$359 Red Pitaya Board Combines an Oscilloscope, a Spectrum Analyser, a Waveform Generator and More

If you need to setup an electronics lab, the cost of equipment such as an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, can quickly add up and become expensive. There are already some attempts at low cost measurement devices such as the $35 ExpEyes Junior or pocket size digital storage oscilloscopes (~$200), but those are far from the performance achieved with regular measurement devices. Red Pitaya measurement board brings the performance level and flexibility a bit higher, and stays relatively low cost at $359, with a Linux-based solution based on Xilinx Zynq dual Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC. Hardware Specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq Z7010 dual core Cortex A9 CPU + FPGA System Memory – 1GB DDR2 RAM Storage – microSD card slot (For system and FPGA images, and data) Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 2x micro USB ports (1 for power, 1 for console), and 1x USB 2.0 Host port Signals: 2x […]

Fedora 19 ARM Remix R1 Release With Support for AllWinner A10, A10s, A13 and A20 SoCs

After releasing a stable version of Fedora 18 for AllWinner A10 and A13 in February, Hans de Goede, working at Red Hat and a Fedora contributor, has recently announced “Fedora 19 ARM remix for Allwinner SOCs” on linux-sunxi community mailing list. This released based on Fedora 19 for ARM together with linux-sunxi kernel and u-boot, adds support for A10s and A20 based devices, and 38 boards and devices are now supported. To give it a try, download the 665MB image:

then write it to an SD card (8GB or greater):

Where you have to replace [device] with your actual SD card device, e.g. sdc.Since u-boot is board/product specific, you’ll also have to update u-boot for your hardware. Remove the SD card, re-insert it, and run:<

to display a graphical menu (if dialog is installed on your Linux PC), or a list supported boards and products:

Select […]

Texas Instruments SensorTag Unboxing, Getting Started with Bluetooth Low Energy in Linux (with a Raspberry Pi)

Texas Instruments CC2541 SensorTag is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) development kit with 6 sensors (IR temperature, humidity, pressure, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer) mainly destined at mobile application developers for iOS, and soon, Android 4.3. I’m interested in BLE, as I expect most new phones with come with BT 4.0 BLE (aka Bluetooth SMART), and this technology may help bring the Internet of things to life, allowing us to interact with sensors, smart appliance (e.g. light switch)… Since it just costs $25 (including international shipping), I decided to buy it, and give it a try. Today, I’ll show some unboxing pictures, and how to communicate with the kit using the Linux command line. TI SensorTag Unboxing I ordered it at the end of May, and receive it by Fedex on the 18th of July, about 7 weeks later, in the package below. Inside we’ve got a Quick Start Guide for iOS […]

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 […]

A Preliminary XBMC Image is now Available for Wandboard, GK802

Yesterday, Stephan Rafin left a message on Wandboard mailing list saying he had released a preliminary (Linux) XBMC image that can run on Wandboard Quad development board. GPU and VPU acceleration work, but this is still work in progress, so if you want something that just works, this is not for you. But if you just want to give it a try, it should work on any hardware based on Freescale i.MX6, such as Wandboard Dual or GK802 mini PC, with some minor modifications. If you’ve got a Wandboard Quad board, the installation is straightforward from a Linux machine: Download the SD card image Decompress it with xz or 7x:

Dump the resulting to a 2GB or greater microSD card:

Where /dev/sdx is the sdcard device (e.g. /dev/sdc). You can check with lsblk command. If you’ve got a machine running Windows only, you can use Win32DiskImager for step […]

Freescale SABRE Lite i.MX6 Development Board Unboxing, Wandboard Quad Comparison, and Quick Start Guide

Freescale SABRE Lite is a development board powered by i.MX6 Quad processor with 1GB RAM, SATA, GbE Ethernet, and more. You can get SABRE Lite specifications in my first post about the board. I recently participated in Element14’s “brainteaser” competition for the 4th birthday of their community, where the company offered 9 SABRE Lite development kit to randomly selected participants, and I got lucky. The board can be purchased for $179 from Element14 (MCIMX6Q-SL). I’ll start by showing what in the package, followed by a side-by-side comparison with Wandboard Quad, and show how to getting started by following the Quick Start Guide provided with the board. SABRE Lite i.MX6 Development Kit Unboxing I received the board about 5 days after I provided my address in a large staple carton box with a few goodies. Beside SABRE Lite devkit, the package comes with Element14’s T-Shirt (not my size), double walled tumbler, […]

Firmware Update for CS868 mini PC Version 2.06 (Android 4.1.1)

If you’ve got a Rockchip RK3188 mini PC, there’s usually no issue with finding firmware updates, or even custom ROMs. But if you’ve bought an AllWinner A31 mini PC, such as CS868, you may feel everybody dropped the ball, as the system is not stable, and it seemed there would never be any upgrade. I’ve recently been made aware that there’s some activity on a Chinese bulletin board, and a new firmware is available for CS868: V2.06-4.1.1-20130610. As the name implied, the firmware is based on Android 4.1.1, and has been release on the 10th of June 2013. Here’s the Changelog against V2.05: Add video color brightness, contrast and saturation settings Output to HDMI output by default Other systems optimization and the Changelog against V2.04 (22nd of May): Reduce DDR frequency to improve system stability. Fixed potential sound failure. Optimize USB OTG interface to fix issues with Air mice. Increase […]

Hacking MK908 mini PC for Serial Console Access

Thanks to Omegamoon (and this brother) we already have instructions to connect the UART pins on MK808 in order to access the serial console. He’s done it again with MK908 mini PC featuring Rockchip RK3188. Tx and Rx pads are located on the RAM chips side, and he has connected the green wire to Tx (Going to Rx on TTL debug board), and a yellow wire to Rx (Tx on debug TTL board). A ground pad is available on the other side of the board. Since I got a sample for review from Geekbuying, I decided to give a try myself. The pad are quite small, so this may require patience, but it’s perfectly feasible. I wanted to keep the device closed, so I passed the wires through the ventilation holes (enlarging them a bit with a precision screwdriver), put back the main heatsink on RK3188, and reassembled the enclosure. […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC