Beside their “all-new” Amazon Fire TV 2017, Amazon has made a bunch of other announcements mostly related to their Alexa services with four new or updated Echo devices: the “all-new” Echo, the Echo Plus, Echo Connect, and the Echo Spot. 2017 Amazon Echo (aka Echo 2) The new second generation of the Alexa based Echo has a new smaller design, improved sound with Dolby processing, and a lower price at just under $100. Some of the key features include: Speakers – 2.5″ woofer and 0.6″ tweeter Connectivity Dual band 802.11 b/g/n WiFi for streaming music from Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc…, controlling smart devices Bluetooth LE Audio 3.5mm audio jack 7-mic array using beamforming technology and enhanced noise cancellation. Improved wake-word (“Alexa”) detection Various designs with 6 different fabrics Dimensions – 148 x 88 x 88 mm Weight – 821 grams The Echo can make free calls to the US, […]
Linaro Connect SF 2017 Welcome Keynote – New Members, Achievements, the Future of Open Source, and More…
Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017 is now taking place until September 29, and it all started yesterday with the Welcome Keynote by George Grey, Linaro CEO discussing the various achievements since the last Linaro Connect in Budapest, and providing an insight to the future work to be done by the organization. The video is available on YouTube (embedded below), and since I watched it, I’ll provide a summary of what was discussed: Welcoming New Members – Kylin (China developed FreeBSD operating systems) joined LEG (Enterprise Group), NXP added LHG (Home Group) membership, and Xilinx joined LITE (IoT and Embedded). Achievements OPTEE open portable trusted environment execution more commonly integrated into products. Details at optee.org. LEG 17.08 ERP release based on Linux 4.12, Debian 8.9 with UEFI, ACPI, DPDK, Bigtop, Hadoop, etc… LITE group has been involved in Zephyr 1.9 release, notably contributing to LwM2M stack More projects to be found […]
Onkyo Has Developed a Shaker Turning Walls & Home Appliances Into Speakers
According to an article on Nikkei Technology, Onkyo has designed a shaker that can be attached directly to walls and/or the surface of home appliances, and turn them into speakers to play music and voices. The device developed using Onkyo voice & music playing technologies, has a a minimum resonance frequency of 115 hertz, and measures just 41x 36 x 21 mm. The company expects it to be used in places where visible speakers are problematic, either due to installation issues because of requirements such as waterproofness or air tightness, or for aesthetic reasons. Onkyo will provide the shaker to OEM’s in order to be integrated into home appliances or walls for artificial intelligence, or Internet of things applications. So voice enabled walls and washing machines may just be around the corner… Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a […]
Bose QuietComfort 35 II Headphones Are Optimized for Google Assistant
Many years ago, when the first Bluetooth headset started to be sold, it was always a bit funny to hear people apparently talking to themselves while walking in the street. But soon enough, fellow walking zombies may start talking even more on the go, as Google and its partners have launched a new category of headphones with support for Google Assistant starting with Bose QuietComfort 35 II (aka QC35 II). The new headphones are actually an update to QC35 headphones that not only adds Google Assistant support but also noise control settings. It’s not really as cool as it first sounds though. The headphones have an “Action” button to trigger Google Assistant, so no “OK Google” or “Hey Google”, and support is not exactly built-in, meaning you’ll still need to pair the headphones with your smartphone over Bluetooth. You’ll then be able to hear your incoming messages and calendar automatically […]
Imagination Announces PowerVR Series2NX Neural Network Accelerator (NNA), and PowerVR Series9XE and 9XM GPUs
Imagination Technologies has just made two announcements: one for their PowerVR Series2NX neural network accelerator, and the other for the new high-end GPU families: PowerVR Series9XE and 9XM. PowerVR Series2NX neural network accelerator The companies claims 2NX can deliver twice the performance and half the bandwidth of nearest competitor, and it’s the first dedicated hardware solution with flexible bit-depth support from 16-bit down to 4-bit. Key benefits of their solution (based on market data available in August 2017 from a variety of sources) include: Highest inference/mW IP cores to deliver the lowest power consumption Highest inference/mm2 IP cores to enable the most cost-effective solutions Lowest bandwidth solution with support for fully flexible bit depth for weights and data including low bandwidth modes down to 4-bit 2048 MACs/cycle in a single core, with the ability to go to higher levels with multi core The PowerVR 2NX NNA is expected to be […]
Review of Vobot Alarm Clock with Alexa
Karl here with a review of Vobot sent By Cafago. I had to Google it when I was asked to review it. Turned out it was an Echo type device with a pixel display and a battery. It started as an Indiegogo campaign. I had been wanting to try to do some sort of voice control with my home automation so I agreed to review it. Vobot Clock C1 Specifications These are pulled from Vobot’s website. No power supply is included but a long USB cable is. Vobot Setup I let my wife do the initial setup as I figured that she would use it the most. She followed the instructions, and it seemed straightforward from what she told me. She said she had to reboot it once during a step but it continued the setup with no problems. She tied to our Amazon Prime account, and she quickly was […]
Arm Research Summit 2017 Streamed Live on September 11-13
The Arm Research Summit is “an academic summit to discuss future trends and disruptive technologies across all sectors of computing”, with the second edition of the even taking place now in Cambridge, UK until September 13, 2017. The Agenda includes various subjects such as architecture and memory, IoT, HPC, computer vision, machine learning, security, servers, biotechnology and others. You can find the full detailed schedule for each day on Arm website, and the good news is that the talks are streamed live in YouTube, so you can follow the talks that interest you from the comfort of your home/office. Note that you can switch between rooms in the stream above by clicking on <-> icon. Audio volume is a little low… Thanks to Nobe for the tip. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting […]
Amlogic A111, A112 & A113 Processors are Designed for Audio Applications, Smart Speakers
Amlogic processors are mostly found in TVs and TV boxes, but the company is now apparently entering a new market with A111, A112, and A113 audio processors. I was first made aware of those new processors through Buildroot OpenLinux Release Notes V20170831.pdf document posted on their Open Linux website, where two boards with Amlogic A113D and A113X are shown. First, S400 board with the following key features/specifications: SoC – Amlogic A113D CPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 512MB SLC NAND flash Display I/F – MIPI interface Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet SDIO WiFi/BT (AP6356S) Audio SPDIF_IN/SPDIF_OUT LINE_IN/LINE_OUT 2x Audio headers (MIC_Connector & SPK_Connector) USB – 1x USB 2.0 OTG Expansion – 2x PCIe ports Misc – 6x ADC Keys, IR_IN/IR_OUT, UART Interface (RS232) The second S420 board is based on A113X SoC, and comes with less features (no display, no Ethernet, no PCIe…), less memory: SoC – Amlogic A113X […]