OpenELEC for M8 TV Box (Amlogic S802) with USB Tuner Support

M8 TV Box is an Android media player based on Amlogic S802 that’s relatively popular. We’ve already seen XBMC Linux ported to M8 device, for people who want a more pure XBMC experience, and automatic frame rate switching, but now OpenELEC Beta 2 is also available for the device thanks to Alex Deryskyba (Codesnake). The firmware image (OpenELEC-Meson8-K200-devel-test build 2.zip) will work on M8 / TM8, and any other Amlogic S802 devices based on K200 board. It is based on OpenELEC 4.1.2 and Linux 3.10, and a beta version, so there may still be some bugs, for example Bluetooth is not working. One very interesting feature is built-in VDR / Tvheadend DVB backends which means you should be able to use one of these USB tuners to watch Live TV from your box via satellite (DVB-S/S2), cable (DVB-C) or digital terrestrial TV (DVB-T2/ATSC) dongle. The zip files contains three files […]

Applied Micro X-Gene (64-bit ARM) vs Intel Xeon (64-bit x86) Performance and Power Usage

A group of researcher at CERN have evaluated Applied Micro X-Gene 1 64-bit ARM XC-1 development board against Intel Xeon E5-2650 and Xeon Phi SE10/7120 systems, and one of them, David Abdurachmanov, presented their findings at ACAT’ 14 conference (Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques) by listing some of the issues they had to port their software to 64-bit ARM, and performance efficiency of the three systems for data processing of High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments like those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where performance-per-watt is important, as computing systems may scale to several hundred thousands cores. Intel Xeon Phi platform based on Many Integrated Cores (MIC) computer architecture was launched the HPC market, and contrary to the table above features 61 physical cores. Applied X-Gene 1 (40nm process) was used instead of X-Gene 2 built on 28-nm process which was not available at the time. The ARM platform ran […]

Boardcon Compact 31S is an Allwinner A31s based Development Board with HDMI, VGA, and LCD Interfaces

Boardcon Embedded Design, an ODM providing industrial Computer-on-Module, and board, announced Compact A31S powered by Allwinner A31s quad core Cortex A7 processor, with 2GB RAM, 4GB eMMC, HDMI, LCD and VGA video outputs, and various other ports. Boardcon Compact A31s hardware specifications: SoC – Allwinner A31s quad core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1 GHz with 256 KB L1 cache, 1MB L2 cache, and PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU compliant with OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenCL 1.x, DX 9_3 System Memory – 2GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash + micro SD slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4, VGA (up to 1280×800), and 40-pin FPC connector for LCD with capacitive touch screen support Audio Output – HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack Connectivity – 10/100M/1000M Ethernet, Wi-Fi USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port, 1x USB 2.0 OTG port Camera – CMOS Camera interface Expansion – 1x 20-pin expansion connector for GPIOs Misc – Real Time […]

Forlinx OK335xD Industrial Single Board Computer Supports Android, Linux and WinCE

Forlinx, an embedded systems design and manufacturing company based in Hebei province in China, has announced OK335xD industrial (temperature) single board computer powered by Texas Instruments Sitara AM335X processor, and which appears to be a high-end version of their OK335xS-II SBC with more ports. Potential applications include communication devices, medical equipment, automotive computers, control panels, data acquisition devices, industrial control, industrial automation equipment, and more. OK335xD single board computer is composed of a CPU module (FET335xD), and a baseboard simply called “OK335xD Base Board”. Listed specifications for FET335xD computer-on-module: SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3354 Cortex A8 processor @ 800MHz with PowerVR SGX530 GPU System Memory – 512MB DDR3 Storage – 256MB SLC NAND Flash Interfaces available via CoM connector: 1x USB 2.0 Host; 1x USB2.0 OTG Ethernet Dual Gigabit Ethernet 3x MMC 3x I2C, 2x SPI, 6x UART / IrDA Various GPIO pins 8x ADC 2x CAN LCD Interface […]

