GK802 and Hi802 mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6. I could only find time to give it try yesterday and today. I’ll provide the steps I followed to install the image, and my quick first impressions of the stability and performance of this image. Installation Instructions I mainly followed the instructions provided by Jasbir, and run GParted to increased the partition size on my micro SD card. The image is for a 8 GB micro SD, but those instructions should work on 4GB SD card and greater, as the rootfs partition is only 3GB large. Download the Ubuntu 11.10 image, uboot, as well as the kernel image and modules in a Linux PC:

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

Copy the image, uboot and the kernel to the micro SD card by typing the commands below:

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt;
sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt; &amp;&amp; sync
sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/&lt;sd_drive&gt; bs=1048576 seek=1 &amp;&amp; sudo sync

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/<sd_device>

sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/<sd_device> && sync

sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/<sd_drive> bs=1048576 seek=1 && sudo sync

Replace /dev/<sd_device> by your […]

March 25, 2013November 23, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Z1 Android 2.2 Smart Watch Phone

There’s currently a lot of articles about Apple, Samsung, and Google smart watches rumors in the blogosphere. I’ve written about other smartwatches in the past with products such as the Pebble or Wime Nanowatch, but those are based on low-end hardware that do not run Android directly, but instead communicate with your Android or iOS device via Bluetooth. The only watch I know that runs (a customized version of) Android is the “I’m Watch“. You’ll need relatively deep pockets to purchase it as price starts at 249 Euros / $349 US and goes up to $19,999 if you purchase the version with white gold and diamonds. So I decided to have a look if there are lower cost Chinese Android smartwatches around. The Z1 Android Smart Watch Phone showed up everywhere in my searches. The product is not new, as Charbax first discovered it in January 2012 and it was […]

March 24, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

IO Technologies Announces $29.99 Baseboard for Cubieboard

The Cubieboard is a low cost development board powered by AllWinner A10 with 512MB/1GB RAM, 4GB NAND and lots of interfaces. However some of processor interfaces are only available via the extension headers, and access to interfaces like VGA and LVDS would normally require some (minor) hardware hacking. That’s why George Ioakimedes (IO Technologies LLC) has decided to design and manufacture a carrier board (baseboard) for the Cubieboard. The Cubie baseboard provides the following: 2mm pitch female sockets to insert the Cubieboard All 96 Cubieboard pins brought out to 0.100″ (2.56mm) pitch headers 4-pin power header to match optional power input header on Cubieboard LVDS header with separate LCD Backlight connector to match low cost LVDS cable 4-wire touch screen connector Standard 2.5mm DC jack, 12V-18V input Onboard 5.0V switching regulator to power the Cubieboard and provide 3A (available on 0.100″ header) Onboard 3.3V switching regulator to power LCD and […]

March 22, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Gumstix Unveils $249 Pepper Single Board Computer Powered by TI Sitara AM3359

Gumstix has just announced a new single board computer for Linux embedded development and experimentation. Pepper is powered by Texas Instruments Sitara AM3359 Cortex A8 processor, and comes with 512MB DDR2, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, a 4.3″ LCD touchscreen and more. Gumstix Pepper Key features: Processor – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3359 Cortex A8 processor up to 720 MHz System Memory – 512MB DDR2 Storage – microSD card slot (No flash) Connectivity: Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n 10/100/1000M Ethernet Bluetooth 3.0 Display – Samsung 4.3″ LCD resistive touchscreen (480 x 272) USB – 2x USB OTG connectors Expansion headers – For I2C, SPI and UARTs GPIO-controlled push buttons and LEDs Sensors – 3D Accelerometer (ST LIS33DE) Power – 5V Since there’s no flash, a microSD is used to boot the board. Gumstix provides a Linux distribution built with the Yocto Project which you” eventually be able to download here (the page is […]

March 22, 2013March 22, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Focuswill Coolship Board Picture and Main Components List

Tejinder has just sent me a picture of the internal boards of the CoolShip Android keyboard computer. It’s composed of a main board (Keyboard-V2.0) and a CPU module with RK3066, flash and SDRAM chipsets, PMIC, and video decoder.. Tejinder found the following components on the boards: Processor – Rockchip RK 3066 SDRAM – 4x Hynix H5TQ2G83BFR Flash – Hynix h27ubg8t2btr 1080p Video decoder – Rockchip RK1000S PMIC – 1x Wolfson WM8326G DAC – 1x Wolfson WM8960G Wifi chip – RTL8188CTV USB HUB – GL850G The two 2-pin connector (one on the left, and the other under the DAC) should be for the speakers, and the 3-pin connector on the right goes to a 8-pin IC connected to the power, so it could be the connection to the 300 mAh battery used to handle unexpected power failure. You’ll also notice he has connected an UART to TTL debug board to the […]

March 22, 2013March 22, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

Ugoos UG007B Rockchip RK3188 mini PC Sells for $74

My very first article about Chinese mini PCs was about Rikomagic MK802, an Android 4.0 HDMI TV dongle with a cortex A8 processor, 512 MB RAM and 4GB flash, and the device was selling for $74 at the time. Ten months later, it appears that for the exact same price you can now buy UG007B, an Android 4.2 mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3188 quad core Cortex A9 processor with 2GB RAM, and 8 GB Flash. Here are UG007 IIB specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3188 Quad Core ARM Cortex-A9 Processor up to 1.6Ghz + Mali-400MP4 Quad-core GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 8GB Nand Flash + microSD card slot (up to 32GB) Connectivity Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n (MediaTek 5931 in CDT-K25931 module) Bluetooth 3.0 (MediaTek 6622 in CDT-K25931 module) 3G support via external USB dongle USB – 1 x USB 2.0 Host + 2x micro USB host Video […]

March 21, 2013March 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SECO mITX GPU DevKit Features Nvidia Tegra 3, Supports CUDA 5

SECO mITX GPU DEVKIT is a GPU computing development kit that provides a Mini-ITX Qseven 2.0 carrier board (SECO mITX Carrier Board) with a Nvidia Tegra 3 powered Qseven SoM (QuadMo747-X/T30). The carrier board provides a PCI-e x16 connector (PCI Express x4) intended to allow the connection of CUDA 5 enabled desktop graphics boards. Embedded Control Europe reports that the platform will support Nvidia Kayla platform. The main specifications of the platform are as follows: CPU – Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-Core ARM Cortex A9 GPU – TBD. But you should be able to insert Nvidia graphics card via the PCI-e x16 connector (PCI Express x4) on the mini-ITX board Memory – 2 GB Storage – 4 GB eMMC + 1x SATA 2.0 Connector Network – 1x Gigabit Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 + 1 OTG port Display – HDMI The platform will support Linux Ubuntu , as well as […]

March 21, 2013March 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Nvidia Updates its Tegra Roadmap with Parker 64-Bit ARM SoC, Unveils Kayla CUDA Development Platform

Nvidia has given an update about the roadmap for its Tegra processor at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. Tegra 4 will still be followed by Logan (Tegra 5) as planned with a Kepler GPU and support for CUDA and OpenGL 4.3, but “Stark” has been replaced by “Parker” (Tegra 6) which will be the first 64-Bit Tegra processor based on Denver CPU, Maxwell GPU and make use of Finfet transistors. Logan will be available in 2014, and Parker should be available in 2015 with 100 times more performance than Tegra 2. With this kind of performance, the separation line between desktop and mobile processors will be gone. Nvidia also unveiled Kayla (“Logan’s girlfriend”), a development platform for CUDA and OpenGL based on Tegra 3 quad-core ARM processor and a Kepler GPU connected via a PCI express slot. Jen-Hsun Huang (above) showcased Kayla performance by running real-time ray […]