Programming Category - Page 17 of 43 - CNX Software

January 29, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Embedded Systems Conference 2016 Schedule – April 13-14

The Embedded Systems Conference 2016 will take place in Boston on April 13-14, and the organizers have now released the schedule, minus some keynotes, which features four main tracks: Embedded Hardware, Embedded Software, Connected Devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), and the ESC Engineering Theatre. As usual, I’ve gone through the list of talks and composed my own little virtual schedule which ended up with sessions focusing on power management, IoT, and security, as well some optimization and drivers development talks among others, such as patents, and the origin of Gerber files. Wednesday 13 8:00 – 9:00 – Power Management in Embedded Systems by Colin Walls, Embedded Software Technologist, Mentor Graphics The importance of power management in today’s embedded designs has been steadily growing as an increasing number of battery powered devices are developed. In this session, we will discuss design considerations that should be made when starting a […]

December 11, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Light Biz OS Firmware, Android and Ubuntu Image, and Android SDK Released for GeekBox (RK3368)

GeekBox is an upcoming Android TV box based on Rockchip RK3368 octa-core processor that doubles as a system-on-module and development board. The company has now uploaded the Android 5.1 SDK, including Linux 3.10.79 kernel, on github. It’s not for the Android SDK for RK3368, but at least it’s not just an outdated tarball, and will hopefully be regularly updated directly on github. Beside the source code, the company also released three firmware image including Rockchip’s Light Biz OS desktop operating system based on Lollipop: Biz OS for GeekBox – V151208 (8th of December 2015) Android and Lubuntu dual boot image – V151129 (29th of November 2015) Android 5.1 image – V151129 (29th of November 2015) It’s quite possible those images will also work on other Rockchip RK3368 platform with some modifications, e.g. an updated device tree file for a given hardware. I’ve downloaded Biz OS adn the dual boot image, […]

December 10, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Allwinner A64 Android 5.1 SDK and Linux Source Code

Allwinner A64 is likely to become quite popular as it will be used in PINE A64 board, Olimex open source hardware laptop featuring A64-OLinuXino board, and some low cost tablets. We’ve already got some documentation such as Allwinner A64 datasheet and user’s manual, but AFAIK, there was no source code released for the board. The good news is that you can now download Android 5.1 SDK and Linux source code on Baidu with four files available: lichee_A64_A5.1_V1.0.tar.gz – Linux source code android_A64_A5.1_V1.0.tar.gz– Android 5.1 SDK android_prebuilts_A64_A5.1_V1.0.tar.gz – Some pre-built binaries for Android A64硬件资料.zip – Documentation including the datasheet, product brief, and user’s manual which we’ve already got, but also some hardware with reference schematics, PCB layout files, and BoM for an Allwinner A64 tablet. That’s about 7.4GB to download, and apart from the documentation, the download is not quite complete yet, so I could not look into the details of […]

June 9, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Free Electrons Releases Buildroot Training Materials

Free Electrons develops embedded Linux & Android software, and also provides related training. On-site training sessions are scheduled from time to time, or organized on request, and they usually release their training materials for free, as they did for their Embedded Linux training in 2012, or their Yocto Project / OpenEmbedded course more recently. Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons’ Chief Technical Officer, recently informed me that the company also released training materials for Buildroot, which like the Yocto Project is a build system, but it had been around for much longer, and the company is actively participating in its development with over 2,800 patches submitted upstream over the years. Four main resources have been released for the course, under a Creative Commons BY-SA license: training materials for Buildroot – 325 pages Practical labs instructions (PDF) with BeagleBone Black – 32 pages Practical labs data (.tar.xz) – Patchsets for drivers, rootfs, and […]

May 31, 2015May 31, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linaro 15.05 Release with Linux 4.1 and Android 5.1

Linaro 15.04 has been released with Linux 4.1-rc4, Linux 3.10.79 and 3.14.42 (LSK), and Android 5.1_r3. The Ubuntu image is now based on Vivid instead of Utopic. Android and Debian builds/images have been released for Hikey’s 96boards, Ubuntu Vivid and Android builds have been setup for Qualcomm’s Dragonboard 410c. A new platform, Socionext M8M, has also show in Linaro changelog. I could not find details about M8M, but Socionext is a “new company that designs, develops and delivers System-on-Chip products” and focuses on “imaging, networking and other dynamic technologies”. Their latest press release mentions a 4K media processor with build-in HDMI 2.0 Tx and Rx, so maybe M8M is based on that processor, but I can’t know for sure as they have several chips. Highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 4.1-rc4-2015.05 GATOR updated to version 5.21.1 updated integration-linaro-vexpress64 topic by ARM LT: PCI support added – for Juno r1. Linaro […]

April 18, 2015April 18, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

NodeMCU is both a Breadboard-Friendly ESP8266 Wi-Fi Board and a LUA based Firmware

NodeMCU is a LUA based interactive firmware for Expressif ESP8622 Wi-Fi SoC, as well as an open source hardware board that contrary to the $3 ESP8266 Wi-Fi modules includes a CP2102 TTL to USB chip for programming and debugging, is breadboard-friendly, and can simply be powered via its micro USB port. Let’s checkout the hardware first. The latest version of the board (V1.0) has the following specifications and features: Wi-Fi Module – ESP-12E module similar to ESP-12 module but with 6 extra GPIOs. USB – micro USB port for power, programming and debugging Headers – 2x 2.54mm 15-pin header with access to GPIOs, SPI, UART, ADC, and power pins Misc – Reset and Flash buttons Power – 5V via micro USB port Dimensions – 49 x 24.5 x 13mm The hardware documentation for the board can be found on nodemcu-devkit repo, including schematics and PCB layout designed with Altium Designer, […]

April 13, 2015April 13, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments

How to Program STMicro STM8S $1 Board in Linux

In January, I discovered there was such thing as a one dollar development board based on STMicro STM8S103F3P6 8-bit MCU with 1KB SRAM, 8KB flash, and 640 bytes EEPROM, some GPIOs as well as I2C, UART, SPI, ADC, and PWM signals. Links to documentation and source code were provided, but development tools were only Windows based. However, one of my reader informed me SDCC (Small Devices C Compiler) supported STM8, and development in Linux should be feasible. So I decided to buy the board on eBay for $1.62, as well as an ST_link V2 programmer for STM8 / STM32 for $4.52 in order to flash the firmware. The board came pretty quickly, i.e. within 2 to 3 weeks. But due to a lost package, the programmer took nearly 3 months to reach me, as the seller had to re-send after I failed to receive it within 2 months. It comes […]

April 12, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ARDHAT adds Arduino Shield Compatibility, an ISM Band Radio to Raspberry Pi and ODROID-C1 Boards (Crowdfunding)

NinjaBlocks created Pi Crust add-ons board adding a 433MHz radio and Arduino compatibility to the Raspberry Pi Model A & B a few years ago, but the product has since been removed from their store. But a startup called ubIQio has now created a similar product compatible with Raspberry Pi Model A+, B+ and B2, as well as ODROID-C1 which also comes with a 40-pin R-Pi header. The ARDHAT board is a HAT compatible add-on board with an Atmel MCU, Arduino headers, as well as an optional long range mesh ISM radio (433, 868 and 915 MHz) and various sensors. There are four versions of the board: Basic Ardhat, Ardhat-I, and Ardhat-W and Ultra, which share the following specifications: MCU – Atmel MCU @ 16MHz Headers and I/Os Arduino compatible header accepting 5V Arduino shields 12 ch PWM O/P, 6 ch analog I/P Real-time Clock Programmable Power/Navigation combo switch Programmable […]