Preliminary Dual Boot Android & Ubuntu Firmware for Nagrace HPH NT-V6 TV Box (Rockchip RK3288)

Nagrace NT-V6 TV Box is powered by Rockchip RK3288 processor, and in my review I found the hardware to be pretty good, although some progress had to be done on the firmware. The company is still focus on perfecting Android firmware for NT-V6 and Firefly-RK3288 development board, but in meantime, they’ve released a dual boot image capable of running either Android 4.4 or Ubuntu (14.04?). To give it a try download HPH-RK3288-Android-Ubuntu_20140924.rar. I haven’t been able to try it myself, because Google Drive download is extremely slow today. Once the download is complete, you’ll probably need to flash the firmware using Rockchip AndroidTools (windows) or upgrade_tool command line utility (Linux). The dual boot firmware is based on Android firmware 1.3.9 released on September 30, plus an Ubuntu root file system. It’s not overly convenient to use Ubuntu, because you need to enter recovery mode by inserting a sharp oject (e.g. […]

Freescale Unveils QorIQ LS1043A Quad core ARM Cortex A53 Communication Processor for Fanless Networking Equipment

Freescale has introduced the QorIQ LS1043A communications processor, powered by four 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 cores, and destined to be integrated into “intelligent-edge networking equipment including security appliances, SDN (Software Designed Networks) / NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) edge platforms and other fanless, power-efficient applications.” A dual core version named LS1023A is also available. Key features of LS1043A and LS1023A SoCs: CPU – Quad (LS1043A) or Dual (LS1023A) ARM Cortex-A53 64-bit cores @ 1 GHz to 1.5 GHz with 32/32 I/D Cache KB L1 and 1 MB L2 cache. 16,000+ CoreMarks. Networking & High Speed Interfaces: Up to six 1x GbE or 1x 10GbE and five x GbE Four lane SerDes up to 10 GHz multiplexed across controllers supporting: Three PCI Express Gen 2 interfaces SATA 3.0 Interface uQUICC Engine Accelerators and Memory Control DPAA (Data Path Acceleration Architecture) Parse, Classify and Distribution Engines Integrated security engine 32-bit DDR3L/4 controller Other peripherals 3x […]

USB Armory is an Open Source Hardware Freescale i.MX53 Dongle for Security Applications

Most computers-on-a-stick come with an HDMI port, and a few USB ports, but Inverse Path’s dongle is quite different. USB Armory is a flash drive sized computer powered by Freescale i.MX53 Cortex A8 processor with only a USB port and a micro SD slot, that targets security applications such as mass storage devices with automatic encryption, virus scanning, host authentication and data self-destruct, VPN routers, electronic wallets, password managers, portable penetration testing platforms, and so on. USB Armory specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX53 ARM Cortex-A8 @ 800Mhz with ARM TrustZone System Memory – 512MB DDR3 RAM Storage – microSD card slot USB – 1x USB host port. USB device emulation: CDC Ethernet, mass storage, HID, etc. Expansion Header – 5-pin breakout header with GPIOs and UART Misc – customizable LED, including secure mode detection Power – 5V via USB  (<500 mA power consumption) Dimensions – 65 x 19 x 6 […]

AllWinner A80 based Cubieboard4 Development Board is Now Available for $100 (in China)

Allwinner and Cubietech announced they were working on Cubieboard8 in May, before we got to see some pictures of the first engineering samples. Cubieboard8 has now been renamed to Cubieboard4, also known as CC-A80 (CubieTech single board Computer A80), and the company has listed the board on Taobao for 620 RMB (~$102), with shipping scheduled for October 30. Cubietech CC-A80 board specifications, which have changed since the first pictures were released in July: SoC – AllWinner A80 octa core 4x Cortex A15 @ 2.0GHz,  4x Cortex A7 @ 1.3GHz, and Imagination PowerVR G6200 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC (25MB/s read and write speed), micro SD Card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4, and VGA Audio I/O – HDMI, 2x 3.5mm audio jacks for audio output and microphone Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n up to 300 Mbps + Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6330 module) […]

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