Allwinner H-Series Category - Page 26 of 35 - CNX Software

September 25, 2016September 26, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 51 Comments

VR SKY CX-V3 Android VR Headset Review – Part 2: GUI, 360° and VR Videos, and Issues

VR SKY CX-V3 is an Android virtual reality headset powered by Allwinner H8vr processor and featuring a 1080p display. I had read VR requires 2K or 4K displays to be useful, but since that’s my very first VR headset, if we don’t count the a Google Cardboard clone as one, I did not mind testing one with a 1920×1080 display, and it ended up being an interesting learning experience. I’ve already shown the hardware with the various buttons, touch interfaces and lenses in the headset, as well as accessories like the charger and headphone in the first part of the review, so today, I’ll go through the interfaces, what works, and mention the issues I had with the device. If you’ve never used a virtual reality headset before, you’ll definitely want to read the user manual, which for once is written in proper English, both for entertainment value, and learn […]

September 19, 2016September 19, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 51 Comments

Orange Pi One Development Board Sells for $3.69 Shipped (Promo)

[Update: Sorry the promo is over, and price is back at $13.79] Last time, we had a promo for Orange Pi PC for $8.57 on GearBest, and it was legit, but quantity limited, so not so easy to get. There’s now another promo from the same parent company, as Orange Pi One is sold for $3.69 including shipping on Everbuying with 289 pieces and about 8 days left. In case you can’t recall Orange Pi One specs, it’s a development board based on Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 SoC, with 512 MB RAM, micro SD card for storage, 10/100M Ethernet, a USB ports, and HDMI output. The best Linux OS for the board is probably Armbian. The normal price is around $13 to $14 shipped. Thanks to Theguyuk for the tip. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a […]

September 13, 2016September 16, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

$20 pcDuino4 Nano is Yet Another Allwinner H3 Development Board (Sort of)

We already have plenty of low cost Allwinner H3 development boards thanks to several Shenzhen Xunlong Orange Pi boards and FriendlyARM NanoPi boards among a few others. Here comes another one with pcDuino4 Nano. pcDuino4 Nano (preliminary?) specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3 SDRAM Storage – micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI and 3.5mm jack for CVBS (composite + stereo audio) Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port Camera – DVP Interface Expansions – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header with UART, SPI, I2C, PWM, GPIOs, etc… Debugging – 4-pin header for serial console Misc – Power and reset buttons; 2x LEDs; IR receiver; on-board microphone. Power Supply – 5V/2A via micro USB port; 5V via VDD_5V pin […]

August 31, 2016September 1, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

VR SKY CX-V3 Allwinner H8vr All-in-one Android Virtual Reality Headset Review – Part 1: Specs and Unboxing

I’ve heard about standalone Android virtual reality headset for a while, but so far I had never tried one, except using my phone with a cardboard kit, which was not such a good experience. So when GearBest asked me whether I want to try one of the Allwinner H8vr virtual reality kits, I thought it was a good idea, and today, I received VR SKY CX-V3 model. Today, I’ll just list the specs, check out the device and accessories, and report my first impressions, before posting a review about my experience in a few weeks. VR SKY CX-V3 Virtual Reality Headset Specifications While I would have preferred a 2K or greater display, CX-V3 includes a 1080p display, but that’s probably good enough for a first experience: SoC – Allwinner H8 octa core Cortex A7 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with PowerVR SGX544 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage […]

August 23, 2016August 23, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

NanoPi NEO Board Gets Armbian Debian 8 & Ubuntu 16.04 with Linux 4.6 & 4.7 (Mainline), h3consumption Power Consumption Tool

We’ve been blessed with a wide range of low cost Allwinner H3 boards thanks to Shenzhen Xunlong Orange Pi and FriendylARM NanoPi boards. Recently, armbian developers have been focusing on NanoPi NEO board, and they’ve now released Debian Jessie and Ubuntu Xenial with Linux 4.6.7 and Linux 4.7.2. The latter is mainline kernel with some patchsets for Ethernet. You can download the Linux 4.6.7 based “beta” images from armbian NanoPi NEO page, and selected the “Vanilla” versions, then flash then one a micro SD card as you would normally do. Linux 4.7.2 based “experimental” images with USB OTG support and schedutil cpufreq governor can be found on the separate server in a temporary directory. Thomas Kaiser explains further: Ethernet and throttling are working (the latter not as efficient as with legacy kernel but at least it protects the SoC from overheating). Please note that all vanilla kernel images currently suffer from […]

August 17, 2016August 17, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

Allwinner H5 is a Quad Core Cortex A53 Processor for 4K OTT TV Boxes

Last year, we found that Allwinner was preparing to launch Allwinner H64 and H5 quad and octa processors in their roadmap, but there have been some changes, and the compny seems to have dropped H64 name, and has now introduced Allwinner H5 quad core Cortex A53 processor designed for 4K TV boxes. Allwinner H5 main specifications: CPU – quad core Cortex A53 with NEON, FPU, 64KB I/D cache per core, and 512KB L2 cache 3G GPU – ARM Mali-450MP GPU with 4 pixel processor cores, and 2 geometry cores with support for OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1/1.1, OpenVG 1.1 and EGL 2D GPU (Graphics and Display Processor) – Dual display; Main display: 4 video layers, 12 graphics layers, 4 alpha blending channels; Auxiliary display: 4 video layers, 4 graphics layers, and 2 alpha blending channels Memory I/F – DDR3/3L SDRAM interface up to 32-bit data width Storage I/F – SPI NOR flash, […]

July 25, 2016May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Linux 4.7 Release – Main Changes, ARM and MIPS Architectures

Linux 4.7 is out: So, after a slight delay due to my travels, I’m back, and 4.7 is out. Despite it being two weeks since rc7, the final patch wasn’t all that big, and much of it is trivial one- and few-liners. There’s a couple of network drivers that got a bit more loving. Appended is the shortlog since rc7 for people who care: it’s fairly spread out, with networking and some intel Kabylake GPU fixes being the most noticeable ones. But there’s random small noise spread all over. And obviously, this means that the merge window for 4.8 is open.Judging by the linux-next contents, that’s going to be a bigger release than the current one (4.7 really was fairly calm, I blame at least partly summer in the northern hemisphere). Linus Linux 4.6 brought USB 3.1 superspeed, OrangeFS distributed file system, 802.1AE MAC-level encryption (MACsec), and BATMAN V protocol support, improved […]

July 22, 2016July 22, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

FriendlyARM NanoPi NEO Board Benchmarks

We’ve already seen how to setup NanoPi NEO with Ubuntu Core, and while it’s mostly designed as an IoT node, for example to control relays over Ethernet or the Internet, I’ve still decided to see how it would perform under load by running Phoronix benchmarks, and then network and storage (micro SD card provided by FriendlyARM). It’s a small board, so we should expect it to heat a lot under load, especially it does not come with an heatsink by default. Also bear in mind that performance may dramatically change depending on the software implementation, and for the test, I’m using the company’s Ubuntu Core firmware. Before start the benchmark, I noticed that QTe-Demo was running in the background, probably because it was used on their other board with video output or LCD. but it’s taking some CPU usage, and is absolutely not needed here. To disable it, edit /etc/rc.local, […]