Faraday Technology has unveiled “SoCreative! IV”, a SoC development kit based on Faraday A380 SoC featuring a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, an ARMv5-compliant core developed by the company, and a high speed expansion bus for interfacing with FPGA daughtercards. A380 SoC has been designed for cloud infrastructure market, including networking, computing, and storage applications. The company has not listed the specifications, but here’s what I could derived from the picture above, and the info found on Linux Gizmos article. SoC – Farady A380 dual core Cortex A9 @ 1GHz, with ARMv5-compliant FA626TE RISC processor @ 500MHz, and 512MB L2 cache. BGA package (31x31mm), 40nm process. System Memory – 1GB DDR3-1600 RAM Storage – 4Gb NAND Flash (512MB), 128Mb of NOR flash, 64Mb of SPI flash, I2C EEPROM, and SD Card slot. Video Output – DSUB for 24-bit LCD I/F up to 1280×1280 Audio – Mic In, Audio In/Out, Audio […]
AlmaDom.us Home Automation System Fits into Your Walls’ Gang Boxes
Almaware, an Italian IT company, has recently launched an Indiegogo campagain for AlmaDom.us, an home automation system with a 4.3″ touchscreen screen that replaces your wall switch, and fits in your wall’s gang box. Almadom.us specifications: SoC – ARM Cortex A8 720Mhz ARM Processor with PowerVR SGX530 GPU (Texas Instruments AM3354) System Memory – 256MB or more (TBD) Storage – 128Mb Flash or more (TBD) Display – 4.3″ resistive touchscreen (5 points). Resolution: 480×272, 256K colors Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0, Z-Wave and WiFi 802.11b/g/n with antenna on external cover Relays – 3 relays compatible with 110V and 230V (US and European Standard), with a maximum of 10A for single electrical equipment Misc – Temperature sensor, Infrared proximity sensor (to turn on/off screen), microphone and speaker. Power consumption – Active: 0.2 – 2W, Standby: 20 – 100 mW Operating temperature range – 0° to 70° C Board dimension – About 70×30 […]
$49 Safeplug Tor Router Let You Browse the Net Anonymously
With the recent NSA leaks, more and more people have been be aware that there’s virtually no privacy online, especially with regards to their own or foreign governments. So people have looked into using secure emails, or find way to protect themselves against eavesdropping from criminals, advertisers, and politicians. For example, instructions have been posted to convert the Raspberry Pi into a Tor router, called Onion Pi, in order to hide your IP address, and browse the web anonymously from any of your devices. If you’re not the tinkerer type, and/or would just like to get something that works out of the box cheaply, people behind the Pogoplug, have introduced the Safeplug, a Tor enabled router, that sells for just $49, plus $9 shipping to the US. It does not seem to be available for the rest of the world. There’s absolutely no information about the hardware used, but it […]
Boston Viridis 2.0 and AAEON CRS-200S-2R ARM Based Servers Powered by Calxeda Quad core Cortex A15 SoC
Calxeda unveiled its new ECX-2000 Server-on-a-Chip (SoC) at ARM Techcon 2013. Calxeda new chipset features 4 cortex A15 cores, support up to 16GB RAM, and thanks to the move from Cortex A9 to Cortex A15 supports hardware virtualization. I’ve stumbled across two new servers powered by ECX-2000: Boston Viridis 2.0 and AAEON-CRS-200S-2R. Let’s have a look Boston Viridis 2.0 The successor of Boston Viridis powered by Calxeda ECX-1000 quad core Cortex A9 SoC, Viridis 2.0 features six ECX-2000 cards, with each card hosting two four-core SoCs @ 1.8GHz, and consuming as little as 6 watts of power. The server runs Ubuntu 13.10 operating systems, and OpenStack Havana platform, and would typically be used for cloud computing, distributed storage, and virtualization. Viridis 2.0 is a 4U ARM microserver that, and the company claims this can allow up to 1000+ servers in a rack, or about 1.5PB of data storage per rack. […]
Dual Tuner “Simple.TV by SiliconDust” DVR Runs Linux on Zenverge ZN200 SoC
“Simple.TV by SiliconDust” is the full name of a digital video recorder (DVR) featuring two tuners, one input supporting antenna (ASTC) and over-the-air cable (ClearQAM) connections, one Ethernet, and one USB 2.0 host port for external mass storage devices. The device, called HD Homerun on SiliconDust website, is powered by Zenverge ZN200 STB SoC, and runs Linux. This is an upgrade of Simple.TV 1, and it allows you to watch a channel, while recording another, or record 2 programs thanks to the 2 tuners. An app will also be available to watch recorded TV program on Android tablets (coming soon) or iPads, and there’s also an HTML5 client to watch TV in any compatible browser. Recorded shows can be watch from any location with Internet access if you have a Premier subscription. Simple.TV 2 specifications: SoC – Zenverge ZN200 STB SoC with a quad Stream HD Transcoder, audio processing engine, […]
Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2013 Videos and Presentation Slides
I uploaded several Embedded Linux Conference Europe videos in 2011 and 2012 that were hosted by Free Electrons and/or the Linux Foundation for download, but this year, it seems the Linux Foundation has discovered a new (to them) online video service called YouTube, and created a playlist with (for now) 18 sessions of ELCE 2013. I’ve embedded the playlist below starting with the “Status of Embedded Linux (2013)“, by Tim Bird, Sony Mobile which takes place every year, and is among the most popular presentations. Most of ELCE 2013 presentation slides are already available from eLinux.org. You can also have a look at the list of ELCE 2013 talks I featured before the event took place. [Update: I’ve just watched the Status of Embedded Linux video, and I though it may be interested to list the topics (and keywords) used for what has happened in embedded linux in the last […]
Gumstix Announces Solution Kits for their CPU Modules and Boards
Gumstix has recently unveiled several solution kits featuring their Overo and DuoVero Computer-on-Modules (CoMs), Pepper single board computer, and several expansions boards, together with required accessories, and software packages, in order to help their customers getting started more easily. All these solutions are based on Texas Instruments OMAP3, OMAP4, and/or Sitara processors, and run Linux (Ubuntu or Yocto), and sometimes Android for the kits with displays. The solutions kits target 6 different types of applications and/or markets: Robotics Robotic Development Kit (Pictured above) with one Overo AirSTORM CoM (OMAP3703), and RoboVero expansion board. The kit is better suited for motor control applications. Mobile Robotic Development Kit with one Overo AirSTORM CoM, and Turtlecore expansion board to be used with iRobot Create. The kits ship with a Linaro (Ubuntu for Overo) system card and Robot Operating System (ROS) pre-installed. Handhelds 3.5″ Handheld Development Kit featuring Overo AirSTORM CoM with Alto35 cutomizable […]
How to Flash Rockchip RK3066 / RK3188 Firmware in Linux
Rockchip provides 2 tools to update the flash: RkBatchTool – Used to upgrade firmware with a single file RkAndroidTool – Used to flash the NAND flash with image corresponding to particular partition, e.g. system.img. kernel.img, boot.img. recovery.img. etc… One problem is that the company only provides these tools for Windows, so if you’re using a Linux based operating systems, you’d have to run a Windows XP or 7 virtual machine in VirtualBox or VMWare, which is an inconvenience, and requires a license in theory. To work around this issue, I’ve tried to use ReactOS, an open source operating systems compatible with Windows XP, but although the USB drivers appeared to install properly, RKAndroidTool failed to recognized my device (MK908). But a member of Mini PCs community informed me about a tool called RkFlashKit, written in Python and using GTK, that can flash firmware to Rockchip RK3066 and RK3188 devices in […]