XTRX SDR Mini PCIe Card Supports 10 MHz to 3.8 GHz Tuning Range, up to 120 MSPS Sample Rate

Fairwaves is a startup that aims to make deploying and operating mobile networks in rural regions profitable, and their latest project is called XTRX, a high performance Software Defined Radio (SDR) board packed into a mini PCIe card form factor. The project was launched on Crowdsupply earlier with year, got fully funded by around 700 backers, and the company is now working on fulfilling backers rewards by the end of August. XTRX board specifications: RF Chipset – Lime Microsystems LMS7002M FPRF (as found in LimeSDR Mini) FPGA Chipset – Xilinx Artix 7 35T RF Channels – 2 × 2 MIMO Sample Rate – ~0.2 MSPS to 120 MSPS SISO / 90 MSPS MIMO Tuning Range: 30 MHz – 3.8 GHz Rx/Tx Range: 10 MHz – 3.7 GHz 100 kHz – 3.8 GHz with signal level degradation PCIe  Bandwidth PCIe x2 Gen 2.0 up to 8 Gbit/s PCIe x1 Gen 2.0 […]

Facebook Oculus Go Standalone VR Headset Launched for $199 and Up

Oculus has developed virtual reality headset for several years, starting with VR development kits, before launching consumer VR headsets working with either a powerful computer (Oculus Rift), or a smartphone (Oculus Gear VR). But the company – now part of Facebook – has more recently been working on an all-in-one virtual reality headset called Oculus Go that works without external hardware, and launched it today starting at $199.00. Oculus Go specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 octa-core Mobile VR Platform System Memory – Storage – 32 or 64GB storage Display – 5.5″ display with 2560 x 1440 resolution; 538ppi; up to 72 Hz refresh rate Fresnel lenses Audio – Built-in spatial audio and integrated microphone Battery – Lithium-Ion battery good for about two hours for games to up to 2.5 hours for streaming media and video. Dimensions – 190mm x 105mm x 115mm Weight – 468 grams The company explains […]

Measy RCA220 is a $35 Wireless AV Transmitter / Receiver Kit with a 200m Range

Measy-RC220

There are several ways to send video & audio data over a distance without using long cables, from professional DVB-T transmitters with up to 10km range, to cheaper DIY SDR solutions with a shorter range , and HDMI transmitters leveraging your existing electrical cables. Those all work for different target applications (drones, video signal extender), but cost at least a few hundred dollars. If you just intend to transmit composite video (PAL/NTSC) and audio within a house or building, Measy RCA220 will be a more cost effective solution with a range of up to 200 meters. Measy RCA220 AV transmitter / receiver specifications: Connectivity – 2.4GHz wireless transmission with up to 200m range; built-in antenna, 8x selectable channels Video / Audio Ports Transmitter – RCA composite input, 2x RCA L/R audio input Receiver – RCA composite output, 2x RCA L/R audio output Misc – IR jack, channel selection button, front […]

Kite is an Open Source Hardware Android Smartphone Powered by Snapdragon 450 Processor (Crowdfunding)

Kite is an open source hardware Android phone kit specifically targeting makers which you can assemble yourself into a Kitephone. The phone is based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 mainboard (Kiteboard v2), and comes with  a 720p touchscreen display module, a 12MP camera, antennas, buttons, a 3,000 mAh battery, and a Raspberry Pi HAT compatibility board to optionally interface to external hardware. Kiteboard v2 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core Arm Cortex A53 @ 1.8 GHz with Adreno 506 GPU System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 16 GB storage + microSD card slot Connectivity Cellular LTE Cat. 6/3G/2G, 2x nano SIM slots (dual-SIM dual standby) Two variant North America with LTE FDD Bands: 2,4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 14, 25, 26 LTE TDD Bands: 41 WCDMA 850, 1700, 1900, 2100 GSM 850, 1900 Rest of the World (Europe, Russia, etc…) LTE FDD Bands: 1, 3, 5, 7, […]

Primebook Laptop Runs Android based PrimeOS with Start Menu, Multi-Tasking Support, Key Mapping, etc…

