Last month, Mediatek announced their Mediatek MT2502 SoC for wearables, codenamed Aster, as well as the Linkit development platform targeting the developer’s community. But at the time they did show the actual hardware, and thanks to Charbax we know have more interesting details about Aster and Linkit. First they compare a design based on Aster to Samsung Galaxy Fit wearable band, and show why it uses less space, will cost less, and they claim over twice the battery life. Simple and smaller design (~36% reduction in size) Aster solution – MT2504 (6.2 x 5.4 mm) plus all required resistors, capacitors and inductors require 89.97 mm2 Galaxy Fit – MCU. Bluetooth Transceiver, external memory, a linear charger, and all required resistors, capacitors and inductors require 140.97 mm2 Battery life – Samsung Galaxy Fit is supposed to last between 1 and 1.5 days on a charge, whereas devices based on Aster should last about […]
$70 MicroNFCBoard Brings NFC Connectivity to Any Board or Device (Crowdfunding)
AppNearMe MicroNFCBoard is a development platform for Near Field Communication (NFC) comprised of an NFC transceiver, an NXP MCU, and all software stack and tools you need for development. This board also exposes various I/Os that allows you to connect to external hardware or devices, and it can be used with an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, mbed or PC/Mac. Let’s go through the board specifications first: MCU – NXP LPC11U34FHN33/421 Cortex M0 MCU @ 48MHz, with 10KB RAM, 48KB FLASH, 4KB EEPROM NFC Transceiver – NXP PN512. Reader/Writer and card operation modes supporting ISO14443A/Mifare and FeliCa schemes. NFCIP-1 mode Splittable antenna USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming I/O – 20x through holes with access to serial (UART), I2C, SPI, 4x ADC inputs, IRQ, Boot and Reset, and power pins. (2x pin header that you can solder are provided) Misc – Reset and bootloader enable push-buttons, 2x LEDs. […]
Renesas RZ/A1H Starter Kit and Emtrion DIMM-RZ System-on-Module Run Segger embOS RTOS or Linux with 10MB SRAM
Announced just about a year ago, Renesas RZ/A1 ARM Cortex A9 processor family can be used for human machine interface applications, and has the particularly to embed large amount of SRAM, especially the RZ/A1H series with 10 MB SRAM which allows the development of some applications without external RAM chip, lowering both board size and BoM cost. I’ve just come across a development kit dubbed “RZ/A1H Starter Kit”, and the just released Emtrion DIMM-RZ system-on-module both powered by Renesas RZ/A1H SoC. Renesas RZ/A1H Starter Kit+ (RSK) The development kit includes the mainboard, a 7″ TFT LCD (Optional), a detachable Colour LCD Board Pmod Compatible,a detachable AD Adjustment Shaft, Segger J-LINK Lite debugger, various connection cables, a power supply, a Quick Start Guide, and a DVD-ROM with documentation, ARM DS-5 IDE (with 32K code limit), KPIT GNU compiler for Cortex A9, Segger debugger drivers. and sample code. The mainboard has the […]
Hardkernel Unveils $179 ODROID-XU3 Development Board Powered by Samsung Exynos 5422 SoC
Remember ODROID-XU2 development board based on Exynos 5420? The bad news is that it apparently got scrapped, but the good news is that it gave birth to ODROID-XU3 development board powered by the latest Samsung Exynos 5422 octa core big.LITTLE SoC with support for Ubuntu 14.04 and Android 4.4, including GPU 3D acceleration with the company promising a full desktop experience in Ubuntu. ODROID-XU3 specifications: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5422 quad core ARM Cortex-A15 @ 2.0GHz+ quad core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.4GHz with Mali-T628 MP6 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 / 2.0 / 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 Full profile System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM PoP (933Mhz, 14.9GB/s memory bandwidth, 2x32bit bus) Storage – Micro SD slot (up to 64GB) + eMMC 5.0 module socket (16, 32, or 64GB module available) Video Output – micro HDMI (Up to 1080p) and DisplayPort (up to 2160p) Audio Output – micro HDMI and […]
Unboxing of VidOn.me AV200 Android Blu-Ray Box
I had only reviewed on device based on AllWinner A31 before, namely CS868 mini PC which turned out to be disappointing. And recently I’ve reviewed quite of few Amlogic and Rockchip TV boxes, so I’m happy to get a change and try again with another AllWinner A31 based device thanks to VidOn.me AV200 Android Blu-ray Box. I’ll start by listing hardware specifications and showing pictures of the device and the board today, and I’ll write a complete review in a few days. VidOn.me AV200 Specifications AV200 is an Android TV box with a metallic enclosure very similar to the one used for Mele X1000 Android Blu-ray box, and with the following specifications: SoC – AllWinner A31 quad core Cortex-A7 @ 1.3GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage: 8GB + SD/SDHC card reader Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – HDMI, optical S/PDIF, and 3.5mm headphone jack […]
How to Use an Android TV Box as a Wi-Fi Access Point
Today, I’ve come across another potential use case for Android TV boxes with Wi-Fi and Ethernet. Let’s say you are in a room with Ethernet, but there’s no Wi-Fi signal or the signal is too weak, and want to use your smartphone to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. If you don’t have one of these small (openWRT) Wi-Fi router with you, but instead brought an Android mini PC, you can configure the “Portable Hotspot” function to transform it into a secure Wi-Fi access point. Assuming you’ve connect an Ethernet cable, and powered the device, first make sure Ethernet is enabled\, and Wi-Fi is disabled in the Settings menu. To click on Settings->More.. in the Wireless & Networks section, and select “Tethering & portable hotspot” or simply “Portable hotspot” depending on your firmware. In the next menu, click on Portable Wi-Fi hotspot to enabled it, then “Set up Wi-Fi Hospot” […]
Peek into the Smart Home of the Future with ARM Seamless Computing IoT Demo
We’ve seen lots of home automation being launched on crowdfunding platforms in the last year or so, and companies like Samsung, Archos, Google and Apple have launched, announced, or bought smart hone solutions. Recently ARM has hosted a demo for the smart home based on Cortex-M MCU mbed development boards, a single board computer gateway, and sensinode connected home software framework. Although some parts of the demo are unlikely to really have uses, e.g. you can look at the window to check the weather, I found the demo to be very interesting, especially with regards to the central role of the smartphone, and computing convergence. The list of different demos that can be seen in the video below is as follows: As you walk close to the main door, the system checks the weather, and if it rains, blinks a LED and emits a sound close to your umbrella, and […]
Texas Instruments Announces Sitara AM437x Cortex A9 SoCs and Evaluation Modules
The first time I heard about Texas Instruments Sitara AM437x was via a TechNexion EDM-CT-AM437x system-on-module back in 2012, but Texas Instruments Sitara Cortex A9 processors development seems to have dragged a little longer than expected. Nevertheless, the company has now formally announced their Sitara AM437x ARM Cortex A9 SoC targeting automation, IoT gateways, and other industrial applications, and featuring four PRUs (Programmable Real-time Units), and support for dual camera for terminals with bar code scanning. At launch there will be four AM437xprocessors: AM4376, AM4377, AM4378, and AM4379. The processors will all be based on a single Cortex A9 core @ 800 to 1000 MHz with 64KB SRAM shared with 32KB data cache and 32KB programmable cache, 256 KB L2 and L3 caches, a 32-bit memory interface supporting LPDDR2, DDR3, and DDR3L, a 2-port Gigabit Ethernet switch , two USB 2.0 OTG + PHY and the following other interfaces: Serial Ports […]