Gumstix has just announced a new single board computer for Linux embedded development and experimentation. Pepper is powered by Texas Instruments Sitara AM3359 Cortex A8 processor, and comes with 512MB DDR2, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, a 4.3″ LCD touchscreen and more. Gumstix Pepper Key features: Processor – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3359 Cortex A8 processor up to 720 MHz System Memory – 512MB DDR2 Storage – microSD card slot (No flash) Connectivity: Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n 10/100/1000M Ethernet Bluetooth 3.0 Display – Samsung 4.3″ LCD resistive touchscreen (480 x 272) USB – 2x USB OTG connectors Expansion headers – For I2C, SPI and UARTs GPIO-controlled push buttons and LEDs Sensors – 3D Accelerometer (ST LIS33DE) Power – 5V Since there’s no flash, a microSD is used to boot the board. Gumstix provides a Linux distribution built with the Yocto Project which you” eventually be able to download here (the page is […]
ARMBRIX Zero / OPENBRIX Zero Board Cancelled
ARMBRIX Zero (renamed to OPENBRIX Zero), the cheapest ARM Cortex A15 board that was supposed to hit the market next month, won’t be produced anymore. Howchip has published a laconic notice to explain the cancellation: Dear Customers Due to a situation experienced by the ARMBRIX Company(www.armbrix.com), the production of its boards have been discontinued. At this time we ask for the understanding of our customers who have shared interest in the ARMBRIX zero/OPENBRIX zero product. Every PAYPAL payment will be refunded by next week. Refunds will take 3-5 business days to process. We apologize for this inconvenience, and would like to thank every customer that has appreciated the ARMBRIX/OPENBRIX zero product. The project owner cannot provide an explanation why this has been canceled (it’s probably confidential), but still offer people to contact him if they have project ideas for the board. That means the only Cortex A15 option is now […]
The Mojo – $65 FPGA Development Board Powered By Xilinx Spartan 6
Embedded Micro has started a kickstarter campaign to fund an FPGA board called “the Mojo”, “designed to be user friendly and a great introduction into digital design”. The board is powered by a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA that comes with over 9,000 logic cells, and will allow you to design digital circuits composed of a bunch of logic and, or, nor, etc… gates connected together to perform a specific task. Here are the features of “The Mojo”: Spartan 6 XC6SLX9 FPGA – 9,152 logic cells for your largest designs 84 general purpose digital IO pins (3.3V logic level) 8 analog inputs 8 user controlled LEDs A USB connection (new revision) to configure the FPGA and send receive data from your design On board voltage regulation (4.5V – 12V input, 3.3V and 1.2V outputs) 8 MHz on-board clock (can be multiplied internally by the FPGA) A reset button to be used in your designs […]
NXP LPC800-MAX Development Board Combines mbed, LPCXpresso and Arduino Connectivity
NXP unveiled LPC810 & LPC812 Cortex M0+ MCUs in November 2012, and more recently at Embedded World 2013, the company announced LPC810 and LPC812 microcontrollers availability together with LPC800-MAX, a development board based on NXP LPC812 compatible with mbed, Arduino and LPCXpresso headers which will be released in April 2013. LPC800-MAX board features: MCU – LPC812 Cortex M0+ in TSSOP20 package Onchip memory – 4KB SRAM and 16KB Flash. On-board debug interface (mbed USB onboard interface) on a LPC11U35 Top of board has Arduino compatible connectors, bottom of board has mbed and LPCXpresso connectors. Routing configurable via Switch Matrix. 3 color user LED, same one as on the LPC800 Xpresso A PCF8591 I2C ADC, mainly intended for use with the Arduino connectors 14-pin Serial Expansion Interface Connector compatible with several expansion modules from Embedded Artists 10-pin SWD connector for optional external debug probe User prototyping area This USB powered board will […]
$49.90 MarsBoard is Yet Another AllWinner A10 Development Board
After the tablet based Gooseberry and Hackberry boards, as well as Cubieboard and the upcoming A10-Olinuxino development boards, here’s another development board based on AllWinner A10 called the MarsBoard that looks very similar to the Cubieboard. Here are the key features of the board: SoC – AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 @ 1 GHz + Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – 4GB Flash + 1x microSD card (up to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – 3.5mm stereo jack USB – 2x USB host port + 1x microUSB Connectivity – 10/100 M Ethernet SATA Connector Headers – 2x 2.0mm GPIO headers. (140 pins in total) Power Supply Requirements – 5V/2A Dimensions – 80mm x 55mm There’s also a 3.5mm jack but I’m not sure if it’s just for audio in or out, or for composite output. The website is still in construction (basically a modified copy of […]
mbed 2.0 SDK Released, becomes Open Source and Supports $12.95 Freescale Freedom Board
The mbed community has had a pretty busy week, with first the announcement that mbed SDK would become open source, the release of mbed 2.0, and finally support for the low cost Freescale Freedom board FRDM-KL25Zpowered by Kinetis Cortex M0+ KL25Z MCU. mbed becomes open source The mbed Software Development Kit (SDK), a C/C++ MCU software platform, has always been free (as in free beer) for both commercial and noncommercial use, and the large community around mbed has written tons of code for ARM microcontrollers. But now that the SDK has now a stable API, and the developers achieved transparent portability for code based on the SDK across multiple controllers and multiple toolchains, they decided to release the SDK source under an Apache 2.0 license. Although sharing modifications is encouraged, this license allows users to keep the changes closed if they wish to do so. mbed developers explain that the 3 […]
Wandboard Dual Unboxing and Quick Start Guide
I’ve just received Wanboard Dual development board together with an enclosure, and Wi-Fi antenna. This board is powered by Freescale i.MX6 Duallite Cortex A9 processor, and comes with 1GB RAM, HDMI output and Ethernet. There’s also a version based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo with 512 MB RAM. You can refer to my earlier post for more detailed specifications. I’ll start by showing some unboxing pictures of the board, and write a quick start guide (casing assembly, Ubuntu & Android boot, and development). I also planned to run some benchmarks and test videos, as according to a poll on Wandboard website many people want to use it as a media player, but I’ll do that a bit later since the current Android image is not up to the task yet. Wandboard Dual Unboxing The package I received contained 3 boxes: one for Wandboard Dual board, one for the enclosure, and one for […]
A New, Faster, and Cheaper Beaglebone is On its Way
Beaglebord.org community is currently teasing a new Beaglebone on their website. At this time information is not complete, but we already know it will be “significantly cheaper” than the existing Beaglebone, feature a processor with higher performance (Albeit the picture shows TI Sitara AM3359 which is about the same as AM3358 + Ethercat), and come with 512 MB DDR3L RAM (instead of 256 MB DDR2), 2GB eMMC Flash, and onboard HDMI output. The new Beaglebone will keep supporting Angstrom, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Hardware expansion boards (cape) designed for the old model will still be fully compatible with the new Beaglebone. You’ll need to wait April to get hold of the new Beaglebone. Until then, you can register your interest on Element14/Farnell to be informed when the board becomes available. Another way to find out more is to attend the Embedded Linux Conference 2013 which is taking place right […]