Testing Category - Page 155 of 169 - CNX Software

March 27, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Mini PCs (MK802+, UG802, GK802 & iStick A200) Linux Performance Comparison

Ian MORRISON (linuxium) has tested Linux with several mini PCs powered by different processors. The main point of his tests was to evaluate the performance difference between running Ubuntu 12.04 natively, or in a chroot in Android using tools such as Complete Linux Installer. I previously tried Linux on Android in ODROID-X, and found the applications start time when running from an low-end SD card pretty dismal, and the graphics performance poor. Ian had a different approach, and decided to use a subset of Phoronix Suite benchmarks to compare different hardware / software combination and posted the results in “mini PCs” G+ community. There’s a lot of data, and analyzing the results is not really straightforward without spending some time looking at the data. In this post, I’ll explain how the tests have been conducted, explain the results and try to draw a conclusion. Mini PCs and other Hardware Under […]

March 26, 2013November 7, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

OpenELEC 3.0.0 on Raspberry Pi – Installation and Video Tests

Yesterday, OpenELEC developers announced the release of OpenELEC 3.0.0, a lightweight OS running XBMC Frodo 12.1 for several platforms including the Raspberry Pi (OpenELEC stands for Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center). When the Raspberry Pi was initially released, I did not feel like testing it as a media center, mainly because of codecs limitations. But over time, this has improved with the availability of MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs (for a fee), and GPU accelerated support for free codecs such as VP6 and VP8, so today I’ve tested to give a try and install OpenELEC 3.0.0 on my Raspberry Pi. I’ll first give installation instructions, then test several types of videos container formats, and video / audio codecs, as well as give some quick impression about the performance and stability of OpenELEC on this low cost board. Installing OpenELEC on Raspberry Pi To install OpenELEC, I basically followed the instructions provided […]

March 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 Image for Hi802 / GK802 is Now Available for Download

About 2 weeks ago, Jasbir released an Ubuntu 11.10 image and installation instructions for GK802 and Hi802 mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6. I could only find time to give it try yesterday and today. I’ll provide the steps I followed to install the image, and my quick first impressions of the stability and performance of this image. Installation Instructions I mainly followed the instructions provided by Jasbir, and run GParted to increased the partition size on my micro SD card. The image is for a 8 GB micro SD, but those instructions should work on 4GB SD card and greater, as the rootfs partition is only 3GB large. Download the Ubuntu 11.10 image, uboot, as well as the kernel image and modules in a Linux PC:

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

Copy the image, uboot and the kernel to the micro SD card by typing the commands below:

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt;
sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt; &amp;&amp; sync
sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/&lt;sd_drive&gt; bs=1048576 seek=1 &amp;&amp; sudo sync

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/<sd_device>

sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/<sd_device> && sync

sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/<sd_drive> bs=1048576 seek=1 && sudo sync

Replace /dev/<sd_device> by your […]

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Review of Egreat H5 mini PC Powered by Nufront NS115

W2COMP sent me a new toy to play with: Egreat H5 mini PC built around Nufront NS115 dual core Cortex A9 SoC with 1GB RAM and 4GB Flash, and (theoretically) running Android Jelly Bean (4.1). Since it’s the first time I write about this device, let’s start with the specifications as shown in W2COMP: SoC – Nufront NS115 dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.0GHz + Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB Nand Flash (2 GB for OS, 2GB available space) + micro SD slot. Video Output – HDMI (720p / 180p) Video Containers- AVI, RMVB, MKV& FLV Audio Codec – Dolby, DTS, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD, PCM (DTS-HD MA, RAW not supported), MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC and OGG Connectivity – Built-in WI-FI 802.11 b/g/n USB – 1x USB host port, 1x micro USB Misc – 1 IR port Power – 5V/2A Dimensions – 122 […]

March 1, 2013May 25, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 35 Comments

How to Run Android Apps in Linux with AndroVM

You may want to run some Android applications in your computer. If you’re using Windows, there’s already a decent option with Bluestacks. If you’re using Linux, you could always install the Android SDK and run the emulator, but I don’t really like this option because of the user interface, and for people who don’t need to use the SDK it’s not really the simplest thing to install. The way to run Android apps in Linux is probably to run an x86 Android virtual machine in VirtualBox. Yesterday, I tried the latest development version of Android x86 4.2, but for some reasons I could not control the mouse, and had to perform all tasks with the keyboard. What I’m going to use today instead is AndroVM, an Android VM for x86 processor, that is even more easy to use than the Android x86 image. The instructions has been performed in a […]

February 27, 2013February 28, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

$35 expEYES Junior Transforms the Raspberry Pi, Aakash2 Tablet or any Linux Powered Device into an Electronics Lab

I remember in high school in France, our class only had 2 oscilloscopes and few other electronics equipment, needless to say I did not actually get to use an oscilloscope until I went to university. It would have been nice to be able to play around with oscilloscopes, frequency generators, etc… earlier, but due to budget constraints, this was not possible. Dr Ajith Kumar, a scientist working with the Inter University Accelerator Centre of India, has spent several years working on an ultra low cost electronics lab composed of an oscilloscope and a signal generator to provide students attending schools that cannot afford regular equipments. This learning & experimentation tool is called expEYES, and a prototype was demonstrated last year with the Raspberry Pi. At the end of last year, the final version called expEYES Junior (aka expEYES 2.0) was announced, and is now available to schools and hobbyists in […]

February 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Adding Wi-Fi to Emcraft Systems K70 SoM

Emcraft Systems K70 SoM is a system-on-module powered by Freescale K70 Cortex M4 micro-controller with enough RAM (64 MB) to comfortably run uClinux. They used to charge $99 for their uCLinux BSP, but it’s now free of charge, and the company also provides full hardware and software documentation, including a getting started guide, schematics and BoM for the baseboard, application notes and more… Many of their clients want to use Wi-Fi with K70 SoM, and it can easily be done by using Wi-Fi USB dongles based on Ralink RT5370 chipset such as D-Link DWA-140 (H/W rev B3) or Comfast CF-WU815N. Emcraft has provided detailed instructions to do so with K70 SoM, their latest baseboard (SOM-BSB-EXT) and a demo image based on their uClinux BSP. I’ll summarize the instructions to use K70 SoM as a Wi-Fi access point below. Connect the baseboard and K70 SoM with an Ethernet cable, a mini […]

February 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Nvidia Tegra 4 Benchmarks on Tablet Reference Design

Mobile World Congress 2013 has just started. Nvidia is showcasing both a smartphone reference platform based on Nvidia Tegra 4i (Phoenix reference phone) and an unnamed tablet reference design with Tegra 4 during the event, and several Android benchmarks have been run on the platform including Antutu and Quadrant. The results in the quad-core Cortex A15 Tegra 4 are really impressive with over 36,000 in AnTuTu and 16,000 in Quadrant, which are the best scores ever reported (by far) on those two benchmarks, as the top score in Antutu achieved with an overclocked Galaxy Note 2 is just over 27,000, a phone like the HTC One X scores around 5,600… Android Police also ran two other benchmarks that can help to access web browsing performance: Vellamo (HTML5) and SunSpider. The Tegra 4 completes SunSpider in 494ms (vs 1124ms with HTC One and 208ms in my desktop PC), and scores 3300 […]