MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Let’s Compare Them!

MK802 mini PC quickly went viral as it launched in May 2012 for $74 US, and since then many Chinese manufacturers have jumped into the market bringing both new faster devices, and the price down. AllWinner A10s, a low cost version of AllWinner A10 used in MK802, was also launched specifically for this market to bring costs even lower. Today, I’ve been informed an HDMI TV dongle based on AllWinner A10s that sells for $36.55 on Tinydeal.com which is a very good price, but decided to check on Aliexpress to look for comparable deals, and found one shop selling MK802 II for $34.91 including shipping via China Post, which makes it cheaper than the Raspberry Pi model B selling for $35 excluding shipping. Both products target 2 different markets, as MK802 is oriented to the consumer market, and Raspberry Pi targets the educational market, but in practice, it appears people […]

$6.80 Easycap DC60 USB Video Capture Card

You may have some old VHS tapes that you want to digitize to play on your computer or media player, or don’t feel like spending money on an HD recorder for your satellite or cable TV box, but still would like to record your favorite programs. It’s actually possible to do so for less than $7 thanks to USB video grabbers. Those USB capture cards are nothing new, but I did not know the price had come down that much. One of the cheapest capture card is Easycap DC60 (clone?) that sells for $6.80 on Aliexpress, and runs on Windows, and (if you are lucky) in Linux. The device provides stereo audio input, composite input and S-Video input. It is sold with a USB cable to connect it to your computer. CD is normally provided with Windows drivers and program. All you need is a Windows 2000/XP computer with a […]

Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And Review

Every Friday, Olimex organizes an online competition where they give away one of their board. They’ll ask a (usually simple) technical question on their twitter account at 22h00 (GMT+7), and all you have to do is to reply to their tweet with the correct answer within one hour. The winner is then selected randomly with random.org. There are usually 50 to 100 respondents so the odds are pretty good. I played a few times, and finally, I was lucky enough to win an A13-OLinuXino-MICRO development board at the beginning of December. I received it yesterday, after UPS took a whooping 15 days to deliver the board (Way to go UPS!). The board can be purchased on Olimex for 35 Euros plus shipping and taxes, or even lower if you order larger quantities. A13-OLinuXino-MICRO is a stripped down version of A13-OLinuXino-WIFI with the following specs: SoC – AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 […]

Linaro 12.12 Release with Linux Kernel 3.7 and Android 4.2.1

Linaro release 12.12 has just been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.7 and Android 4.2.1. The tracking version (stable release) uses Kernel 3.4.22. This release upgrades Android to version 4.2.1, Ubuntu images are now based on Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) and Linaro U-Boot 2012.12 has been released with support for Origen 4 Quad and Arndale boards. Further improvements have been done for OpenEmbedded ARMv8, where they replaced the php Apache module by php-fpm among other things. On the kernel side, USB drivers have been refactored, and a kernel size analysis have been performed on several platforms. The power management team has mainly worked on big.LITTLE IKS and MP implementations, and it’s the first time LEG (Linaro Enterprise Group) is included in the release, and they worked on UEFI for ARM, GRUB for U-Boot, and provided a Ubuntu server image for Arndale board which can boot via UEFI or UBoot. Here […]

Digia and the Qt Project Release Qt 5.0

The Qt Project and Digia have announced the release of Qt 5.0, which is available via Qt 5.0 page on qt-project.org, or via qt.digia.com/qt5 for commercial customers. Qt 5.0 comes as a full SDK package including Qt 5 framework, Qt Creator 2.6.1, examples and full documentation. Qt 5.0 is available in source code and binary format for Linux (64 and 32 bit), Mac OS X (10.7 and 10.8), and Windows. You can read more about the main changes and new features compared to Qt 4.8, on my previous blog post about Qt 5 Alpha. A video showcasing some of the key features of Qt 5 has been uploaded to Youtube. The video above is actually a screen capture of a Qt 5 based application using Qt Quick, OpenGL and WebKit, running in a Mac. Audio has been added with iMovie application. You can try this Qt 5 Launch Demo by yourself by […]

Habey Unveils MITX-6500 mini-ITX Embedded Board Powered by Freescale i.MX53

There aren’t many mini-ITX ARM board, and the only one I can recall is Kontron KTT30/mITX based on Nvidia Tegra 3. But there’s now at least one more mini-ITX ARM board thanks to Habey MITX-6500 embedded board. This mini-ITX board feature Freescale i.MX535 or i.MX536 processors, 1GB DDR3 and a 4GB on-board SSD. Since this is mainly an industrial board, it also features 2 Ethernet NIC and a whooping 13 COM ports. The board is suitable for a range of applications such as human to machine interfaces, data acquisition, point of sale, vehicle telematics, digital signage, industrial automation, building controls and connected appliances. Contrary to many other embedded companies, Habey also sells the board available to individuals. Here are the specifications of this board: CPU – Freescale ARM Cortex A8 i.MX535 @ 1 GHz or i.MX536 @ 800 MHz System Memory – 1GB on-board DDR3 Storage – 1x SATA 3Gb/s, 1x […]

MyGica A11 Android Set-top Box Powered by AMLogic AML8726-M3 Processor

Full-sized set-top boxes based on AMLogic AML8726-M3 processor have the potential to support XBMC Linux & Android with proper hardware support, but are not always priced very aggressively. But today, I’ve stumbled upon MyGica A11 Android 4.0 media player powered by AML8726-M3, with 1GB RAM and 4GB flash that sells for $65.10 on DealExtreme including shipping, and just 339 RMB (~55 USD) in China. Mygica A10 Specifications: SoC – AMLogic AML8726-M3 (Cortex A9) processor @ 1.0GHz with Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB Flash + microSD slot (Up to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI 1.3 (Up to 1080p) Video Formats – AVI, RM, RMVB, Ts, TP, TRP, Vob, Mkv, Mov, WMV, IOS, AFS, FLV, DAT, MPG, MPEG & SWF Video Codecs – MPEG1/2/4, H.264, AVC/VC-1, Xvid ,DivX3/4/5/6, and Real Video 8/9/10 Audio Formats – MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AAC, AC-D, DTS & Real […]

3.95 Euros RPI-UEXT Breadboard & UEXT Adapter for Raspberry Pi is Now Available

Last month, I wrote about an upcoming T-shaped adapter for the Raspberry Pi that can easily plug  into a breadboard, and provides a UEXT connector that can bring new features (RTC, GPRS, sensors, relays…) to the Raspberry Pi via low cost external UEXT modules. Olimex has just announced the RPI-UEXT adapter is now available for 3.95 Euros. To connect RPI-UEXT adapter to the Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to purchase a 26-pin ribbon cable and a breadboard if you don’t have these already. Olimex provides those 2 for respectively 2 & 2.95 Euros. That means a complete set would cost 8.90 Euros. As discussed on my first RPI-UEXT post, what makes this little board really interesting are all the existing UEXT modules (over 20) that bring new features at very low cost. Olimex uploaded a video showing the Raspberry Pi, the RPI-UEXT and the MOD-IO UEXT module connected together, with the Raspberry […]

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