Category: Programming

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on LinuxCon North America 2013 Schedule

LinuxCon North America 2013 Schedule

LinuxCon (North America) 2013 will take place on September 16 – 18, 2013 in New Orleans, LA. The event will be co-located with several other conferences: the Linux Plumbers Conference, the Xen Project User Summit, the OpenDaylight Mini-Summit, the Gluster Workshop 2013, the UEFI Plugfest, the Linux Wireless Summit, the Linux Security Summit, and CloudOpen 2013. LinuxCon consists of 3 days of keynotes, and legal, operations, and developers related sessions as well as tutorials and workshops. There will be around 150 sessions and keynotes during those 3 days. I’ve gone through developer sessions and selected one for each time period. Monday, September 16 10:35 – 11:25 – UEFI and Linux by Kirk Bresniker, HP UEFI has become ubiquitous on the PC client systems and is coming up on servers and ARM-based systems, it is becoming the converged firmware infrastructure. UEFI Secure Boot feature has attracted a lot of attention from […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on NI myRIO is an Education Platform Powered by Xilinx Zynq-Z7010

NI myRIO is an Education Platform Powered by Xilinx Zynq-Z7010

National Instruments has been working on a device called NI myRIO, an hardware & software platform that aims at giving engineering students the ability to design real systems quickly for automation, robotics, data logging or embedded systems. The hardware is based on Xilinx Zynq-7010 with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and an FPGA with 28,000 programmable logic cells, and features 10 analog inputs, 6 analog outputs, audio I/O channels, and up to 40 lines of digital input/output (DIO). NI myRIO Hardware  Specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7010 with a dual core Cortex A9 processor and FPGA with 28,000 cells System Memory – Unknown Storage – Unknown Expansion Ports: myRIO exPansion Ports (MXP) – Two identical ports (MXP A and MXP B) with 4 analog inputs, 6 digital inputs/outputs, 2 analog outputs, 1 quad encoder, 3 PWMs, 1 UART, 1 I2C and 1 SPI by default. Ports configuration is customizable with Labview […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on ARM TechCon 2013 Schedule – ARM Servers, Internet of Things, Multicore, Hardware and Software Optimization and More

ARM TechCon 2013 Schedule – ARM Servers, Internet of Things, Multicore, Hardware and Software Optimization and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2013 will take place on October 29 – 31, 2013, in Santa Clara, and the detailed schedule for the event has just been made available. In the previous years, the conference was divided into  Chip Designs day (1 day), and the other 2 days were reserved for Software & System Design, but this year it does not appear to be the case. Whether you’ll be able to attend the event or not, it’s worth having a look at what will be discussed there in order to have a better understanding of what will be the key ARM developments in the near future in terms of hardware and software. There will be around 90 sessions categorized into 15 tracks: Accelerating Hardware Development – This track explores the resources, tools, and techniques that designers can employ to quickly bring hardware to market. Topics include multicore design, ARM IP, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Tizen Developer Conference 2013 Presentation Slides, Audio Recording and Videos Are Now Available

Tizen Developer Conference 2013 Presentation Slides, Audio Recording and Videos Are Now Available

The Tizen Developer Conference took place in San Fransisco, on May 22-24, 2013. We’e already seen a few Tizen demos from the conference, but slides and media files (mostly audio, but also some videos) are now available for keynotes and technical presentations. As this was just the second Tizen conference, there were still many sessions dealing with overall structure of the operating system, and explaining how to get started either with native or web development, such as: An Overview of the Tizen Native Application Framework Introduction of Tizen SDK minimal web development tools Tizen Design Guidelines and User Experience Tizen Overview and Architecture Tizen.org Web Infrastructure Tizen enters a mobile world dominated by Android and iOS, so several sessions targeted app developers used to work with either operating systems in order to show them how to port their existing apps to Tizen: Bringing Android Apps to Tizen From iOS to […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on DIY Stripboard/Veroboard Enclosure for Raspberry Pi (Part 2)

DIY Stripboard/Veroboard Enclosure for Raspberry Pi (Part 2)

Rasbperry_Pi_Stripboard_LED_Relay

Following up my previous post entitled “DIY Modular Stripboard / Perfboard Casing for Raspberry Pi (Part 1)” where I explained how I created an modular enclosure made of perfboard, or the overall concept, I’ve now designed two “smart” sides for the enclosure: a 16-LED stripboard side, and a 5V relay stripboard side. Today, I’ll detail how I’ve done this, with details about electronics, soldering, assembly, the Linux distribution (built with Yocto), as well C programs, HTML page, and (CGI) shell scripts used to light up the 16 LEDs, and control a standard 220V lamp with a relay via my phone’s web browser. 16-LED Stripboard Top Schematics, Soldering, and Testing I had decided to design the top board of the enclosure with several LEDs, 3 LEDs on both side, and a Raspberry fruit (6 red LED) and 2 leaves (4 green LED) in the middle. Before getting started, I did some […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 32 Comments on Linux-Rockchip Developers Community Up, Rockchip Development Boards Coming Soon?

Linux-Rockchip Developers Community Up, Rockchip Development Boards Coming Soon?

Companies like Freescale and Texas Instruments provide good software support, and documentation, which is why they can be found in many embedded devices, because without documentation or source code low-level customization is nearly impossible or extremely time consuming. They also usually open most of the documentation and code, because they understand this can foster the use of their chips. On the other hand, Chinese-based SoC manufacturers focus on high-volume platforms such as tablets and smartphones, and usually management don’t understand the advantage to make documentation and GPL source code available, or even may consider it bad for business. Some individuals and small companies do not see it that way however, and they either want to access to the source code to improve existing mobiles devices, or use low cost Chinese SoCs to provide highly customizable hardware and software solutions. So source code and documentation have started to leak, and tools […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments on Rockchip RK3188 Linux Source Code is Now Available

Rockchip RK3188 Linux Source Code is Now Available

Good news! I’ve just read Rockchip RK3188 Linux source code has just been released via Rikomagic, and Alok Sinha, the main maintainer of RK3066 source code, has already imported into github, and we should soon see a PicUntu image for RK3188 mini PCs. Let’s have a look:

[Update: you may have to run “sudo apt-get install libc6-i386” before running make_kernel_ruikemei.sh below, as mkkrnlimg is a 32-bit binary] Usually, I immediately look into arch/arm/configs, but this time, there’s a “funny” script called make_kernel_ruikemei.sh, and .config already have some CONFIG_RK3188, so let’s run it:

After just over a minute, success!:

This kernel image is for Android only, and there’s a little work to modify it as a “pure” Linux kernel, so that it can be used to boot PicUnutu for RK3188. Let’s go back to arch/arm/configs, and we’ll find several RK3188 configs: rk3168_86v_defconfig rk3188_dongle_defconfig rk3188_ds1006h_defconfig rk3188_ds1006h_v1_0_defconfig rk3188_hotdog_defconfig rk3188_LR097_defconfig rk3188_magicwand_defconfig […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on Bluetooth Versions Walkthrough, and Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Development Resources

Bluetooth Versions Walkthrough, and Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Development Resources

I’ve seen more and more Bluetooth 4.0 LE devices in the last few months including RFDuino, Wimoto Motes, TI SensorTag, and Scadanu Scout, so I thought it would be good to write a bit about Bluetooth. First, I’ll write about the different version of Bluetooth, since I was still confused with the practical implications between the versions, and then I’ll show some development kits and software resources to play around and/or develop Bluetooth 4.0 LE applications both on devices and hosts. Bluetooth Versions Bluetooth v1.0 and v1.0B The Bluetooth 1.0 Specification was released in 1999, and according to an entry in Wikipedia, 1.0 and 1.0B devices had many issues, mainly interoperability issues. You won’t find any Bluetooth 1.0 device today. Bluetooth v1.1 Bluetooth v1.1 was ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1-2002 in 2002. It fixed many issues found in the previous specifications, added the option to use non-encrypted channels, as well […]

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