Testing Category - Page 153 of 169 - CNX Software

May 8, 2013May 8, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Review of Bluetimes MX5 Android 4.2.2 Set-top Box

Bluetimes MX5 is an Android 4.2.2 set-top box powered by AMLogic AML8726-MX that costs around $70, or about $30 less than devices with similar hardware such as G-Box Midnight MX2 or Tronsmart Prometheus. AndroidPC.es got hold of one sample, also called 10moons D6, took some pictures and reviewed the devices for us. Bluetimes MX5 Unboxing The package contains the media player, an RF remote control and a power adapter, but no cables, which is one way to save on costs. Looking at the rear panel of the device front left to right, we can see an external Wi-Fi antenna, the 5V power jack, one USB port, a composite RCA connector and stereo RCA output, an Ethernet RJ45 port, HDMI output, and SPDIF output. An SD card slot and another USB host port are located on the front panel. So Bluetimes MX5 just has 2 USB ports, which is a bit […]

May 7, 2013May 29, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Vivante GC4000 is The Best Mobile GPU… When It Comes to Accuracy

Most of the time, mobile GPU comparisons involve benchmarks such as Antutu, Nenamark 2, etc…, or people may consider which games will be able to run smoothly with a particular device, but we seldom compare image quality, for the simple reason it’s usually more difficult to achieve. YOUi Labs has just done that, however, by running the shader code below on several hardware platforms, mainly Android tablets, with the most common mobile GPUs, and used the results obtained with a Desktop PC GPU, Nvidia Geforce GT 630M, has a reference.

precision highp float;
uniform vec2 resolution;
void main( void )
{
      float x = ( 1.0 – ( gl_FragCoord.x / resolution.x ));

      float y = ( gl_FragCoord.y / resolution.y ) * 26.0;
      float yp = pow( 2.0, floor(y) );
      float fade = fract( yp + fract(x) );
      if(fract(y) &lt; 0.9)
          gl_FragColor = vec4( vec3( fade ), 1.0 );
    else
          gl_FragColor = vec4( 0.0 );
}

precision highp float;

uniform vec2 resolution;

void main( void )

{

float x = ( 1.0 – ( gl_FragCoord.x / resolution.x ));

float y = ( gl_FragCoord.y / resolution.y ) * 26.0;

float yp = pow( 2.0, floor(y) );

float fade = fract( yp + fract(x) );

if(fract(y) < 0.9)

gl_FragColor = vec4( vec3( fade ), 1.0 );

else

gl_FragColor = vec4( 0.0 );

}

Here are the results: The worst GPUs are Mali-400 MP4 in Exynos 4412 and Geforce ULP in Tegra 3, which can respectively only show 5 and 8 lines before degradation, and the top two GPUs are Qualcomm Adreno 225 in MSM8660A, and Vivante GC4000 in HiSilicon K3V2 processor. Imagination Technologies SGX544 and ARM Mali-T604 also provide decent results, but […]

May 6, 2013May 10, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 157 Comments

Matricom G-Box Midnight MX2 Android TV Box Review

Matricom sent me one of their latest G-Box Midnight MX2 media player based on AMLogic AML8726-M6, with 1GB RAM, 8 GB flash, running Android 4.2, and with full support for XBMC. This is an update of the G-Box Midnight based on AML8726-M3 which supports XBMC in Android, as well as XBMC Linux thanks to community builds. Specifications: SoC – Amlogic AML8726-MX Dual Core Cortex A9 CPU + dual core Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 8GB Flash + SD card slot (Up to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI v1.4, composite (CVBS) and component (YUV) Audio Output – HDMI, AV, and SPDIF Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n internal Wifi + 10/100 Ethernet Port USB – 4x USB 2.0 Ports (1 might be OTG) IR sensor Power Supply – 5V/2A The hardware and software is very similar to Tronsmart Prometheus (See review), as both are based on AML8726-MX, run Android […]

April 27, 2013May 25, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

How to Flash Firmware to Rockchip RK3188 HDMI TV Sticks

Yesterday, I’ve received MK908 mini PC featuring Rockchip RK3188, and a new firmware is available, so before further testing I’ll flash the firmware to the device basically using the instructions from Geekbuying. This method use standard Rockchip tools, so it should work for any RK3188 devices. But first a little rant. Those instructions only work on Windows operating systems, so if you’re using Linux or Mac, you’re out of luck until you find a Windows PC, or launch Windows in a virtual machine. This method should just be used in case the device can’t boot, or you have serious issue with the device firmware, but it is also used for firmware upgrade for Rockchip mini PCs. This is just wrong. Typical users should not be asked to install software and drivers, press the recovery button, just to upgrade their firmware. The best very way would be OTA updates, but maybe this […]

April 26, 2013April 26, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linaro 13.04 Release With Linux Kernel 3.9 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.04 has just been released. It features Linux Kernel 3.9-rc7 and Android 4.2.2. A lot of work has been done on ARMv8 (Cortex A53) with further work on OpenEmbedded, more testing, and updates to the GCC toolchain. Calxeda EnergyCore server has been added to LAVA, Origen Quad now gets hardware video acceleration in Android Jelly Bean. Still more cleanup has been done on the kernel side with regards to Samsung and ST SoC, and a big.LITTLE porting guide is now available (linaro login required). Here are the highlights of this release: LAVA Prototype of a new publishing system is used to overcome performance problems with android-build.linaro.org. Calxeda EnergyCore support is merged in LAVA, and an isolated system has been set up for web benchmarking. Fedora support is merged in LAVA. A user can submit LAVA jobs using a Fedora pre-built image. Boot commands are untangled from LAVA dispatcher. They’re now […]

April 25, 2013May 10, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

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 […]

April 24, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Using ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Streamline with MK802II mini PC

MK802-II is an Android 4.0 mini PC powered by AllWinner A10 (ARM Cortex A8) with 1GB RAM and 4GB flash. Instructions are also available to run Ubuntu, or other Linux distributions. ARM Development Studio 5 (ARM DS-5) is software development tool suite for ARM processors that can be used for both Linux and Android debugging, and available in 2 versions: professional edition and community edition, the latter being free of charge. I’m writing about both today, because Bob Peng, Technical Marking Engineer for ARM China, recently wrote a blog post in Chinese [Update: An English version is now available] showing how to use MK802-II, preloaded with the required drivers and daemon, with DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer with is part of both versions. The community edition may be missing some features of Streamline however. Streamline Performance Analyzer allows you to: Find out which modules or functions to take up most of […]

April 22, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

You-Get – Video Download Script for YouTube, YouKu, DailyMotion, and More

YouKu is the equivalent of YouTube in China, and earlier today I wanted to download a video from the service, so I’ve looked for an application or script that can do the job in Linux. I’ve finally come across you-get, a python 3 script that claims to be able to download videos from an impressive number of websites, namely: YouTube Vimeo Coursera Blip Dailymotion Facebook Google+ Google Drive Tumblr Vine SoundCloud Mixcloud Freesound JPopsuki VID48 Niconico (ニコニコ動画) Youku (优酷) Tudou (土豆) YinYueTai (音悦台) AcFun bilibili CNTV (中国网络电视台) Douban (豆瓣) ifeng (凤凰视频) iQIYI (爱奇艺) Joy.cn (激动网) Ku6 (酷6网) MioMio h NetEase (网易视频) (v.163.com) PPTV.com QQ (腾讯视频) (v.qq.com) Sina (新浪视频) (video.sina.com.cn) Sohu (搜狐视频) (tv.sohu.com) 56 (56网) Xiami (虾米) Baidu (百度音乐) (music.baidu.com) SongTaste I won’t try all, but just test it with YouKu and YouTube. First things first, let’s install it:

git clone git://github.com/soimort/you-get.git
cd you-get
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-setuptools
./you-get -V
make install

git clone git://github.com/soimort/you-get.git

cd you-get

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-setuptools

./you-get -V

make install

Time to go to youku.com and download a video:

you-get http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTQ1OTk3NTAw.html
Video Site: Youku.com
Title:      1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with  A10
Type:       Flash video (video/x-flv)
Size:       5.45 MB (5711001 Bytes)

Downloading 1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with  A10.flv ...
100.0% (  5.4/5.4  MB) [========================================] 1/1

you-get http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTQ1OTk3NTAw.html

Video Site: Youku.com

Title: 1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with A10

Type: Flash video (video/x-flv)

Size: 5.45 MB (5711001 Bytes)

Downloading 1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with A10.flv ...

100.0% ( 5.4/5.4 MB) [========================================] 1/1

Success! […]