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February 11, 2017July 9, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

Review & Quick Start Guide for Khadas Vim Pro Development Board with Ubuntu 16.04

Khadas Vim is the only Amlogic S905X development board I’m aware of. There are 4 or 5 versions of the board, but currently only two models are sold: Khadas Vim with 8GB flash and single band WiFi + BLE 4.0, and Khadas VIM Pro with 16GB flash, and dual band WiFi + BLE 4.2. SZWesion, the company behind the board, has sent Khadas Vim Pro for evaluation. Today, I’ll take a few pictures of the board and its accessories, and report my experience playing with Ubuntu 16.04.2 on the board. They’ve also released Android, LibreELEC, and dual boot Android/Ubuntu (for Vim Pro only) images, which you can find in the firmware resources page. Khadas Vim Pro Unboxing and Photos My parcel included Khadas package that looks like a book, an HDMI cable, and the same IR remote control sent with GeekBox, the first board made by the company, and powered […]

February 2, 2017February 2, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

How to Use IPVanish VPN Service on an Android TV Box to Stream Videos from Anywhere

A few days ago, I completed the review of EBox T8 V Android TV box geared towards the UK market and/or people who want to watch UK content. However this time I did not spent that much time on the IPTV / streaming apps, as I had already checked out in EBox T8 4 TV box review last year, and many apps and/or TV programs required an IP address in the UK to work. For example, BBC iPlayer would throw the following error message each time I tried to play a video. Normally, you can work around this using a DNS or VPN service, but it’s not something I really need so I did not investigate further. However, IPVanish contacted me a few days after EBox T8 V review, and I asked whether I could get a test account for their VPN service to try it in EBox T8 V, […]

January 30, 2017January 31, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

LibreELEC (Kodi Linux) on Voyo V1 VMac Mini Apollo Lake Mini PC

I’ve just posted Voyo V1 VMac Mini review with Windows 10 this morning, and at the end I mentioned I quickly tried to run Ubuntu 16.04 without success. Reader Piotr who also happens to be a LibreELEC together with about 65 other team members, noticed it, provided me a link to a development version of LibreELEC 8.0 (mirror link) working with Apollo Lake processors, and explained Ubuntu was not working because Linux needs updated Mesa and Intel drivers. The image is based on Linux 4.10-rc5 with the necessary drivers and Kodi 17. The changes were mostly made by FernetMenta (Rainer Hochecker), and will be merged in Linux 4.10 and Mesa 17.0. He also implemented 10-bit HEVC support that will officially be available in Kodi 18 only and found in daily builds. So let’s try this out. After downloading LibreELEC-Intel.x86_64-8.0-devel-20170130110609-r25167-gd210441.img.gz, I tried to flash it (N.B.: no need to extract it) […]

January 21, 2017January 21, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

How to use Sonoff POW with ESPurna Firmware and Domoticz Home Automation System

Sonoff POW is an ESP8266 based wireless switch with a power meter that comes pre-loaded with a closed-source firmware that works with eWelink app for Android or iOS by default. But we’ve also seen Sonoff POW, and other Sonoff wireless switches from the same family, can be flash with open source firmware supporting MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) lightweight messaging protocol such as ESPurna, and I initially sent data from Sonoff POW to ThingSpeak via an MQTT broker (mosquitto) to draw some pretty charts. I did that with the switch connected to a lightbulb, but I’ve since installed Sonoff POW in my office to measure the room’s power consumption minus the ceiling light and aircon as shown below. Sonoff cable mechanism is really a pain for hard copper wires, as they are hard to push inside the mechanism, and something come out. I finally managed by it took longer than […]

January 19, 2017January 19, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

How to Install Domoticz Home Automation System in NanoPi NEO and Other ARM Linux Boards

I’ve recently started experimenting with IoT projects, and the first hurdle is to select the hardware and software for your projects are there are simply so many options. For the hardware your first have to choose the communication protocols for your sensors and actuators, and if you are going to go with WiFi, ESP8266 is the obvious solution, used together with your favorite low cost Linux development board such as Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi to run some IoT server software locally or leveraging the cloud. But the most difficult & confusing part for me was to select the server software / cloud services as there are just so many options. I prefer having a local server than something running only in the cloud, as my Internet goes a few hours a month, so I started with a solution combining ThingSpeak with MQTT gathering data from Sonoff power switches running […]

January 16, 2017January 19, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 55 Comments

Getting Started with Onion Omega2+ LEDE WiFi IoT Board and Expansion Dock

Onion Omega2 LEDE (OpenWrt fork) WiFi board is powered by Mediatek MT7688 MIPS SoC, targets IoT projects, and sells for as low as $5. There are actually two versions: Omega2 with 64MB RAM, 16MB flash, and Omega2+ with 128MB RAM, 32MB flash and a micro SD slot. Onion sent me the latter for review, together with an expansion dock that allows powering up the board though USB , and adds a USB host port, an RGB LED, buttons, and access to GPIO via a female header. In this quick start guide, I’ll start by taking some unboxing pictures, and then report my experience following the documentation to configure the board, blink the RGB LED, and control a LED on a breadboard using a GPIO from the header. Onion Omega2+ Unboxing I received the two boards in their respective package, and which are both stored in anti-static bags. Let’s check Onion […]

January 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Self-hosted OpenGL ES Development on Ubuntu Touch

Blu wrote BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition review – from a developer’s perspective – last year, and now is back with a new post explaining how to develop and deploy OpenGL ES applications directly on the Ubuntu Touch tablet. Ever since I started using a BQ M10 for console apps development on the go I’ve been wanting to get something, well, flashier going on that tablet. Since I’m a graphics developer by trade and by heart, GLES was the next step on the Ubuntu Touch for me. This article is about writing, building and deploying GLES code on Ubuntu Touch itself, sans a desktop PC. Keep that in mind if some procedure seems unrefined or straight primitive to you – for one, I’m a primitive person, but some tools available on the desktop are, in my opinion, impractical on the Touch itself. That means no QtCreator today, nor Qt, for […]

December 28, 2016December 29, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

RetrOrangePi 3.0 Retro Gaming & Media Center Firmware Released for Orange Pi H3 Boards and Beelink X2 TV Box

RetrOrangePi is a Linux distribution based on armbian transforming Allwinner H3 boards – mostly Orange Pi boards, but also Banana Pi M2+ and NanoPi boards – into entertainment centers to play retro games, and watch/listen media files (videos/music) using Kodi. If you don’t have a development board, or would prefer a complete solution with casing and power supply, Beelink X2 TV box is also supported. The developers had been recently working on rectifying some GPL issues, and they have released RetrOrangePi 3.0 images right before Christmas. RetrOrangePi 3.0 changelog and key features: Full Armbian 5.23 Jessie Desktop version with kernel 3.4.113 (backdoors fixed) Slim version 1st release (less than 2 GB) coming soon OpenELEC (Kodi Jarvis 16.1) with CEC support by Jernej Škrabec RetroPie-Setup version 4.1 New Kodi Krypton beta6 version New emulationstation-ROPI branch forked from jacobfk20 with gridview, on screen keyboard with easy wifi config and storage check with […]