olimex

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments on Open Source Prosthetic Arm Controlled By Muscle Movements

Open Source Prosthetic Arm Controlled By Muscle Movements

Gustavo Brancante is working on a very interesting project that let you control a prosthetic arm with your muscle movement using open source technology with InMoov Hand (which can be 3D printed), Arduino Uno R3, and Olimex Electrocardiography electromiography shield (SHIELD-EKG-EMG). This is called a Myo-Electric Prosthesis. Gabriel wrote a tutorial to use his “open arm” which I’ll summarize here. On the hardware front, you’ll also need a UDP compatible Wifi Shield configured as a UDP server with a fixed IP in the same LAN as the smartphone, and 57600 bps. TouchOSC (for smartphone and Workstation) is used with the following layout for calibration and feature selection. Finally load the program below to your Arduino board: Once everything is connected together, you should be able to do that: The demo looks impressive, but this is still work in progress, and next step will be to use a four channel EMG instead […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Souliss Automation and IoT Framework Makes Your Home Smarter

Souliss Automation and IoT Framework Makes Your Home Smarter

Souliss is an open-source framework written in C/C++ for the Internet of Things and home automation that runs on Arduino boards, or other Atmel AVR MCU based boards, and let your control lighting, heating, or anything else you can think of via your Android device, or switches connected to your board(s). You can get started with Souliss in 3 steps: Getting the building blocks, for example: Arduino, Olimex, or other AVR boards (See list of supported boards) Relay boards ON/OFF Switches, Lights, etc… Wi-Fi router Download and load Souliss to an AVR powered board controlling real things such as lights. Monitor and/or control via Souliss Home Automation App for Android. A detailed getting started guide is provided on Souliss Google Code page. Internally, the framework is composed of three parts: Souliss, an application level layer, MaCaco, a communication protocol and vNet, a transport layer. I’ll skip details in this post, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on Olimex A20-OLinuXino Prototype, AllWinner A20 SoM In The Work

Olimex A20-OLinuXino Prototype, AllWinner A20 SoM In The Work

Yesterday, Olimex showed their new A20-OLinuXino board. This AllWinner A20 board is still a prototype, and there are currently 3 of them only, but the good news is that it appears to be working, 50 developer edition boards will be manufactured shortly, and mass production should start in June. AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 can clearly be seen in the middle of the board, but if you look close to the top left, you’ll see a marking: “A10-OLINUXINO-MICRO”. That’s because, as planned, they managed to design one PCB for both AllWinner A10 and A20 processors, and they’ll sell both versions. Olimex A10/A20-Olinuxino boards have the followings specifications: SoC – AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 processor or AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 processor, both  running @1Ghz System Memory – 512MB or 1GB DDR3 memory depending on model Storage – 4GB NAND Flash (optional), 2x microSD card slot, and SATA connector […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments on AllWinner A20 Linux Source Code, EVB Schematics and Product Brief

AllWinner A20 Linux Source Code, EVB Schematics and Product Brief

Hardware based on AllWinner A20 such as Cloudsto Media PC PRO DRIVEDOCK, should start to be available soon, and resources for developers have been slowly released (or leaked) to the community. AllWinner A20 Source Code The source code for AllWinner A20 and A31 has been released to sunxi-linux a while back, and they have started to clean up the code before hardware becomes available. The code apparently hasn’t made it to sunxi-linux github account just yet, but Linux for A20  has been imported into github at https://github.com/amery/linux-allwinner/tree/import/lichee-3.3/a20-dev. AllWinner A20 is known as sun7i in the code. AllWinner A20 Evaluation Board Schematics and Product Brief Olimex received A20 EVB schematics and product brief from AllWinner earlier this week, and as usual, they promptly uploaded those documents to their github account. The 3-page product brief does not bring anything new, and the data sheet does not seem to be available right now. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments on Final Release of Fedora 18 for AllWinner A10 & A13 Powered Devices

Final Release of Fedora 18 for AllWinner A10 & A13 Powered Devices

A few months ago, Hans de Goede, currently working at Red Hat and a Fedora contributor, started to show up on linux-sunxi mailing list, and sent a lot of kernel patches for linux-sunxi kernel. Last week-end, he  announced “Fedora 18 Final for Allwinner A10 and A13 based devices” on linux-sunxi community mailing list. To install it, first download the image:

And write it to an SD card (all data will be wiped out):

You may have to replace “/dev/mmcblk0” by your own SD card device, e.g. “/dev/sdc”. AllWinner based devices can share the same kernel, but u-boot is board/products specific, so you’ll have to install u-boot for your board. First remove the SD card, re-insert it in order to automatically mount the FAT partition, and run:

This will show the list of supported boards and products. Then run the command again for your device. For example:

[…]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And Review

Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And Review

Every Friday, Olimex organizes an online competition where they give away one of their board. They’ll ask a (usually simple) technical question on their twitter account at 22h00 (GMT+7), and all you have to do is to reply to their tweet with the correct answer within one hour. The winner is then selected randomly with random.org. There are usually 50 to 100 respondents so the odds are pretty good. I played a few times, and finally, I was lucky enough to win an A13-OLinuXino-MICRO development board at the beginning of December. I received it yesterday, after UPS took a whooping 15 days to deliver the board (Way to go UPS!). The board can be purchased on Olimex for 35 Euros plus shipping and taxes, or even lower if you order larger quantities. A13-OLinuXino-MICRO is a stripped down version of A13-OLinuXino-WIFI with the following specs: SoC – AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on 3.95 Euros RPI-UEXT Breadboard & UEXT Adapter for Raspberry Pi is Now Available

3.95 Euros RPI-UEXT Breadboard & UEXT Adapter for Raspberry Pi is Now Available

Last month, I wrote about an upcoming T-shaped adapter for the Raspberry Pi that can easily plug  into a breadboard, and provides a UEXT connector that can bring new features (RTC, GPRS, sensors, relays…) to the Raspberry Pi via low cost external UEXT modules. Olimex has just announced the RPI-UEXT adapter is now available for 3.95 Euros. To connect RPI-UEXT adapter to the Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to purchase a 26-pin ribbon cable and a breadboard if you don’t have these already. Olimex provides those 2 for respectively 2 & 2.95 Euros. That means a complete set would cost 8.90 Euros. As discussed on my first RPI-UEXT post, what makes this little board really interesting are all the existing UEXT modules (over 20) that bring new features at very low cost. Olimex uploaded a video showing the Raspberry Pi, the RPI-UEXT and the MOD-IO UEXT module connected together, with the Raspberry […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

Between the AllWinner A10 and AllWinner A13 processors, there’s now an alternative. AllWinner A10s is based on AllWinner A13 architecture (sun5i), but adds HDMI and Ethernet MAC which makes it suitable for mini PCs and set-top boxes. The first time I heard about this processor was in August with IP878 mini PC, and in October, one reader (Alex) informed me AllWinner had posted more details about his new processor. Here are the key features of this (relatively) new SoC: CPU/GPU – ARM Cortex-A8 Core with 32KB D-Cache/ 32KB I-Cache / 256KB L2 Cache, and Mali-400 VPU HD Video Decoding 1080p@30fps of VP8/6, H.264/H.263, WMV9/VC-1, WMV7/8, MPEG-4/2/1, Xvid codecs HD Video Encoding 1080p@30fps with H.264 codec Video Out – HDMI 1.4 (1080p), Memory Up to 1GB DDR2/DDR3 up to 533MHz (16/32 bits Data Bus) MLC/TLC/SLC/EF-NAND ECC 64-bit Peripherals: USB2.0 OTG, USB2.0 HOST （OHCI/EHCI） SD Card V.3.0, eMMC V.4.2 SPI, TWI and […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC