devkit News - Page 53 of 63 - CNX Software

June 20, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Tizen Launches Development Unit Program for Developers

The Tizen development team showcased and gave away Tizen development hardware at the Tizen Conference in May, which are similar to the Samsung Galaxy S2. If you were not present, do not despair as Tizen has just announced the launch of a Development unit program in order to make it easier for qualified developers to find available development hardware running Tizen. The 30 units currently available are only useful for Tizen developers, since they do not contain all of the features that you would expect to see in a consumer device and are only intended to developers who are building applications for Tizen. If you are a developer willing to working on Tizen Apps, you can apply for this batch until June 29 at 11:59 pm PST by filling the application form (After logging-in which appears to be impossible right now). To be eligible, you can’t work for the handset […]

June 20, 2012June 26, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Freescale Announces Availability of Kinetis L Series Cortex M0+ MCU and Freedom Devkit

ARM unveiled its ultra-low power Cortex-M0+ core back in March, and Freescale and NXP also announced their plans to use this new core in some of their micro-controllers destined to power the internet of things. Yesterday at Freescale Technology Forum (FTF), Freescale announced the availability of alpha samples of its Kinetis L series. This new low power MCU family will allow existing 8-bit and 16-bit architecture to be replaced by 32-bit architecture without increasing power consumption, cost or size, and the company expects them to be used in devices such as small appliances, gaming accessories, portable medical systems, audio systems, smart meters, lighting and power control. The ARM Cortex-M0+ processor is said to consume about a third of the energy of any 8- or 16-bit processor, while delivering between two to 40 times more performance. Kinetis L series MCU can consume as low as 50 uA/MHz in very-low-power run (VLPR) […]

June 12, 2012August 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Adafruit mbed and NFC/RFID Starter Pack with µNFC stack & NFC Mood Lamp Demo

If you are looking for a (relatively) low cost NFC development kit, you may interested in Adafruit mbed and NFC/RFID Starter Pack that sells for 134.99 USD. The kit contains the following items: mbed LPC1768 (Cortex M3) development board with mini-B USB cable and reference cards NFC/RFID breakout board based on PN532 NFC transceiver MiFare RFID card with 1K programmable EEPROM Full-sized breadboard 40 x 3″ (75mm) long male/male jumper wires Standard blue & white 16×2 character LCD + contrast potentiometer + header Diffused 5mm RGB LED + 3 x 560 ohm resistors Analog temperature sensor (TMP36) Piezo buzzer 2 x 10K trim potentiometer 5 x Tactile Pushbuttons On the software side, you can use AppNearMe µNFC stack written in C++ that allows you to use a user interface on NFC-enabled smartphone, removing the need for knobs, buttons, screens on your embedded device. During the initial pairing, the NFC board can […]

June 11, 2012June 11, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Texas Instruments Launchpad MSP-EXP430G2 & Capacitive Touch Booster

This is a guest post about the low cost Launchpad MCU devkit. This kit was unveiled in 2010, but since I’d never written about this $4.30 development kit previously, I’ve accepted to publish the post below with slight modifications and amendments. You may be itching to get started with a micro-controller based project but held back because of the high cost of the development boards, and the complex nature of tools required. The good news is that Texas Instruments have come up with a development kit – including a board and the required development software tools. This tool is intended for beginners as well as experienced users. In fact, at under $5, the Texas Instruments’ LaunchPad gives you a complete environment in which you can get started with your projects. This LaunchPad Development Kit is a part of the Texas Instruments MSP430 Value Line series of micro-controllers. You can program, […]

June 11, 2012June 11, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

GeneralPlus GP3300 Cortex A8 Processor and Android Tablet Reference Design

I’ve recently come across Eken D70 Tablet which is a typical 7″ Android ICS tablet, except it’s product description shows a Cortex A8 chip called GP33003. After some research, I found that this chipset is provided by GeneralPlus (previously part of Sunplus). GP3300x application processor features a cortex A8 clocked at 1 GHz together with a PowerVR SGX531 GPU, and comes in 216pins LQFP package. This SoC integrates LVDS and HDMI, and the company told me that the GP33XX targets “higher resolution displays, but still keep the lower PCB cost, compared to its current competitors”. It also features an hardware video decoder and encoder (up to 1080p), and can handle a 720p full-duplex video conference. That’s about all the information I could get about the SoC itself. I’ll update this post If I find out more. The company also provides a tablet reference design (GP3300xA Tablet) with the following specifications: […]

June 7, 2012June 8, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Texas Instruments Sells the MetaWatch, A Wearable Bluetooth 2.1 Watch Devkit For $139

I think there is a TI deal about once a month, and today Texas Instruments sells (via Digi-Key) a Pebble Watch clone device similar to Pebble Watch called MetaWatch which is based on TI MSP430 MCU and CC2560 Bluetooth host controller and was released last year. There are two models: Metawatch Analog ($139) Metawatch Digital ($149) Both models regular price is $203. The discounted price also includes free shipping, but you need to follow the instructions carefully. Although the Metawatch is supposed to currently support both Android and iOS, the model sold is the original one that only supports Android. Here are the specs of the digital Model: Compatibility: Most devices with Android OS 2.3 and up. Potentially any programmable device supporting Bluetooth 2.1 and up device with Serial Port Profile (SPP) connectivity. Case / strap: 3 ATM water resistant stainless steel, black or white replaceable genuine leather strap Display: Mirror polymer network […]

June 5, 2012June 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Advantech RSB-4210: Freescale i.MX53 Single Board Computer

Advantech has just launched the RSB-4210, a fanless and heatsink-less RISC Single Board (RSB) powered by Freescale i.MX53 (Cortex A8) with 512 MB DDR3 and 2 GB NAND Flash. This board can operate in industrial temperature range (-40 to 85° C) and targets industrial control, digital signage, HMI/kiosk, medical, and portable applications. Here are the key features of this board: Freescale ARMCortex-A8 i.MX536 @ 800MHz Supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 hardware accelerators Supports full HD 1080p video decode and HD 720p hardware video encode Video Output LCD support with resolution up to 1920×1080 (default 800×480) via LVDS connector HDMI VGA Touch, UART, I2C, I2S, SPI, GPIO, USB Supports SATA storage interface and CAN-bus for vehicle applications Dimensions – 146 x 102 x 20 mm Power – 9 ~ 24 V DC with 3-watt power consumption Operating temperature – -40 ~ 85° C If you don’t mind about the […]

June 2, 2012August 7, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Zedboard Xilinx Zynq-7000 Community Board is Now Available

Based in March, I wrote about Xilinx Zynq-7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP), a SoC comprises of a Dual Cortex A9 and an FPGA, as well as the corresponding development boards and kits: Xilinx Zynq-7000 EPP ZC702 Evaluation Kit based on Zynq-7020 with all the basic components (595 USD). Xilinx Zynq-7000 EPP Video Kit based on Zynq-7020 with all necessary hardware, software and IP components for the development of custom video applications (1195 USD). Zynq-7000 EPP ZedBoard, a low cost development board for the developers community. At the time, the first 2 (expensive) boards were available, but there was little information about the Zedboard. But yesterday evening, I noticed Zedboard website had a lot more information and we now know details about the board and it is even possible to purchase it. Here are the Zedboard specifications: Processor – Xilinx Zynq-7020 Dual ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore @ 677 MHz Memory 512 MB […]