After solutions such as Remix OS and Phoenix OS, PrimeOS is the latest attempt to bring Android OS to the desktop with support for a start menu, a status bar with pinned apps, multiple windows & multi-tasking, key mapping for playing games with keyboard, various power modes, and so on. Floydwiz Technologies Pvt. Ltd has ported their Prime OS to Arm and x86 laptops which they call Primebooks. The first model is based on Rockchip RK3288 Arm processor with the following specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A17 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz with Arm Mali-T764 GPU System Memory – 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM Storage – 64 GB flash + micro SD slot up to 256 GB Display – 14.0″ TN LCD HD Display (non-touch) Video Output – mini HDMI port Audio – 3.5mm audio jack, built-in microphone and speaker Connectivity –  WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth […]

FFmpeg 4.0 Released with Initial AV1 Support, aptX, etc..

Whenever you are playing videos on a machine running Linux, Android or Windows, chances the software is at least partially using code from FFmpeg, a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The developers just outed a new major release FFmpeg 4.0 “Wu” which adds new filters, more hardware features, drops Windows XP and ffserver, implements initial AV1 codec support, aptX, TiVo ty+, and more. FFmpeg 4.0 includes the following libraries version:

and some of the main changes include: Bitstream filters for editing metadata in H.264, HEVC and MPEG-2 streams Experimental MagicYUV encoder TiVo ty/ty+ demuxer Intel QSV-accelerated MJPEG encoding & overlay filter native aptX and aptX HD encoder and decoder NVIDIA NVDEC-accelerated H.264, HEVC, MJPEG, MPEG-1/2/4, VC1, VP8/9 hwaccel decoding mcompan & acontrast audio filters OpenCL overlay filter video mix filter video normalize filter audio lv2 wrapper filter VAAPI MJPEG and VP8 decoding […]

Allwinner VR9 SoC is Specifically Designed for Extended/Virtual Reality Headsets

Virtual reality headsets have been powered by application processors designed for smartphones, tablets, or even TV boxes. For example last year, I reviewed a low cost VR headset good enough to watch 360 / VR videos, but not gaming that was based on Allwinner H8  TV box processor. But we’ve previously seen Allwinner was working on VR9 & VR10 processors specifically designed for virtual reality headsets with launches scheduled for Q4 2016 and Q2 2017. There’s obviously been some delays, but the company also now formally launched Allwinner VR9 quad core Cortex A53 processor specifically designed for XR and VR headset (Extended / Virtual reality). Allwinner VR9 key features & specifications with parts that look specific to XR/VR highlighted in bold: CPU – Quad-Core Arm CortexM-A53 @ 1.8GHz with 32KB L1 I-cache + 32KB L1 D-cache per core, 512KB L2 cache, CoolFlex power management architecture GPU – Arm Mali-T760 @ […]

hIoTron Modular & Enterprise IoT Development Kit is Designed for Fast Prototyping

Hi-Nodes

hIoTron modular & enterprise IoT development kit is described by the company has a “fully pre-programmed prototyping kit for quickly building and testing your IoT concept” with plug-n-play module allowing for flexible prototyping. Beside the hardware comprises of a gateway and nodes, the kit also integrates with the company’s enterprise IoT Platform enabling easy design of custom mobile application & GUI dashboard. The company offers standard, advanced, and custom kits, but to keep things simple, let’s focus on the content of their standard kit first: Hi-Gate IoT gateway: WiSoC – Texas Instruments CC3200 Arm Cortex-M4 @ 80 MHz with 1MB flash, 256KB RAM Storage – 1MB serial flash, 512KB EEPROM Connectivity 802.11 n/g/n Wi-Fi,  2G GSM/GPRS (optional 3G/4G), ZigBee, BLE 4.0, sub-1GHz RF/NON RF to REST/MQTT gateway Expansion – 2x GPIO port pins, 2x analog port pins Power Supply – 9-12V DC 3x modular Hi-Nodes (up to 25 supported per […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC