Beelink X45 Mini PC Review with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04/18.04

Beelink X45 Board

The Beelink X45 mini PC is now available, and Lightinthebox.com have provided a unit for review. It is very similar in style to Intel’s latest NUC Windows mini PC, the NUC7CJYSAL reviewed earlier. However it contains an Intel Celeron Processor J4105 SoC which is a quad core processor bursting up to 2.50 GHz together with the Intel UHD Graphics 600 processor that is capable of 4K support at 60Hz. It is physically small consisting of an approximately 4.5″ by 4” case about 1¾” tall with a front panel that includes the power button and a couple of USB ports and a headphone jack with the rest of the ports including two HDMI (2.0) ones at the rear: The specifications include: A key point to note is the Beelink X45 comes with 64GB eMMC with pre-installed Windows 10 Home together with 4GB DDR4 RAM (soldered and is non-expandable) with space and […]

Nubia–α Wearable Smartphone is a Smartwatch with a Long Curved Display

Nubia alpha wearable smartphone

We have smartphones, we have smartwatches. and we have… Nubia-α that is something in between, and which the company (Nubia) promotes as a “wearable smartphone”. The device comes with a long curved display, and you’d wear it around your wrist just like a watch with access to fitness apps, and music, but just like in a phone, you could make phone calls and send SMS thanks to 4G connectivity, as well as taking selfies or making video calls with its built-in camera. We don’t have the specifications yet, but the thing is real as it was showcased at IFA 2018, although for the eyes only, i.e. no hands-on or even touching the Nubia-α. Engadget reported about the device, and while the reporter clearly did not like the largish camera on the side, she seems impressed by the brightness and colors coming out of the Flex OLED display. The watch / […]

Creality Ender 3 3D Printer Sells for $169.99 (Promo)

Creality Ender 3 3D Printer

From time to time I come across good deals for 3D printers, and a recent promotion for Creality Ender 3 3D printer appears to be one of them. Creality Ender 3 has gotten some pretty good reviews – see video embedded below – in the sub $200 market, and GearBest is now offering the 3D printer for $169.99 including shipping from their Los Angeles warehouse. That deal is only available to the US however, and if you purchase it from the China warehouse (CN-099) price is $179.99 + shipping. That’s still a pretty good price though, as the official Aliexpress store offers the printer for $208 with Fedex shipping. Creality Ender 3 specifications: Modeling Technology – FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) Printing Speed – 180mm/s Filament – 1.75mm PLA, TPU, ABS Layer Thickness – 0.1-0.4mm Nozzle Diameter – 0.4mm Printing Accuracy – ±0.1mm Working Mode – Online or SD offline Nozzle […]

Compulab WILD WiFi Router Supports WiFi RTT (802.11mc) Location

Compulab WILD WiFi RTT Router

When Google released the first Android P preview back in March, one interesting new feature was indoor positioning through 802.11mc WiFi aka. WiFi RTT (Round Trip-Time). That looks promising so I started to look for 802.11mc capable routers, and all I could find were some Intel cards and Marvell chips with WiFi RTT, but not actual products. Since then Android 9 has been formally released, and today I’ve learned that Compulab launched a WiFi RTT capable router that will work with Android 9.0 phones. Meet Compulab WILD. Compulab WILD WiFi RTT router specifications: SoC (from a choice among three) Intel Atom x7-E3950 quad core processor @ 1.6 / 2.0 GHz with 18 EU HD graphics; 12W TDP Intel Atom x5-E3930 dual core processor @ 1.3 / 1.8 GHz with 12 EU HD graphics; 6.5W TDP Intel Celeron J3455 quad core processor @ 1.5 / 2.2 GHz with 12 EU HD […]

Self-hosted GLES on ChromeOS, part two

This is a follow-up post from an earlier guest post by Blu about OpenGL ES development on Chrome OS. One can’t practice real-time rendering to disk files for long ‒ it’s just unnatural. So after checking that my habitual GLES tests work as intended on ChromeOS when rendering to an off-screen-buffer-subsequently-saved-to-a-PNG, the next step was to figure out a way how to show frames on screen at a palpable framerate, if possible. Being as new to Chrome OS as the next guy, I had to start from scratch with ‘How to show EGL surfaces on screen fast’. In the comments section to the first article William Barath kindly mentioned that there was a wayland client library on Chromebrew, so I decided to pursue that as I had had (positive) prior experience with wayland. Long story short, the established way on most platforms for connecting wayland to EGL (or vice versa) […]

ARCO is a Real Robot that Lives in Virtual Worlds (Crowdfunding)

ARCO ROVER AR Robot

Hicat launched HICAT.Livera machine vision board for robotics projects on Kickstarter two year ago. The company second project is still related to robotics and machine vision, but geared towards a different target audience, as ARCO robot aims to offer an augmented reality gaming experience to kids, although it’s still hackable/customizable as we’ll see below. The hardware part is mostly comprised of ARCO ROVER robot, and a Bluetooth controller that can be stored in ARCO’s inner capsule, where it recharges and communicates with ARCO through a magnetic pogo connection joint.  The listed specifications are rather limited: ARCO ROVER Bluetooth connectivity (nRF52 WiSoC) 10 RGB LEDs Battery – Good for about one hour Power Supply – Via USB type C port Dimensions – 8.9 x 7 x 6.5 cm Weight – ~180 grams Controller Bluetooth (nRF52) Sensor – 3-axis accelerometer for motion detection Trigger and rocker Battery – Good for about one […]

ASUS ZenBook Pro 14 UX480FD Laptop Replaces the Touchpad with a 5.5″ “ScreenPad” Display

ASUS ScreenPad Laptop

Touchpads is a feature found in most laptops,  but AFAIK there’s not been much innovation recently apart from maybe support for multitouch and gestures. But I’ve just found out ASUS started to showcase laptops without touchpad a few months ago, instead integrating what the company calls a ScreenPad, a 5.5″ touchscreen display placed at the location where you’d normally expect a touchpad. The company’s latest (and second) laptop with a ScreenPad is Asus ZenBook Pro 14 UX480FD, which comes with a 14″ display, processor up to an Intel Core i7-8565U Whiskey Lake-U processor, up to 16GB DDR4 RAM, and up to 1TB PCIe SSD storage, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q graphics,  802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, and more. You can visit the product page for the full specs, as I’ll focus a bit more on the ScreenPad in this post. The ScreenPad in this laptop is a […]

Seeed Studio Introduces 1 to 8 Channels Grove I2C Solid State Relay Modules

I’ve been playing with products or boards with AC relays for a while, but I never really cared to check about different types of relay. So far, all platforms I tested came with largish blue or black boxes which are SPDT electro-mechanical relays. But as I browsed through Seeed Studio, I found some weirdly-shaped relay modules, much thinner than usual, and fairly more expensive. The main difference is that those are solid state relays, and the boards also include a grove connector that allows microcontrollers or other boards to control the relay over a simple I2C connection. The modules are available in 1-channel, 2-channel, 4-channel, and 8-channel  versions with the following specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32F030F4P6 Arm Cortex-M0 micro-controller Relay –  Omron G3MC202P module Input Voltage – 4~6V (Rated Input Voltage: 5V) Load Voltage Range – 75 to 264 VAC 50/60 Hz Rated Load Voltage –  100 to 240 VAC 50/60 […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC