Raspberry Pi News - Page 132 of 171 - CNX Software

August 21, 2017August 22, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

NComputing RX300 Thin Client Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown

NComputing RX300 is a thin client based on Raspberry Pi 3 board that will allow to remotely run Windows and Linux operating systems from a much more powerful server, and Raspberry Pi 3 mostly handling the display, and connection to hardware like USB keyboard and mouse. The company has me sent a review sample for evaluation, and I’ll start by checking out what I received, and the hardware design of the device. NComputing RX300 Thin Client Unboxing I was asked whether I could test dual display, and then I had to choose between a VGA adapter or a DVI adapter. I selected the former, and I received both RX300 thin client, and a USB to VGA secondary adapter with its USB cable. We’ll find the thin client, a 5.1V/2.5A power adapter with a US plug adapter, and a multi-language quick installation guide in the package. The enclosure is really cute, and […]

August 17, 2017August 17, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Raspbian for Raspberry Pi Boards Gets Upgraded to Debian Stretch

While Raspberry Pi boards support many different operating systems, Raspbian is by far the most popular option, and in the last two years the distribution was based on Jessie (Debian 8), the Raspberry Pi foundation has just announced it was now replaced by an update to Stretch (Debian 9). The Jessie version is completely gone from Raspbian Download page, and you’ll only be offered to download “Raspbian Stretch with Desktop” or “Raspbian Stretch Lite”. So what has changed compared to Jessie? Debian 9 changelog will list the main differences compared to Debian 8, but some modifications have also been made in Raspbian itself: Version 3.0.1 of Sonic Pi “Live Coding Music Synth” app – See changelog Chrome 60 stable with improved memory usage and more efficient code Bluetooth audio is supported by the bluez-alsa package by default instead of PulseAudio Better handling of “non-pi users”, as previously many applications assumed […]

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Aspencore 2017 Embedded Markets Study – Programming Languages, Operating Systems, MCU Vendors, and More

Aspencore media group asked readers of their EE Times and Embedded.com websites to fill out an online survey about their embedded system projects. They got 1,234 respondents mostly from North America (56.3%), followed by Europe (25.2%), and Asia (10.6%). This resulted in a 102-page market study which you can download here. I’ve extracted a few slides to have a look at some of the trends. C language is still the most used language in embedded systems, but other languages like C++, Python and even assembly language are gaining traction. Operating system is more spread with Linux being the most used via Embedded Linux distributions, Debian, and Ubuntu. FreeRTOS comes in second place, while Android registers fourth with 13%. Git has finally supplanted Subversion in 2017, with all other version control software losing ground. Switching to some hardware slides, 44% used a development board to start their embedded design with ST […]

August 14, 2017August 14, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

Fedora 26 Supports Single “Unified” OS Images for Multiple ARM Platforms

The decision to use device tree in Linux occurred several years ago, after Linus Torvalds complained that Linux on ARM was a mess, with the ultimate goal of providing a unified ARM kernel for all hardware. Most machine specific board files in arch/arm/mach-xxx/ are now gone from the Linux kernel, being replaced by device tree files, and in many case you simply need to replace the DTB (Device Tree Binary) file from an operating system to run on different hardware platforms. However, this is not always that easy as U-boot still often differ between boards / devices, so it’s quite frequent to distribute different firmware / OS images per board. Fedora has taken another approach, as the developers are instead distributing a single Fedora 26 OS ARMv7 image, together with an installation script. Images for 64-bit ARM (Aarch64) are a little different since they are designed for SBSA compliant servers, so […]

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

VoltaStream ZERO NXP i.MX6ULL Linux Audio Board Follows Raspberry Pi Zero Form Factor

Back in 2013. Philip came with the idea of designing a development board for audio application, and after various experiments with off-the shelf Raspberry Pi boards and audio DACs, he founded PolyVection company, and started designing the board. Forwarding to today, he has completed his work and introduced VoltaStream ZERO to the world, a board based on NXP i.MX6ULL processor with 512MB or 1GB RAM, and a choice of Texas Instruments DAC. It also follows Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, like the upcoming Banana Pi BPI-M2 Zero board. VoltaStream ZERO specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX6ULL ARM Cortex-A7 processor @ 996 MHz System Memory – 512 MB or 1 GB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Audio 1x I2S for integrated DAC, 1x I2S for GPIO access, 1x S/PDIF header / TOSLINK jack Analog DAC – Texas Instruments PCM5121 (106 dB) or PCM5142 (112 dB) USB – 1x micro USB […]

August 9, 2017August 9, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Movidius Neural Compute Stick Shown to Boost Deep Learning Performance by about 3 Times on Raspberry Pi 3 Board

Intel recently launched Movidius Neural Compute Stick (MvNCS)for low power USB based deep learning applications such as object recognition, and after some initial confusions, we could confirm the Neural stick could also be used on ARM based platforms such as the Raspberry Pi 3. Kochi Nakamura, who wrote the code for GPU accelerated object recognition on the Raspberry Pi 3 board, got hold of one sample in order to compare the performance between GPU and MvNCS acceleration. His first attempt was quite confusing as with GoogLeNet, Raspberry Pi 3 + MvNCS achieved an average inference time of about 560ms, against 320 ms while using VideoCore IV GPU in RPi3 board. But then it was discovered that the “stream_infer.py” demo would only use one core out of the 12 VLIW 128-bit vector SHAVE processors in Intel’s Movidius Myriad 2 VPU, and after enabling all those 12 cores instead of just one, […]

August 8, 2017August 21, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Work on VideoCore V GPU Drivers Could Pave the Way for Raspberry Pi 4 Board

I’ve come across an article on Phoronix this morning, about VideoCore IV GPU used in Broadcom BCM283x “Raspberry Pi” processors, but part of the post also mentioned work related to VC5 drivers for the next generation VideoCore V GPU, written by Eric Anholt, working for Broadcom, and in charge of the open source code related to VideoCore IV GPU for Raspberry Pi. This led me Eric’s blog “This Week in VC4/VC5” and articles such as “2017-07-10: vc5, raspbian performance“, where he explains he committed Mesa drivers for VC5. I’ve just pushed a “vc5” branch to my Mesa tree (https://github.com/anholt/mesa/commits/vc5). This is the culmination of a couple of months of work on building a new driver for Broadcom’s V3D 3.3. V3D 3.3 is a GLES3.1 part, though I’m nowhere near conformance yet. This driver is for BCM7268, a set-top-box SOC that boots an upstream Linux kernel. I’m really excited to be […]

August 6, 2017August 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

RakWireless RAK831 LoRa Gateway Module is Based on Semtech SX1301 Base Band Processor

We’ve previously covered several products from RakWireless, with a Realtek WiFi IoT board, a WiFi camera board, and a Amazon Alexa compatible audio board. The company has now launched RAK831, a LoRaWAN gateway board powered by Semtech SX1301 base band processor, and working with their RAK811 LoRa node or other compatible nodes. RAK831 LoRA gateway board specifications: Connectivity Semtech SX1301 base band processor with LoRa concentrator IP Frequency bands – 433, 470, 868, or 915 MHz Sensitivity – Down to -142.5 dBm Maximum link budget – 162 dB Output power level – up to 23 dBm Emulates 49 x LoRa demodulators 12x parallel demodulation paths 1x (G)FSK demodulator 2x SX1257 Tx/Rx front-ends high frequencies 2x SX1255 Tx/Rx front-ends low frequencies Range – Up to 15 km (Line of Sight); several kilometers in urban environment GNSS – Optional GPS support Host Interface – SPI Expansion – 24-pin 2.54mm pitch “DB24” header […]