UP Squared Apollo Lake Development Board Comes with Up to 8GB RAM, 128 GB Storage for 89 Euros and Up (Crowdfunding)

Up-Squared-Board

AAEON Introduced a Intel Atom X5 based Raspberry Pi-like development board named “UP Board” last year that sold for as low as 89 Euros via a Kickstarter campaign. The company is now back with the first Apollo Lake development board for makers I’ve seen so far, powered by either a dual core Celeron N3350 or a quad core Pentium N4200 processor, featuring an Altera MAX 10 FPGA, and called UP2 (“UP Squared”). There are six variants of UP Squared board sharing most of the same technical specifications: SoC Intel Celeron N3350 dual core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.4 GHz with 12 EU Intel HD graphics 500 @ 200 MHz / 650 MHz (6W TDP) Intel Pentium N4200 quad core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.5 GHz with 18 EU Intel HD graphics 505 @ 200 MHz / 750 MHz (6W TDP) FPGA – Altera Max […]

Remix IO Aims to be Your $99 Android 7.0 TV Box, Mini PC, and Game Console (Crowdfunding)

You can use any Android TV box to watch movies on your TV, play some games as you would on a game console, and perform tasks such as checking email, browsing the web or editing documents like you’d do on your computer. However, this is not always as straightforward and/or user-friendly as it could be, so Jide Technology worked on Remix OS, a fork of Android, to make the experience more PC-like when needed. Recently they’ve also worked on improving gaming and a TV interface, and the company has now launched a new Kickstarter campaign for Remix IO Android mini PC based on Android 7.0 and including software improvements to create an all-in-one device acting as a TV box, mini PC, or game console. Remix IO specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3368 Octa-Core ARM Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.5GHz with Imagination PowerVR SGX6110 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3L Storage – 16GB […]

MUSES-α & MUSES-β DVB-T/C, ISDB-T, DTMB & ATSC Modulator Boards Review – Part 1: The Hardware

V-Bridge Muses digital TV modulator boards launched on Kickstarter earlier this month, with the cheaper $200 MUSES-α board modulating video from a PC, and $600 MUSES-β turnkey solution capable of broadcasting HDMI or AV + stereo input to various digital TV standards including DVB-T/C, ATSC/QAM, DTMB, and ISDB-T/TB without the help of a computer. The company sent me the two hardware kits for evaluation and review on CNX Software, and today I’ll start by showing off the hardware I received. I got 3 packages and a F-female to F-female cable, which means you can connect the board directly to your TV tuner without having to rely on actual RF signals, and potential legal issues that goes with it. The first package I open if for the PC modulator kit that include MUSES-α board, an “RF” board, as a USB cable to connect to your computer. MUSES-α board features Vatek A1 […]

Exilong RF & WiFi Irrigation System Automatically Takes Care of Your Garden Watering (Crowdfunding)

I find it fun to spend time watering the flowers and grass in my garden, but if you’d rather do it automatically then Tevatronic Exilong might be for you as the irrigation system controls up to 4 valves, triggers watering based on RF water sensing sensors via a gateway connected to the cloud through your wireless router. The kit gateway takes care of RF communication with sensors, WiFi connectivity to the cloud server, and turn on and off up to four 24V DC water valve part of your existing installation. It can be configured by iOS or Android mobile app, or your web browser. The other part of the kit are the water pressure sensors that you need to insert into the soil of your garden in order to monitor trees, bushes, and/or flowers. The sensors are using RF (433/915 MHz) communication, send data back to the gateway every minute, […]

V-Bridge Muses Digital TV Modulator Boards Let You Broadcast Your Own TV Channel for $199 and Up (Crowdfunding)

I wrote about VATek VMB8202D Enmoder SoC handling both DVB, ATSC, DTMB and ISDB modulation and H.264 hardware encoding earlier this summer, and at the time, the company also planned to launch a crowdfunding campaign for two open source hardware DTV modulation boards in a couple of weeks. Weeks turned into months, but finally V-Bridge Muses boards and video input & RF daughterboards have now launched on Kickstarter where you can get your own live video broadcasting board for $199 and up. MUSES-α board MUSES-α board is the cheapest of the two boards, and features a header for the RF daughter board, and a USB port to connect to a computer. MUSES-α board specifications: SoC – VATek A1 32-bit RISC modulator chip Storage – SPI flash (unclear whether it can be accessed/modified by user) Modulation – DVB-T/C, ATSC/QAM, DTMB; RF header Video Encoding – N/A (handled by PC via USB […]

Meet STEMTera Smart Breadboard with Built-in Arduino Board, and LEGO Compatibility (Crowdfunding)

From time to time, you see new products on the market with an idea that – in hindsights – seems to simple and obvious that it makes you wonder why you or others had not thought about it a long time ago. Most people will use an Arduino board with a breadboard for their project, so it makes perfect sense to combine both into a single product, and that’s exactly what STEMTera has done, when they designed a breadboard containing an Arduino compatible board, supporting Arduino UNO R3 shields, and usable with LEGO bricks. STEMTera breadboard specifications: MCU (Arduino) – Microchip/Atmel ATmega328P-AU MCU @ 16 MHz with 2KB SRAM, 32KB flash, and 1KB EEPROM MCU (USB-to-TTL) – Microchip/Atmel ATmega16U2 MCU @ 16 MHz with 512 bytes SRAM, 16KB flash, and 512 bytes EEPROM Expansion Arduino MCU – 14 digital I/Os (including 6 PWM), 6x analog input; 5V I/Os; DC current […]

Marvell ESPRESSOBin Board with Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, mini PCIe, and USB 3.0 To Launch for $39 and Up (Crowdfunding)

I can often read people hoping for an inexpensive community board for network, storage and connectivity applications with high speed interface like SATA, multiple Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.0 and/or mini PCIe, and that’s exactly what Globalscale Technologies is about to offer with their Marvell ARMADA 3700 based ESPRESSOBin development board to go for $39 and up via Kickstarter. Marvell ESPRESSOBin board specifications: SoC – Marvell Armada 3700LP (88F3720) dual core ARM Cortex A53 processor up to 1.2GHz System Memory – 512MB DDR3 or optional 1GB DDR3 Storage – 1x SATA interface, 1x micro SD card slot with footprint for an optional 4GB EMMC Network Connectivity 1x Topaz Networking Switch 2x GbE Ethernet LAN 1x  Ethernet WAN 1x MiniPCIe slot for Wireless/BLE periphereals USB – 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, 1x micro USB port Expansion – 2x 46-pin GPIO headers for accessories and shields with I2C, GPIOs, PWM, UART, […]

HICAT.Livera Machine Vision Board and Robot Kit Feature HiSilicon Hi3518 SoC (Crowdfunding)

HiSilicon Hi3518 ARM9 processor is mostly being used in IP cameras, but Hicat startup decided to combined the camera processor with an Atmel MCU and a MT7601 WiFi module to create a wireless camera board to be used with OpenCV, and even provide a complete affordable robot kit with the board. Hicat.livera board specifications: Vision Core – Hisilicon Hi3518 ARM9 processor @ 440 MHz Storage – 16MB flash + micro SD card MCU – Atmel ATmega32U4 AVR micro-controller Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi via Mediatek MT7601 module + u.FL antenna connector Camera interface with provided 140 deg. camera using Omnivision OV9712 720p (1280×720) sensor USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming Audio – Built-in microphone, speaker header Sensors – MPU6050 accelerometer and gyro Expansion – 2x GPIO headers with GPIOs, I2C, SPI, serial, PWM, digital, analog and power signals. Misc – MCU reset and Linux reset buttons, […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC