Huawei MediaQ M310 Is Now Available For Purchase

Huawei MediaQ M310 is a media player based on Hisilicon K3V2 quad core SoC, the company unveiled at CES 2013. The company expected the product to be released in Q3 2013 (about now), and the good news is that it has started to pop-up on Aliexpress for $109 including shipping. The bad news is that the only seller has no feedback at all, so you take an extra risk if you buy right now, and I’m sure it will show up in more places in the days or weeks ahead. Let’s remind us of the specifications: SoC – Hisilicon K3V2 Quad-core Cortex A9 processor with Vivante GC4000 GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 4GB Flash + microSD card slot Video I/O – 1x HDMI In,1x HDMI Out Audio I/O – HDMI, SPDIF, 3.5mm stereo jack, Mic mono USB – 2x USB 2.0 (1 extension from Y cable) + […]

$85 Jesurun K8 (Hi720) Android 4.2 STB Powered by Rockchip RK3188

It looks like MK888 (aka CS918 or K-R42-1), or more exactly MK888B (Includes Bluetooth support), is now getting some competition with Jesurun K8, another Rockchip RK3188 set-top box with 2GB RAM, 8GB Flash, and Bluetooth support, that sells for as low as $80 on Aliexpress (called Hi720), and $85 on DealExtreme. Here are the specifications listed on DX: SoC – Rockchip RK3188 quad core Cortex A9 @ 1.6GHz + Mali-400 MP4 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB Flash + SD card slot (up to 32GB) Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n Bluetooth V2.1 10/100M Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 port Video Output – HDMI 1.4 + AV Audio Formats – MP3 / WMA / WAV / OGG/OGA / FLAC / APE / AAC/M4A / RM Video Codecs – H.264 / VP8 / RV / WMV / AVS / H.263 / MPEG4 Power supply – 5V/2A Dimensions – 14.9 cm x […]

Intel Education Tablets Come with a Temperature Probe, a Magnification Lens

Intel has recently announced 2 educational Android 4.x tablets: The 10″ Intel Education Tablet powered by Intel Atom Z2460, and the 7″ Intel Education Tablet based on the newer Intel Atom Z2420. Beside standard features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, dual cameras, etc…, the tablets also come with items such as a temperature probe, and a snap-on magnification lenses for experimentation, as well as a educational software. The table below adapted from LinuxGizmos lists both tablets’ specifications side-by-side. 10.1″ model 7″ model Processor Intel single-core Atom Z2460 (“Medfield”) @ 1.6GHz Intel single-core Atom Z2420 (“Lexington”) @ 1.2GHz RAM 1G LPDDR2 Flash 16GB eMMC 8GB eMMC + microSD slot Display 1280 x 800 capacitive 5-point touch TFT LCD (16:10) with stylus 1024 x 600 multitouch TFT LCD (16:9) with optional stylus Wireless 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 2.1 EDR 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth 3.0 (optional) Camera 2MP rear; 0.3MP front USB 1x micro USB 2.0 (Type B) […]

GizmoSphere vs Minnowboard – AMD and Intel x86 Embedded Boards Comparison

The Gizmo Explorer Kit is an embedded kit based on a development board powered by AMD G-Series G-T40E dual core APU that’s available since the beginning of the year. The Minnowboard is another new x86 embedded board, but this time based on Intel Atom E640 processor. Both cost $199, so a side-by-side comparison might be useful,and GizmoSphere team released a comparison table for both board, and is offering free shipping for the week with “Sharkweek2013”. Let’s have a look. The company only provided the table in image format, so I’ll reproduce it “as is” below, and see if there may be some correction or addition afterwards, the table has been designed by one of the competitors. The parts in yellow are supposed to highlight advantages of the GizmoShpere against the Minnowboard, but they conveniently “forgot” to highlight advantages of the Minnowboard. [Update 13/08/2013 – Gizmo guys have updated their table […]

