Allwinner A-Series Category - Page 43 of 53 - CNX Software

April 22, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Booting Linux in Less Than 1 Second in AllWinner A10 Devices? Yes! You Can!

threewater, a Chinese developer, has just posted a very interesting demo on linux-sunxi mailing list showing a device based on AllWinner A10 boot linux within 0.85s, and if you add a Qt app, the total time is just about 1.2s. This appears to be a custom hardware (EM6000), but we do know it’s based on AllWinner A10, comes with 512 MB RAM, and 4GB NAND Flash. On the software side, the device runs kernel 3.4 from linux-sunxi, with a customized version of uboot, a squashfs rootfs, and a Qt 4.7.4 app showing a gauge. Both the rootfs (7MB) and the kernel (2MB) have been compressed with LZO. All that boots from NAND flash for optimal speed. The 1.2 second time includes kernel + rootfs + app time, and the total time is a bit longer, but this is still impressive. Here’s the boot log:

[1.690000 1.690000] U-Boot SPL 2013.01-05984-g2120a27-dirty (Apr 17 2013 - 14:22:02)
[0.009000 0.009000] Board: EM6000
[0.012000 0.003000] DRAM: 512MB
[1.014000 1.002000] init startup v1.1
[1.016000 0.002000] mount usr data error 2
[1.158000 0.142000] Could not read calibration: "/data/etc/pointercal"
[1.166000 0.008000] Couldnt open tslib config file: No such file or directory
[1.175000 0.009000] QWSTslibMouseHandlerPrivate: ts_config() failed with error: 'No such file or directory'
[1.187000 0.012000] Please check your tslib installation!
[1.200000 0.013000] qt show

[1.690000 1.690000] U-Boot SPL 2013.01-05984-g2120a27-dirty (Apr 17 2013 - 14:22:02)

[0.009000 0.009000] Board: EM6000

[0.012000 0.003000] DRAM: 512MB

[1.014000 1.002000] init startup v1.1

[1.016000 0.002000] mount usr data error 2

[1.158000 0.142000] Could not read calibration: "/data/etc/pointercal"

[1.166000 0.008000] Couldnt open tslib config file: No such file or directory

[1.175000 0.009000] QWSTslibMouseHandlerPrivate: ts_config() failed with error: 'No such file or directory'

[1.187000 0.012000] Please check your tslib installation!

[1.200000 0.013000] qt show

If you just boot to […]

April 21, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

How to Use Libhybris and Android GPU Libraries with Mer (Linux) on the Cubieboard

You may have heard about libhybris, a library that cleverly loads Android HW adaptations and convert calls from bionic to glibc. One of the greatest achievement of this library is to allow Android GPU drivers to be used with Linux, and is notably used by Canonical, although they did not write it, for Ubuntu 14.04 which will be compatible with any recent Android smartphones or tablets. One way to get started with libhybris is to port a device to Ubuntu Touch, but this may take a while. However, I’ve found a faster and easier way to play with libhybris thanks to Martin Brook (vgrade) who wrote a tutorial on how to use libhybris with Mer on the Cubieboard. Mer is an open source mobile Linux distribution powered by Qt/QML and HTML5, that’s born from the ashes of Meego, and is now used in the upcoming Sailfish OS. You’ll need to […]

April 19, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Mele Android Set-Top Boxes At China Sourcing Fair 2013

The Mele A1000 and A2000 based on AllWinner A10 have been relatively popular last year, and recently Mele A1000G Quad has been unveiled with AllWinner A31 quad core Cortex A7 processor, and there was talk about a Dual core version as well. Charbax has shot 3 videos at Mele stand at China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong earlier this month, so I’ve got a bit more news to share. The first video shows the Mele A1000G Quad with a 2.4Ghz remote (which must be Mele F10 Fly Mouse). We don’t really learn much more than we already know, but we can see the device is action with a 3D game controlled with the “Fly Mouse”, and the new “Metro” style user interface. This STB is currently running Android 4.1, but an upgrade to Android 4.2 is expected in June. The device will be available in May for about $110 retail, […]

April 18, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Cloudsto A20 Media Stick Pictures, Screenshots And Antutu Benchmark

Cloudsto A20 Media Stick, a mini PC based on AllWinner A20, was discovered in March, with shipping expected in early April. One person in Korea (“Eddy Lab”) got hold of the device and took some pictures of this mini PC, as well as screenshots. But before going through this, let’s have a look at the specifications: SoC – Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 + Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB Flash + micro SD slot (Up to 32 GB) Video Output – HDMI (1080p) Video Containers – RM, RMVB, MPEG1/2/4, MPEG2 Transport Stream, VOB, AVI, ASF, WMV, MKV, MOV, MP4, RMP4, IFO, ISO Audio Codecs – AAC, MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV, M4A Connectivity – Built-in Wifi 802.11 b/g/n USB – 2x USB host (1x full USB, 1x mini USB) IR Receiver The package contains the A20 Media Stick, a remote control, a power adapter and […]

April 13, 2013July 24, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Allwinner Showcases A20, A31 and A31s Devices: Tablets, Phablets, Mini PCs, Projectors, Laptops, Development Boards…

Charbax is now at the China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong, meeting and interviewing lots of Chinese companies. One of the companies I’ve been following is AllWinner because of their low-cost ARM Cortex processors, found in many Android devices, which somewhat support Linux. In the video below, we first learn they have shipped 1 million A31 in the last 4 months, A31s and A20 processors have been available since the end of March for phablets, and A20 price is supposed to be very close to A10. So products based on AllWinner A10 could be upgraded to AllWinner A20 for just a few dollars more as both SoC are (nearly) pin to pin compatible. By the way, if you’re interested in the Cubieboard, you may want to see this. We then go through lots of devices based on AllWinner SoC, albeit too fast to get many details, but the list may […]

April 12, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Mele A1000G Quad Set-Top Box Features AllWinner A31 SoC

Mele A1000 Android set-top box based on AllWinner A10 is one the best platform to play with Linux on ARM, thanks to its low cost, numerous features, hackability, and the work of the developers’ community on arm-netbook mailing list, and now in sunxi-linux. I like it so much it’s the first item in my short list of hackable gadgets. However, the hardware specifications of the original Mele A1000 may be too weak for some of today’s applications. So I’m pleased the announce that Mele A1000G Quad is now available (for pre-order) with AllWinner A31 quad core Cortex A7 SoC, 2GB RAM and 8GB Flash. Here are the specifications for Mele A1000 Quad STB: SoC – AllWinner A31 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.5GHz + PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 RAM Storage 8GB Flash SD card slot SATA connector (most probably via a USB to SATA chipset) Video […]

April 6, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

PengPod 700 Linux Tablet Used As a 3D Printer Touchscreen Controller

PengPod 700 & 1000 are two of the rare Linux tablets to be available on the market. Those tablets are based on AllWinner A10 SoC which can support both Android and Linux thanks to independent developers. After a successful Indiegogo campaign, where they managed to received pledges for a few hundred units of both model, people started to receive their Linux tablets earlier this year. Francesco Santini decided to purchase PengPod 700 in order to use it as an touchscreen controller for his 3D printer (Solidoodle). He modified Pronterface, a graphical user interface written in Python to control 3D printer, for the 7″ display the of PengPod tablet, and made the change available in his github account https://github.com/fsantini/Printrun-pengpod700. He uses a SAMBA share to copy G-code files (“G-code is the common name for the most widely used numerical control (NC) programming language”), and load the required file from the PengPod […]

April 6, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

AllWinner A20 Linux Source Code, EVB Schematics and Product Brief

Hardware based on AllWinner A20 such as Cloudsto Media PC PRO DRIVEDOCK, should start to be available soon, and resources for developers have been slowly released (or leaked) to the community. AllWinner A20 Source Code The source code for AllWinner A20 and A31 has been released to sunxi-linux a while back, and they have started to clean up the code before hardware becomes available. The code apparently hasn’t made it to sunxi-linux github account just yet, but Linux for A20 has been imported into github at https://github.com/amery/linux-allwinner/tree/import/lichee-3.3/a20-dev. AllWinner A20 is known as sun7i in the code. AllWinner A20 Evaluation Board Schematics and Product Brief Olimex received A20 EVB schematics and product brief from AllWinner earlier this week, and as usual, they promptly uploaded those documents to their github account. The 3-page product brief does not bring anything new, and the data sheet does not seem to be available right now. […]