This Open Source Hardware Smartwatch Project is Fully Documented

Open Source Hardware Smartwatch

While there are plenty of smartwatches available, they may not perfectly match your requirements and needs. But did you wake up one day and just decided to build your own? Probably not. But Samson March had his own plans, and as a professional electrical engineer and product designer, he decided to start a smartwatch project during his spare time. What makes it really interesting is that he provided a long list of photos and short videos explaining in details the process, and open-sourced all materials from hardware design files, to firmware source code, and 3D print files for the body and charging dock! The OSHW watch does not have a name (yet) and features the following hardware: Wireless MCU – Dialog Semiconductor DA14683 Arm Cortex-M0 microcontroller up to 96 MHz 128KB RAM, 128KB ROM, 64KB OTP, and with Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity Storage – 128 Mbit SPI flash Display – 1.3″ […]

LG 24UD58-B 24″ 4K UHD IPS Monitor Sells for $219

LG 24UD58-B

When I bought my first 4K UHD TV in January 2015, I had to pay around $600 for LG 42UB820T 42″ model. It was good for about a year, after which it started to fail, and was somewhat outdated due to the lack of HDR support. Over four years later, prices for 4K hardware as dropped significantly, as as pointed out by Michael Larabel of Phoronix, it’s now possible to buy a 24″ 4K UHD display for just $219. LG 24UD58-B 24″ 4K UHD IPS monitor also have the advantage of supporting FreeSync helping avoid stuttering and tearing in games. LG 24UD58-B specifications: Screen Size – 23.8″ up to 3840×2160 resolution (16:9 aspect radio) Panel Type – IPS Color Gamut (CIE 1931) – NTSC 72% Color Depth (Number of Colors) – 10bit(8bit + A-FRC) Response Time – 5ms GTG Refresh Rate – 60Hz Brightness – 250 cd/m2 Contrast Ratio – […]

Facebook Oculus Quest Standalone VR Headset Launched for $399 and up

Oculus Quest VR Handset

One year ago, Facebook introduced their very first standalone virtual reality headset with Oculus Go. At $199 the price was fairly attractive, but the headset only supported 3DOF motion tracking. The company announced a new model at F8 2019. Oculus Quest is equipped with a more powerful Snapdragon 835 processor, two 1600 x 1440 displays, and support for 6DOF (degrees of freedom) virtual reality thanks to two handheld motion controllers. Oculus Quest specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa-core processor with 4x high performance Kryo 280 cores @ 2.20 GHz/ 2.30 GHz (single core operation), 4x low power Kryo 280 cores @ 1.9 GHz, Adreno 540 GPU System Memory – 4GB RAM Storage – 64GB or 128GB flash storage Display – 2x 1600×1440 OLED displays up to 72 Hz Camera – 4x wide-angle tracking cameras for inside-out  position tracking Audio – Integrated speakers, 2x 3.5mm audio jacks Battery – Lithium-Ion […]

VORKE GT-King Amlogic S922X TV Box Sells for $114

VORKE GT-KING

One of the first Amlogic S922X TV box to show up in our news feed was Beelink GT1-K “King” with 4GB LPDDR4, 64GB eMMC flash, and all interfaces and features you’d expect from a higher end TV box including 4K HDR, HDMI 2.1 output, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and so on. The Android 9.0 TV was only unveiled at the time, and we had yet to know about pricing. The media player has now started to sell on Aliexpress under the VORKE brand for $114 including shipping. VORKE GT-King specifications: SoC – Amlogic S922X hexa-core big.LITTLE processor with 4x Arm Cortex A73 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz, 2x Arm Cortex A53 cores @ 1.9 GHz, Arm Mali-G52MP4 GPU @ 846MHz; 12nm manufacturing process System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4K @ 75 Hz, AV […]

Battery powered MEGO Portable Power Supply fits into Breadboards

MEGO Portable Power Supply Breadboard

Breadboard power supplies like MB102 have been around for years, and some  even designed a variable power supply for breadboards, but EVO-IN-MOTION MEGO looks much neater as a fully enclosed power supply, 4 to 24V output, fitted with a LiPo battery, and a display to show current voltage. MEGO enabled on-the-go breadboard projects without any cables for the power supply. Just connect the power supply, and you’re good to go with power delivered from the built-in battery. MEGO power supply specifications: Output Voltage – 4-24V DC Maximum Power – 6W Safety – Overload protection; short circuit protection Typical Power Efficiency – 88% Voltage Display Accuracy – <1% Ripple Voltage – <1% Load Regulation – 270mV Battery – 7.4Whs (2,000 mAh @ 3.7V) Misc – Power button;, adjust knob for output voltage; low battery and charging LEDs Dimensions – 73 x 59 x 32 mm Weight – 100 grams Temperature Range […]

Giggle Score Says ODROID-N2 Best Value, Raspberry Pi Zero Worst Value

Giggle Score

[Update May 7, 2019: Giggle Score has been updated to use 7-zip to benchmark the boards instead of sysbench, and the “best value” rankings are now quite different] People like to compare single board computers, and usually want to have a simple answer as to which is better than the others. But in practice it’s impossible, because the beauty of SBCs is that they are so versatile and can be used in a wide variety of project, and that means in some cases the “best board” may be completely useless to you since it lacks a critical feature and interface for YOUR project be it H.265 video encoding or a MIPI DSI display interface. Still, it’s still always fun to look at benchmark scores and trying to compare SBCs, and for projects that mostly require CPU processing power it may also be useful. Robbie Ferguson has been developing and maintaining […]

Alipay Dragonfly F1 PoS Enables Payments with Face Recognition

Alipay Dragonfly F1

We’re being told the traditional way of paying for purchases – cash – is going away, so we’ll soon have to rely exclusively on electronics payment means such as debit cards, credit cards, contactless stored value smart cards, smartphones, our own face, etc… Wait? I could pay by just showing up my face? Apparently yes, as Alipay recently installed 12 Dragonfly POS (Point-of-Sales) devices with biometric technology at Hong Kong airport. The systems started operating at the airport on April 2nd, but similar devices were allegedly deployed in more than 300 cities in mainland China previously. I’m not entirely sure of the exact model operating at Hong Kong airport, but a quick web search reveals Alipay Dragonfly F1 matches the description. Hardware specifications: Processor – Quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor @ 1.3GHz System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 8GB FLASH Display – 10.1″ TFT touch screen display with 1280×800 […]

Huawei Launches 2U 4-node Taishan X6000 V2 Server with Kunpeng 920 Arm Processor

Kunpeng 920 Server Taishan X6000 V2

Back in January, Huawei announced Kunpeng 920 64-core Armv8 server processor as well as three Tianshan servers based on the SoC. But a recent tweet from James Lin, Vice director, Center of HPC, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, claims Huawei launched a 2U 4-node “Taishan” server with  Kunpeng 920 (Hi1620) Arm chip a few days ago. That probably means Huawei is now ready to take orders for their new Arm servers. The server pictured above appears to be Taishan X6000 V2 with the following specifications: Form Factor – 2U, 4Node high-density server Server Nodes – Up to 4 XR320 servers with X6000 universal chassis or 4 XA320 V2 servers with X6000 super chassis Power Supply Units 2x 1,500W enhanced hot-swappable AC PSUs for XR320 server nodes 2x 3,000W hot-swappable AC PSUs for XA320 V2 server nodes supporting 1+1 redundancy Power Supply – 100V to 240V AC; 24V DC Fan Modules – […]

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