Design West Summit – 23-25 April 2013

Design West 2013, previously known as the Embedded Systems Confertence, will take place later this month, on 23-25 April to be exact, at San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, US. The event will be divided into 22 tracks dealing with software development, hardware design, operating systems, security and more: Android Certificate Program – Two-day hands-on embedded android workshop. Black Hat Summit – The Black Hat Embedded Security Summit will provide electronics professionals with essential information and tools, as well as a forum for the discussion and evaluation of the latest solutions for securing their embedded systems. Training courses will focus on topics such as Network Security, Incident Response, Web Application Security, and Exploit Development. Connectivity and Networking – The Connectivity and Networking track educates design engineers on wired and wireless communications, spanning need-to-know topics from essentials of USB device development to antenna and RF system design. Debugging […]

Sailfish OS SDK Adds Support for Windows and Mac OS X

At the end of February, Sailfish OS SDK Alpha was released with support Linux 32- and 64-bit only. The latest version of Sailish OS SDK can also be installed in Windows and Mac OS X. If you’re developing in Linux, it’s just the same SDK as released in February. The SDK and quick start guide is available from Sailfishos.org, or you can click directly on the links before to download and install the SDK. Windows SDK installer – SailfishOSSDK-windows-offline.exe Mac OS X installer –  SailfishOSSDK-mac-offline.dmg The SDK is still at the Alpha stage with several known issues, and probably a few more yet-to-be-known bugs. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

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. […]

Tizen 2.0 SDK and Source Code (Magnolia) Release

Tizen developers have just announced Tizen 2.0 source code and SDK release. This release includes many new features and improvements over Tizen 1.0 released in April. The highlights of this release include: Enhanced Web framework that provides state-of-the-art HTML5/W3C API support Web UI framework, including full-screen and multi-window support Additional Tizen device APIs, such as Bluetooth and NFC support, and access to the device’s calendar, call history, and messaging subsystems Web Runtime framework supporting new configuration elements for specifying the required features and privileges, and providing the basic runtime environment for NPRuntime plugins Native framework supporting full-featured application development and providing a variety of features such as background applications, IP Push, and TTS (Text-To-Speech) Core and native reference applications including Calendar, Contacts, Gallery, Phone, Settings, and Video Player Enhanced Web IDE providing WYSIWYG design environment, Chrome-based JavaScript inspector, and JavaScript log viewer Native IDE providing a project wizard, WYSIWYG design […]

Developer Community for Freescale i.MX6 HDMI Dongles

Last week, I explained how to build U-boot, the kernel, and Android for Freescale i.MX6 HDMI dongle reference platform. Since them, there has been a bit more activity, with Richtechie releasing source code to some ARMTvTech members. However, this source code is very similar to the one released by Freescale, and misses some part present in the kernel config on GK802 such as CONFIG_MACH_MX6Q_RICHTECHIE, and the company clearly does not comply with the GPL. Let’s forget that for now, as Jasbir (who is also behind the Hackberry board) has managed to build and boot the kernel on his mini PC. There’s still more work to do, but at least we have a based to work on. In the meantime, I’ve noticed rz2k, an other developer, was also giving it a try on #arm-netbook Freenode IRC channel, so we decided to setup a few things to facilitate development and communication between developers. […]

U-boot, Linux Kernel, and Android Patches for Freescale i.MX6 HDMI TV Dongles

We can now get some quad core Android mini PCs (e.g. Hi802, GK802) featuring Freescale i.MX6Q processor, Freescale has released full documentation and source code its development platforms, Hi802 / GK802 HDMI TV dongles are easily hackable, and there’s even an Ubuntu image for the devices. So it looks pretty good ,right? Well almost.. there are some patches and config for GK802 that have not been released by Richtechie, so we can’t modify the  bootloader and Linux kernel. But this may change, as ARMTvTech forum user hste noticed some Freescale i.MX6 HDMI dongle patches om IMX Community website. Even though I’m not sure those are fully compatible with Hi802 / GK802, this could be a starting point. Today, I’ll provide the instructions to build u-boot, the linux kernel and Android ICS with those patches in a machine running Linux 12.04 64-bit. Patch Sets Descriptions There are two set of patches that […]

Replicate CAPE Adds 3D Printring Capability to the Beaglebone

Beagleboard.org launched the Beaglebone Cape Design Contest back in November, several designs were submitted, and yesterday, they announced the 3 winning CAPEs who will be manufactured and sold by Circuitco Electronics: Replicape by Elias Bakken – 3D printer cape Interacto by Chris Clark – Cape with a triple axis accelerometer,a gyroscope, a magnetometer and a 640×480 30fps camera. Geiger cape by Matt Ranostay – Geiger counter cape Since today I’ve started to write about 3D printing, let’s carry on and have a closer look at the Replicape. The Replicape 3D printer cape includes: 5 stepper motors (X, Y, Z, Ext1, Ext2) 3 high power MOSFETs (PWM controlled) for 2 extruders and 1 HPB 3 medium power MOSFETs (PWM controlled) for up to 3 fans 3 analog input ports for thermistors 3 inputs for end stops (X, Y, Z) Programmable current limits on steppers motor drivers (SMD). No need to manually adjust […]

Embedded Linux Conference 2013 Schedule

The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2013) will take place on February 20 – 22, 2013 at Park 55 Hotel in San Francisco, California. ELC consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting, and that did not get presented at ELCE 2012 (AFAICR). February 20 11:00 – Anatomy of the arm-soc git tree by Olof Johansson, Google We are now two years into the new maintainer model for ARM platforms, and we have settled down into a workflow that maintainers have adjusted well to. Still, when new platforms arrive, or when maintainer ship changes hands, there’s sometimes a bit of ramp-up in getting used to how we organize our git tree and how we prefer to see code submitted to fit that model. This presentation will give an overview of […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design