open source News - Page 30 of 101 - CNX Software

April 20, 2022April 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

NVIDIA NVDLA AI accelerator driver submitted to mainline Linux

A large patchset has been submitted to mainline Linux for NVIDIA NVDLA AI accelerator Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver, accompanied by an open-source user mode driver. The NVDLA (NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerator) can be found in recent Jetson modules such as Jetson AGX Xavier and Jetson AGX Orin, and since NVDLA was made open-source hardware in 2017, it can also be integrated into third-party SoCs such as StarFive JH7100 Vision SoC and Allwinner V831 processor. I actually assumed everything was open-source already since we were told that NVDLA was a “complete solution with Verilog and C-model for the chip, Linux drivers, test suites, kernel- and user-mode software, and software development tools all available on Github’s NVDLA account.” and the inference compiler was open-sourced in September 2019. But apparently not, as developer Cai Huoqing submitted a patchset with 23 files changed, 13243 insertions, and the following short description: The NVIDIA Deep […]

April 15, 2022April 15, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

ESP USB Bridge project converts ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3 into a USB to UART/JTAG chip

Espressif’s ESP USB Bridge is a project based on the ESP-IDF that leverages ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3 USB interface to use the board as a USB to UART or USB to JTAG debug board. It can serve as a substitute for USB to TTL debug boards based on CH340 or CP2104 for instance, be used with OpenOCD in JTAG bridge mode, and also flash UF2 firmware file to the target board. As just mentioned, there are three main use cases: Serial bridge mode with a terminal program or a firmware flashing tool like esptool. In that case, it just works like your typical USB to TTL debug board JTAG bridge mode for JTAG debugging with OpenOCD, and if the target board is based on ESP32, you can use openocd-esp32 project Mass storage device where the board can be accessed by a file manager on the host computer. One of the specific […]

April 13, 2022April 18, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Arduino releases secure bootloader based on MCUboot

Arduino has released a new bootloader based on MCUBoot to increase the range of features and firmware safety of Arduino products, with the first release targetting STM32H7 based Arduino Portenta and Nicla Vision boards from the Arduino Pro family. The release focuses on Arduino Mbed OS-based boards, but MCUboot is OS agnostic, and should also work with Zephyr, Nuttx, and Apache mynewt. The company has also made sure that the transition is easy and reused the existing OTA firmware upgrade process in place on Arduino boards. MCUboot Arduino highlights: Signed and encrypted updates – MCUboot has support for encrypting/decrypting images on-the-fly while upgrading. It will also check if the computed signature is matching the one embedded in the image before booting a sketch. Confirm or revert updates – After an update, the new Sketch can update the content of the flash at runtime to mark itself as OK. If everything […]

April 7, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

SmartKnob View is a DIY haptic input knob with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity

Soon after writing about RoenDi rotary encoder with a built-in color display, readers pointed me to SmartKnob View, a similar-looking project but featuring an ESP32 module for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, plus software-configurable end-stops and virtual detents. The latter is enabled through a brushless gimbal motor paired with a magnetic encoder to provide closed-loop torque feedback control. Just like RoenDi, SmartKnob View comes with a 240×240 round color display but adds tactile feedback so you can change the menu when pressing the display. SmartKnob View specifications: Wireless module – LilyGO Tmicro32 Plys based on ESP32-PICO-V3-02 WiFi and Bluetooth LE SoC (May be changed to ESP32-S3-MINI-1 to enable USB HID support, once Arduino core supports it) Display – GC9A01 1.28-inch 240×240 round LCD covered by a 39.5mm watch glass on rotor Motor – BLDC gimbal motor, with a hollow shaft for mechanically & electrically connecting the LCD USB – 1x USB […]

April 6, 2022April 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Antmicro releases open-source hardware Snapdragon 845 baseboard designed with KiCad

Antmicro team has released an open-source hardware baseboard for Quectel SA800U-WF System-on-Module powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor, which they designed with KiCad open-source EDA tool. The baseboard supports NVMe storage and offers Micro HDMI and MIPI DSI video interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE support, USB 3.1 Type-C interfaces, and other I/Os, plus three separate power inputs. The company expects the design to serve as a starting point for building portable smart assistants, kiosks, VR/AR or smart screens, and more. Antmicro Snapdragon 845 baseboard specifications: Supported system-on-module – Quectel SA800U-WF with: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core Kryo 385 processor (4x Cortex A75 cores + 4x Cortex-A55 cores), Adreno 630 GPU, Hexagon 685 DSP, 4K H.265/H.264 video decoding and encoding System Memory – 4 GB LPDDR4X Storage – 64 GB UFS storage 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi 5 2×2 MIMO and Bluetooth 5.0 module Board-to-board connector for connection to baseboard Dimensions – […]

March 28, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ESP32 Composite Video Library outputs PAL, SECAM and NTSC, supports LVGL

It’s been possible to use the I2S for video output on ESP8266 and ESP32 chips for years, but aquaticus’ ESP32 Composite Video Library is may simplify the task of outputting PAL, NTSC, or SECAM video signals from any Tensilica-based ESP32 platforms. The library does not require any external hardware, and you can just connect an RCA connector to GPIO25 (I2S data) and GND, plus integration with the LVGL library makes it easy to create graphical user interfaces as showcased with the captures below. The library supports grayscale video output (no color at this stage), multiple resolutions from 384×288 to 720×288 at up to 25 or 30 Hz, six different pixel clocks for PAL/SECAM and NTSC, as well as six framebuffer formats with namely RGB565, RGB332, Grey 8 bits/pixel, Grey 4 bits/pixel, Monochrome 1 bit/pixel, and LVGL monochrome 1 byte/pixel. You’ll find the source code for the ESP32 Video Composite […]

March 27, 2022March 27, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

OASIS – ROS 2 based Smart Home operating system integrates with Kodi

OASIS is a Smart Home operating system based on ROS 2 that currently implements computer vision, input streaming, and general automation features, and can be integrated into Kodi media center. The operating system was recently released by Garrett Brown (a.k.a. garbear or eigendude), who is also known for being the RetroPlayer developer from Team Kodi/XBMC, and provides a complete implementation of the Firmata protocol for communicating with Arduino boards, plus additional support for temperature and humidity sensors, I2C, servos, sonar, SPI, stepper motors, and 4-wire CPU fans. Two main use cases are computer vision and input streaming at this time. The illustration above shows the former with the Kinect 2 driver ported to ROS 2, a background subtractor on all camera feeds using bgslibrary C++ background subtraction library, and Kodi as the visual interface. The second, input streaming, can be seen below with a Lego train (including a Falcon spaceship!) […]

March 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Capyloon mobile Web-based OS works on Pinephone Pro, Librem 5, Pixel 3a

Capyloon is an experimental Web-based OS leveraging b2gOS that served as the base for the now-defunct Firefox OS. The developers’ goal is to provide an open-source OS improving privacy and user control through web technologies. It’s still early stage, and some of the technologies used include the IPFS protocol, WebAssembly plugins, and the Tor network. Capyloon is more like a new phone shell as it replaces Phosh when installing it in a Linux smartphone. The first version of Capyloon released last month worked on Pixel 3a, other Android phones through a generic system image, and 64-bit x86 Debian machines. But since then, the developers added support for Apple M1, and yesterday they released Debian packages for PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 Linux smartphones to run Capyloon on top of a Mobian image. Instructions are as follows: Download the Debian package for PinePhone Pro or Librem 5 Install the package withsudo […]