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June 28, 2018April 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Visual Studio 2017 with an Embedded Linux Arm Device

This is a non-sponsored guest post written by Marc Goodner: Principal Program Manager, Microsoft, and Jeremias Cordoba: Innovation Engineer, Toradex. Today many embedded devices run some flavor of Linux as their primary operating system. This poses a challenge to developers who run Windows on their development machine. This article explains a new way to use the latest Visual Studio for C++ development on an embedded Arm Devices from a Windows Host PC using containers for the build environment. The device we are deploying to is from the Toradex Colibri Family of System on Modules using the NXP i.MX 6ULL SoC, which features an Arm Cortex A-7. As a demo project, we will connect a Bluetooth Sensor with the Toradex Colibri Module. Please note that Visual Studio support for this case is in an early state, you will see improvements from Microsoft and Toradex in the coming months. Prerequisites Colibri i.MX 6ULL […]

June 17, 2018November 16, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

ESP8266 RGB LED Strip Control with ANAVI Light Controller, Arduino, MQTT, and HTML5

Anavi-Light-Controller-Starter-Kit-Assembly

A few months ago I reviewed ANAVI Light pHat for Raspberry Pi which allows you to control an LED RGB strip from the popular development board. However, if all you need is to switch the RGB LED light on and off, or change the color, the hardware is clearly overpowered for the tasks. So Leon ANAVI designed another board based on ESP8266 – ANAVI Light Controller – which does the same thing with lower cost and more power efficient hardware. Leon sent me a sample for review, so let’s see what we’ve got. ANAVI Light Controller Starter Kit Unboxing I received a package for the Starter kit that’s offered for $39 on CrowdSupply. We’ve got the main board, a USB debugging, an acrylic enclosure with screws and spacers, a one meter RGB LED strip, and some stickers inside the package. If we have a close look at the board we […]

May 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

IOTA Tangle is a Blockless Distributed Ledger for the Internet of Things – Running a IOTA Full Node on Rock64 Board

A lot of efforts is going into distributed ledger technologies like the blockchain, and while I keep hearing blockchain is the future, there’s a lot of hype, and so far I have not seen that many practical use cases. But recently I saw Open Source Foundries – a new company announced at Linaro Connect US 2017 – participated in the IOTA blockchain BoF at the OpenIoT Summit 2018 showing a demo publishing sensor data to the IOTA Tangle. So maybe we have a practical application here… Sadly, there’s no video recording of the IOTA blockchain BoF, so instead let’s go to the IOTA website to find out more. What is IOTA? That’s the short description of the solution: An Open-Source Distributed Ledger The first open-source distributed ledger that is being built to power the future of the Internet of Things with feeless microtransactions and data integrity for machines. The key technology […]

May 14, 2018May 14, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 43 Comments

Running out of RAM in Ubuntu? Enable ZRAM

Whenever I ran out of RAM on a Linux system, I used to enable swap memory using the storage device to provide an extra bit of memory. The main advantage is that it’s does not require extra hardware, but come at the cost of much slower access, and potential issues or wear and tear, unless you only use it temporary. This week-end, I compiled Arm Compute Library on ODROID-XU4Q board, and the first time it crashed because the system ran out of memory, so I enable swap on the eMMC flash module to restart and complete the build successfully. However, I was told it would have been better to enable ZRAM instead. So what is ZRAM? Wikipedia explains: zram, formerly called compcache, is a Linux kernel module for creating a compressed block device in RAM, i.e. a RAM disk, but with on-the-fly “disk” compression. So it’s similar to swap, expect […]

May 14, 2018May 14, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

How to Run Chrome OS in Android Emulator

While it’s possible to run the open source Chromium OS in your computer or a virtual machine, AFAIK there was only was way to test Chrome OS: purchasing an actual Chromebook, or other device running the operating system. But this week-end, I read the news that Chrome OS was now available in Android Studio, and you can run in Android Emulator while emulating a Pixelbook, so I gave it a try by following the instructions on Android Developer website. If you haven’t done so already, we first need to install Android Studio. I’m running Ubuntu 16.04 in my computer, but this will also work in Windows and Mac OS X. After download the IDE zip file, we can extract it… and then open a console, go into “{installation home}/bin” and run the program:

./studio.sh

1	./studio.sh

After a few seconds, we got into Android Studio 3.1.2 welcome screen. We can now click […]

May 13, 2018May 16, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

How to Get Started with OpenCL on ODROID-XU4 Board (with Arm Mali-T628MP6 GPU)

Last week, I reviewed Ubuntu 18.04 on ODROID-XU4 board testing most of the advertised features. However I skipped on the features listed in the Changelog: GPU hardware acceleration via OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenCL 1.2 drivers for Mali T628MP6 GPU While I tested OpenGL ES with tools like glmark2-es2 and es2gears, as well as WebGL demos in Chromium, I did not test OpenCL, since I’m not that familiar with it, except it’s used for GPGPU (General Purpose GPU) to accelerate tasks like image/audio processing. That was a good excuse to learn a bit more, try it out on the board, and write a short guide to get started with OpenGL on hardware with Arm Mali GPU. The purpose of this tutorial is to show how to run an OpenCL sample, and OpenCL utility, and I won’t go into the nitty gritty of OpenCL code. If you want to learn more […]

May 10, 2018May 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

CrowPi is a Portable Learning Kit for Raspberry Pi 3 B+ / Zero Boards (Crowdfunding)

We have an embarrassment of choices for Raspberry Pi accessories from touchscreen displays, HAT add-ons boards, sensors, breadboard, and so on, as well as good software and support from Raspberry Pi forums. This is all good, but it can be messy with all those jumper cables, and not really portable. Elecrow has a neat solution with the CrowPi learning kit for Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero that come with a 7″ display, several sensors, buttons, a breadboard, and more all packed in a small suitcase. Main parts of the kit: 7″ touchscreen display Breadboard with GPIOs status LEDs Input modules – Light sensor, IR receiver, PIR motion sensor, sound sensor, temperature & humidity sensor, touch sensor, ultrasonic sensor, NFC reader, and tilt sensor Output modules – 8×8 LED matrix, 4-digit LED display, I2C LCD1602 display, buzzer, vibration motor, relay module, 9G servo, and stepper motor. Control modules – […]

April 15, 2018April 16, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

How to Install and Use Ace Stream Easily in Ubuntu / Mint Linux

Ace Stream enabling the streaming of videos using P2P (peer-to-peer) technology – specifically BitTorrent protocol – and is especially useful for live streams, but also works for Audio and Video on Demand, and IOTT (Interactive-Over-The-Top). Ace Stream is implemented in a fork of VLC (Ace Player HD) working in Windows, Linux and Android, and I’ve found Full HD quality to be higher than services like YouTube, and with less buffering provided enough users watches the stream. It’s easy to use in Windows, and there used to be an Android app installable from the Play Store but it’s been removed, possibly because of the association of the solution with piracy. But just like Kodi, it’s up to do what you want to use it for. Using Ace Player was easy in Ubuntu up to version 14.04 thanks to a ppa, but with Ubuntu 16.04 it become a little more complicated as you […]