Sky Drone FPV HD Video Solution For Drones Uses 3G or 4G/LTE Networks and the BeagleBone Black

Earlier this week, I wrote about SparqEE CELLv1.0 a low cost cellular module to allow applications such as RC helicopter with extended range thanks to cellular networks. It turns out there’s currently a crowdfunding campaign that aims to bring such solution to market, but using 3G/4G USB dongles instead. Sky Drone FPV (First Person View) is an HD video system that can be controlled using 3G or 4G/LTE networks, and features the BeagleBone Black as the controller board. It would usually be attached to a quadcopter, by there’s not reason why you could not also use it with RC ground vehicles. Let’s start with the technical specifications: Controller Board – BeagleBone Black 3G/4G LTE Modem: Option 1 – Huawei E397Bu-501 for US / Americas (4G LTE FDD 1700/2100MHz and 700MHz) Option 2 –  Huawei E398u-1 for Europe / Asia (4G LTE FDD  900/2600 MHz) Camera: Option 1 – Full HD […]

Texas Instruments OMAP5432 EVM Benchmarked Against ODROID-U2, BeagleBone Black, GK802… and an Intel Core i7-2600K based PC

Texas instruments and SVTronics announced an OMAP5 evaluation board a couple of months ago. The board features OMAP5432 dual Cortex A15, dual Cortex M4 SoC, 2GB RAM, a 4GB eMMC module, USB 3.0, SATA and more. SVTronics sent a board to Linux.com, where they wrote a short review, followed by an article benchmarking the OMAP5 EVM against AllWinner A10, Freescale i.MX6, Exynos 4412 Prime, and TI Sitara platforms, namely Cubieboard, GK802, ODROID-U2, and BeagleBone Black, all running Linux. Ben Martin, the writer, also benchmarked the board against a Linux PC powered by an Intel Core i7-2600K processor (4 cores, 8 thread, clocked at 3.4GHz, with a turbo frequency up to 3.8GHz). The board used was an early version, clocked at 800MHz, and later in September, all boards will be clocked at 1.5Ghz, so for benchmarks that stress the CPU, you could expect almost double the performance. With that in mind, […]

BeagleBone GamingCape Transforms your BeagleBone Black into an Hand-held Gaming Console

The BeagleBone GamingCape is an open source project featuring the BeagleBone Black together with extra hardware such as a Cape, LCD display, and enclosure that turns your Beablebone board into a battery powered hand-held gaming console. The gaming console, which has been designed within 6 weeks by Max Thrun, has the following key hardware features: 320×240 16Bit Color TFT LCD Analog joystick + 2 Thumb Buttons 3D Gyro, 3D Accelerometer, 3D Magnetometer Headphone Out + Mic In and it can emulate NES, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and also run Doom. It will not be mass produced, but the whole design is open source, and the necessary files  are available for: The Cape: Schematics, layout, and CadSoft EAGLE file can be found Bill of Materials The Case composed of 11 laser cut pieces of Delrin – 3D files Emulators: Osmose – Sega Master System / […]

Lernstift Digital Pen Hits Kickstarter for $150

Lernstift is a digital pen running Linux that aims at helping children learning how to write by vibrating when they’ve made calligraphy or orthography errors. I’ve covered the overall concept in an earlier post, which you can read for details. The company has made some progress, and they have just launched a kickstarter campaign where you can pledge 99 GBP (about $150) to receive the pen later this year or in early 2014. We do know a little more technical details. The first prototype was based on Gumstix Overo (TI OMAP3 or Sitara), but they are now working to design a custom board based on the platform for the final design. The pen comes with 128 MB RAM and runs embedded Linux. In order to gather handwriting data, Lernstift leverages a motion sensor that combines gyroscope with accelerometer, and adds a magnetometer. They’ve got a drawing with Freescale MMA9950L, but […]

This is How the BeagleBone Black is Manufactured

CircuitCo has recently uploaded an interesting “Make of the BeagleBone Black” video showing how the BeagleBone Black is manufactured in their facilities in Richardson, Texas, USA. The main steps are as follows: A machine applies solder paste to the PCB Pick and place components Reflow soldering for SMT components Hand placement of through hole components such as the Ethernet connector Selective soldering PCB washing Optical inspection via an automatic optical inspection (AOI) machine Manual inspection Burn-in tests after flashing the board with factory firmware Functional testing Packing and shipping Beside the overall process, one interesting point is that human hands are only involved with through-hole components placement, functional testing and packing & shipping. Even those steps may eventually be automatized in the future with robots such as Baxter. Watch the video, it’s worth a look. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his […]

Compulab CM-T335 CoM with TI Sitara AM335x Sells for $27

Compulab, an Israeli company specialized in embedded computing, has just released CM-T335, a family of low cost computer-on-module powered by Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x SoC, and sells for as low as $27 per unit for the AM3352 version (no GPU) for 1k orders. The module is available in commercial, extended and industrial grades, and features up to 512 MB RAM, and 1 GB Flash. Specifications: SoC –  Texas Instruments AM3352 CPU @ 275MHz, or AM3354 @ 600MHz + PowerVR SGX530 GPU System Memory – 128MB to 512MB DDR3-1066, 16-bit bus width Storage – 128MB to 1GB on-board NAND flash, 8bit, SLC Display – 24-bit Parallel display interface – up to 1366 x 768 Touchscreen – 4/5/8-wire resistive touch-screen support, capacitive touch-screen support through SPI interface Connectivity: Ethernet – 1000Base-T Ethernet interface implemented with AM335x integrated MAC and the Atheros AR8033 RGMII PHY WiFi – 802.11b/g/n implemented with TI WL1271 chipset […]

Linaro 13.05 Release With Linux Kernel 3.10, Android 4.2.2, and Ubuntu Raring Ringtail

Linaro 13.05 has just been released with Linux Kernel 3.10-rc2 and Android 4.2.2. This is the first release with Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) images. There’s also Linux Linaro Stable (LSK) preview based on kernel 3.9.4. BeagleBone Black support has been added and preliminary hwpack and images are available, an Android Arndale image with virtual framebuffer is also available. You can now get a desktop environment (XFCE) on Aarch64 / ARMv8. Hardware packs with Real-time Linux kernel (PREEMPT_RT) can be downloaded for Pandaboard and Arndale. More work has gone into Aarch64, big.LITTLE HMP, and ARM virtualization (KVM). Finally an UEFI is available not only for Vexpress boards, but also Samsung Origen and Arndale boards, as well as Texas Instruments Pandabord and Beagleboard. Here are the highlights of this release: LAVA First prototype production run of LAVA Lmp completed, tested functional. Beaglebone Black is now running in LAVA. TC2s is now running […]

BeagleBone Black vs Raspberry Pi – Features and Price Comparison

The Beagleboard community officially announced the BeagleBone Black and its $45 price tag on the 22nd of April. Many blogs and news sites touted it as a Raspberry Pi killer, and R-Pi vs BBB fanboys fights ensued, and many articles with incorrect information or heavily biased were published. There’s however one decent BeagleBone Black vs Raspberry Pi comparison from a robotic point of view, so I’ll build from there with some corrections and additions. I’ll compare both the features and the price differential between the Raspberry Pi Model B and BeagleBone Black boards depending on use cases. BeagleBone Black vs Raspberry Pi – The Features BeagleBone Black Raspberry Pi Model B Comment Processor TI Sitara AM3359AZCZ100 Cortex A8 @ 1GHz(will be changed to AM3358BZCZ100 in future versions) Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 @ 700 MHz (Overclockable to 1GHz) Even thoughboth processors can run at the same frequency (after overclocking the R-Pi), but […]

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