As announced at CES 2013, Dell will be the first multinational company to enter the Android mini PC with Project Ophelia, a mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3066 with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB Flash, which would just be an American copy of Chinese products without support for MHL, and PocketCloud, a software suite to access your computers’ desktop remotely, create your own private cloud, and manage your devices remotely. The specifications have not been disclosed, but I could gather some specs mainly from CNET: SoC- Rockchip RK3066 Dual Core Cortex A9 @ 1.6Ghz System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 8GB Flash + micro SD Connectivity: Bluetooth Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (with push to connect button) Video Output – HDMI / MHL USB – microUSB Dimensions – 8.89cm x 3.81cm You can either power the device via MHL if you have a compatible television, or via USB like most […]
FXI Technologies Cotton Candy HDMI Stick To Fully Support Both Android and Ubuntu
FXI Technologies was the first company to ever show an HDMI TV dongle when they unveiled the Cotton Candy in November 2011. Since then, many Chinese companies started to provide similar products at lower cost, and the company further improved the Cotton Candy, which is still powered by Exynos 4210 (dual core Cortex A9), by making it even smaller, and getting rid of the internal flash in the process. As a memory refresher, here are the specifications of the Cotton Candy: SoC – Samsung Exynos 4210 dual core Cortex A9 + Mali-400MP4 System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – No flash, up to 64GB microSD Video Output – HDMI Connectibity Wifi 802.11b/g/n Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR USB – USB 2.0 male connector for power and connection to devices that supports USB mass storage + microUSB Video Codecs- 480p/720p/1080p Decode of MPEG4-SP/H.263/H.264 AVC/MPEG-2/VC1 Audio Codecs – MP3, AAC, AAC+, Real Audio […]
Sierra Wireless Airprime WP & AR Series Modules Feature Tricore M2M SoC
Sierra Wireless, a company providing machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions, has recently introduced a new (nameless) architecture for embedded wireless communications comprised of a multicore (again, nameless) “high speed application processor” + Cortex M0 MCU + Radio SoC, secure cloud services (AirVantage) to store the data, and an open application framework with M2M libraries and development tools. This new architecture will be available in the company’s AirPrime WP & AR Series wireless modules to provide 2G to 4G technologies for the Internet of things. WP Series are industrial grade modules to be embedded into applications such as smart metering, remote monitoring, transportation, security systems, networking, and healthcare, whereas AR series will be used for automotive applications. The 2G versions will feature an M2M system-on-a-chip with a advanced tri-core architecture that includes a 2G EDGE modem, a Cortex A5 ARM application processor, and an ARM Cortex-M0 processor to enable ultra-low power operation. The […]
AllWinner Announces A31s Processor for Phablets, Hints about Ubuntu Devices
AllWinner is currently a Mobile World Congress 2013, and Charbax had the chance to interview Eva, manager at AllWinner, and learn more about new processors, and future plans by the company. They spent some time discussing about AllWinner A31 and AllWinner A20 quad and dual Cortex A7 processors, but since we’ve know about those for a while I’ll skip this part. The most interesting part is about AllWinner A31s, a cost down version of A31, specifically designed for phablets (smartphones with 5″ to 7″ screens). Like AllWinner A31, AllWinner A31s is also a quad core Cortex A7 processor with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU (8 shader engines) and the following specifications: CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 Quad-Core with 256KB L1-Cache/1MB L2-Cache GPU – POWERVR SGX 544MP2 with 8 logic cores. OpenGL ES2.0, Open CL1.x and DX 9_3 compliant. Memory 32-bit Dual-Channel LPDDR2/DDR3/DDR3L Controller, 8-bit NAND FLASH Controller with 64-bit ECC Video UHD H.264 […]
Ronetix SAMA5D3x-CM System-on-Modules Powered by Atmel SAMA5D3 eMPUs
Earlier this month, Atmel launched SAMA5D3 Cortex A5 embedded processor family, and Ronetix recently unveiled CPU modules based on the platform. SAMA5D3x-CM are SODIMM SoM based on SAMA5D3 series processor with 512MB DDR2, 256MB NAND Flash, 4MB SPI Flash, and Gigabit Ethernet. The key features of the modules are as follows: MCU – AT91SAMA5D3x series, 536 MHz ARM Cortex-A5 @ 1.2V (SAMA5D31, SAMA5D33, SAMA5D34 or SAMA5D35) System Memory – 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM, 32-bit Storage: 256 MB NAND Flash 16 MB NOR Flash (optional) 4 MiB Atmel SPI Flash One Wire 1024-bits EEPROM and 64-bits ROM Connectivity – 10/100/1000 MBit/s Ethernet Dimensions – 67.6x40mm (SO-DIMM 200 JEDEC MO-274 module) Temperature range – 0° +70°C or -40° to +85° C SAMA5D3-CM boards support Linux 3.6.9 and Android 4.0. Those are actually the modules used in Atmel SAMA5D3 evaluation kits, so Linux and Android support, starter kits, as well as documentation (except […]
$35 expEYES Junior Transforms the Raspberry Pi, Aakash2 Tablet or any Linux Powered Device into an Electronics Lab
I remember in high school in France, our class only had 2 oscilloscopes and few other electronics equipment, needless to say I did not actually get to use an oscilloscope until I went to university. It would have been nice to be able to play around with oscilloscopes, frequency generators, etc… earlier, but due to budget constraints, this was not possible. Dr Ajith Kumar, a scientist working with the Inter University Accelerator Centre of India, has spent several years working on an ultra low cost electronics lab composed of an oscilloscope and a signal generator to provide students attending schools that cannot afford regular equipments. This learning & experimentation tool is called expEYES, and a prototype was demonstrated last year with the Raspberry Pi. At the end of last year, the final version called expEYES Junior (aka expEYES 2.0) was announced, and is now available to schools and hobbyists in […]
May the Force be with You Thanks to Thalmic Labs MYO Gesture Control Armband
If you’ve always dreamed of being able to control objects just by thinking about it, you may be interested in MYO, a gesture control armband that is supposed to “unleash your inner Jedi” by monitoring electrical activity in your forearm muscles, and converting that into input commands transmitted wirelessly to the object to control. This can be used to control a quadcopter, or more simply your computer, smartphone, tablet, television, etc.. There are not many details about the technology behind it, but we do know it’s using Bluetooth 4.0 to communicate with peripheral, comes with a lithium ion battery, and will be powered by an ARM processor. It will support Windows and Mac computers, as well as Android and iOS devices initially. The company will provide an “MYO API” to let developers come with new concepts and products, the device will be available sometimes in 2013, and you can pre-order […]
mbed 2.0 SDK Released, becomes Open Source and Supports $12.95 Freescale Freedom Board
The mbed community has had a pretty busy week, with first the announcement that mbed SDK would become open source, the release of mbed 2.0, and finally support for the low cost Freescale Freedom board FRDM-KL25Zpowered by Kinetis Cortex M0+ KL25Z MCU. mbed becomes open source The mbed Software Development Kit (SDK), a C/C++ MCU software platform, has always been free (as in free beer) for both commercial and noncommercial use, and the large community around mbed has written tons of code for ARM microcontrollers. But now that the SDK has now a stable API, and the developers achieved transparent portability for code based on the SDK across multiple controllers and multiple toolchains, they decided to release the SDK source under an Apache 2.0 license. Although sharing modifications is encouraged, this license allows users to keep the changes closed if they wish to do so. mbed developers explain that the 3 […]