PiCore 5.3 is a Lightweight Linux Distribution for the Raspberry Pi

My posts providing and give instructions to generate minimal, headless, images for the Raspberry Pi, such as “84 MB Minimal Raspbian ARMHF Image for Raspberry Pi” and “12MB Minimal Image for Raspberry Pi using the Yocto Project” have been relatively popular with people just wanting to have small base to start with the embedded projects. For desktop users, Slitaz for Raspeberry Pi (34MB) is one option, but I’ve just found out there’s also an other alternative with PiCore 5.3, a Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi based on Tiny Core Linux that’s just 24.7 MB to download. With an image that size, there’s obviously basically no applications installed, you’ve got flwm window manager,  wbar launcher, a control panel, a terminal, a file editor, and that’s about it. There’s no web browser, nor file manager, and you’d have to install the applications you want by yourself using tce-load package manager. If […]

XBMC 13 “Gotham” Released

After month of development, alpha releases, beta releases, RC releases, XBMC 13 “Gotham” is finally out. This is the first official release that supports hardware video decoding for ARM and x86 based Android 4.0+ devices. Support is not available for 100% of devices, as for instance, AllWinner A1X/A20 and Amlogic SoCs do not support the standard Android StrageFright or MediaCodec APIs, but most others should. There’s one XBMC Android version for ARM, one for x86. Android hardware video decoding is obviously not the only feature or improvement brought about by XBMC 13. Here are the key ones: Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements – Overall system performance improvements, but optimizations are said to be particularly noticeable when opening and browsing libraries, loading images and starting videos. Stereoscopic 3D Rendering – SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced are supported. XBMC cannot yet support 3D blurays and cannot provide hardware acceleration for FullSBS/TAB […]

Meet Arduissimo, a Multi-core Arduino Board with a 16-core Xilinx Spartan FPGA (Crowdfunding)

Arduissimo a MultiCore Arduino project based on an FPGA Arduino Board powered by Xilinx Spartan LX6. It supports virtual peripherals, and allows you to configure PWMs, I2Cs, SPIs, and more on any of the 124 General Purpose IOs available through the board. Arduissimo specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 CSG326 -2 System Memory SDRAM Interface 1 – 1x 256MBit, 4x 64MBit, 166MHz SDRAM Interface 2 – 1x 64MBit, 166MHz Storage – EEprom for configuration file + micro SD card slot (4 pins connected to FPGA) USB – High Speed USB, FTDI HS2232HL (13 pins for “245 fifo sync” connected to  the FPGA) 124 IOs: 4 IOs – 2.54mm header (e.g. Raspberry Pi) 72 IOs: Arduino Mega footprint (44 IOs shared with uPlug) 92 IOs: 8 uPlug connector slots (44 IOs shared with Arduino Mega) 50MHz oscillator Misc – Reset switch,  1x yellow LED, 4x  bumpers Dimensions – 98.5 mm x […]

MotherBone PiOne is a 3.5″ Industrial MotherBoard for the Raspberry Pi and the BeagleBone Black (Crowdfunding)

Many people are currently using low cost development boards such as the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black in real products, and 3.5″ single board computers are commonly in industrial applications, so APlus Mobile, a US based company specialized in rugged industrial PCs, has decided to combine the two and designed MotherBone PiOne, a 3.5″ motherboard that can be used in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi and/or the Beaglebone Black for industrial projects. Let’s go through the specifications: SoC / Memory / HDMI and Ethernet – Via BeagleBone Black and/or Raspberry Pi single board computers (usable simultaneously) I/Os: 16-bit GPIO – 5V TTL level 16-bit GPIO (I2C Slave) I2C, I2C2 Bus – Individual BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi 5-pin I2C Master access with additional BeagleBone Black 5-pin I2C2 voltage isolated port Analog Inputs – 7x wide range analog voltage inputs with trim adjust for voltage range select PWM Output – Two […]

SolidRun HummingBoard is a Raspberry Pi Compatible Board Powered by Freescale i.MX6

Yesterday, I wrote about Banana Pi, an AllWinner A20 powered development board that’s mechanically and electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi so that you can keep using your existing R-Pi accessories. It turns out another company is working on a similar concept. Solidrun who has brought us Cubox and Cubox-i in the past, will soon launch HummingBoard, a Raspberry Pi compatible board powered by Freescale i.MX6 solo/dual/quad SoC, bring even more power than the AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 SoC found in the Banana Pi. The HummingBoard, previously known as Carrier One, is composed of a baseboard and SolidRun microSOM (micro System-on-Module) have comes with the followings specifications: SoC = Freescale i.MX6 Quad @ 1 GHz with Vivante GC2000 3D GPU. The microSoM also comes in solo and dual flavors, and although it’s likely the HummingBoard will be sold with these variants too, it’s not 100% confirmed System Memory […]

Banana Pi is a Raspberry Pi Compatible Board fitted with an AllWinner A20 SoC

So you’ve got a Raspberry Pi board, an enclosure, and a few add-on boards. Your application would however do with some more processing power, or you’d like to run Android, but you don’t want to have to purchase accessories all over again for another board. Banana Pi could be the solution, as it’s apparently [Update: it’s not. See comments] mechanically and electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi, and comes with a dual core Cortex A7 AllWinner A20 SoC with 1GB RAM, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a SATA port, among other things. The board does indeed look familiar, with all external connectors at the exact same positions, but the hardware specs are fairly different: SoC- Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 processor @ 1 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – SD card slot, SATA connector Video output – HDMI, Composite, and LVDS/RGB Audio I/O […]

Raspberry Pi Compute Module is a $30 Raspberry Pi Compatible System-on-Module

Albeit the initial goal of the Raspberry Pi board was to address computer science education, it has become extremely popular with hobbyists, has made its way in many different kinds of hardware, and is now clearly the number 1 low cost ARM Linux development board. The Raspberry Pi foundation has then decided to design and sell a system-on-module called Raspberry Pi Compute that people can use in actual products. Since the module will be mostly software compatible with the original Raspberry Pi board, the specs are similar: SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM 11 processor @ 700 MHz with Videocore IV GPU System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash SoM Connector – DDR2 200-pins SODIMM Dimensions – 67.6x30mm board which fits into a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector The main difference is they’ve replaced the SD card slot found in the board, by an eMMC module which is more […]

Low Cost Development Boards Giveaway: Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, MicroZed, Minnowboard, and more

OpenSystems Media is organizing a giveaway of some development boards targeting hobbyists. They’ll have a draw for the boards at EELive in San Jose, at their booth #2009 on April 1-2, but if you can’t attend you can also get a change to win online. Here’s the list of board given away 2 Raspberry Pi Boards sponsored by Element14 2 BeagleBone Black Boards sponsored by Texas Instruments 2 Minnowboards sponsored by Intel 2 Gizmo Development Boards sponsored by Symmetry Microzed Board from Xilinx sponsored by Avnet Finboard Board from Analog Devices sponsored by Avnet 2 STMicroelectronics Nucleo Boards sponsored by Mouser You could also double your chances to win by tweeting the text below: I just entered to win a #DIY board from @embedded_mag from #EELive.  Click here for your chance to #win http://bit.ly/EElivecontest #embedded I could not find any terms and conditions, so I’m not sure if the giveaway is […]

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