MC HCK is a $5 ARM Development Board Powered by Freescale K20 MCU

MC HCK (pronounced McHack) is a tiny and cheap development board powered by Freescale K20 MCU (ARM Cortex M4) that can be easily programmed via USB. The board has been designed with KiCad, is fully open source hardware, and it’s supposed to cost as low as $5. The only problem, or main advantage, depending on how you look at it, is that it’s not available for sale (yet), but instead you’ll need to make it yourself. The actual cost of doing so will be well over $5 (About $35), but the BoM cost is about $5, and you can make 5 boards for this price, or about $7 per board. The detailed steps are explained on McHck blog, but they can summarized as follows: Order 10 PCB using the gerber files via services such as Seeedstudio or Iteadstudio Order 5 free samples of Freescale K20 MCU. Select MK20DX128VLF5 part, and […]

Miracast Adapters Coming Up with Mediatek MT8636 SoC

It’s already possible to use Android mini-PCs such as T428 as a Miracast adapters, and we’ve also seen low cost HDMI dongles based on Actions Semi ATV6003 and Rockchip RK2928 that should eventually work as Miracast adapters, and sell for less than $30 retail. But there’s now a new SoC targeting DLNA/Miracast adapter: Mediatek MT8636. I don’t have any details about the SoC itself, but I could find a few Chinese company working on the solutions, and the most common is the one shown below, which can be called W18, SH-18, or WFD-04 depending on the company. The device is said to have the following specifications: SoC – MT8636 highly integrated SOC System Memory – 128MB DDR3 (TBC) Storage – 128 MB Flash (TBC) Wi-Fi – MT7601 WiFi 802.11b/g/n with Wi-Fi direct Video Decode – 1080p H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) CBP, MP, HP at L1 to 4.1 Audio Decode – LPCM […]

$199 MicroZed is a Low Cost Version of Zedboard ARM+FPGA Linux Development Board

ZedBoard is a low cost development board based on Xilinx Zynq-7020 SoC featuring two Cortex A9 cores and FPGA fabric, together with lots of ports and expansion I/Os, and running Linux. The problem is that “low cost” for this type of board still means $395 (or around $300 for academia), and you only get to this price because it’s been subsidized, and the normal price is actually $495… That’s why Avnet has just come with a new version of the evaluation kit called microZed that sells for $199 and targets applications such as general Zynq-7000 AP SoC evaluation and prototyping, embedded system-on-module (SOM) applications, embedded vision, test & measurement, motor control and software-defined radio. MicroZed technical specifications: SoC – Xilinx XC7Z010-1CLG400C (Zynq-7010) System Memory – 1 GB of DDR3 SDRAM Storage – 128 Mb of QSPI Flash + Micro SD card interface Connectivity 10/100/1000M Ethernet USB 2.0 USB-UART User I/O […]

Emcraft Systems Announces Freescale Vybrid VF6 SoM With Cortex A5 CPU and Cortex M4 MCU

Emcraft Systems has recently announced Vybrid VF6 SoM, a System-on-Module powered by Freescale Vybrid VF6 dual core Cortex A5/Cortex M4 SoC with 128MB DDR3, and 512MB Flash, as well as a starter kit composed of VF6 SoM and a carrier board. Emcraft VF6 System-on-Module specifications: SoC – Freescale Vybrid VF6 dual-core microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A5 (up to 500 MHz) and Cortex-M4 cores (up to 167 MHz). Either MVF61NN151CMK50 (No Security), or MVF61NS151CMK50 (with Security). System Memory – 128 MBytes DDR3 SDRAM; Storage – Up to 512 MBytes NAND Flash, 32 MBytes dual QSPI Flash; Connectivity – Two 10/100 Ethernet interfaces with L2 switch; External interfaces using two 80-pin 0.4 mm-pitch connectors: Two USB 2.0 OTG interfaces Serial console interface at the UART CMOS levels; JTAG interface to the Vybrid VF6 TFT LCD interface Synchronous audio interface (SAI) supporting I2S, AC97 and CODEC/DSP interfaces Multiple serial digital (UART, SPI, I2C, […]

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