Alpha Data ADM-XRC-7Z1 XMC Mezzanine Card Powered by Xilinx Zynq SoC

Alpha Data, a company providing solutions for compute intensive applications, has announced the ADM-XRC-7Z1, an XMC board powered by Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC targeting application such as software-defined radio, radar and sonar processing, image processing and machine vision. If you are like me, and have never heard about XMC mezzanine cards before, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: XMC, or Switched Mezzanine Card, is a PCI Mezzazine Card (PMC) with high-speed serial fabric interconnect defined by the VITA 42 standard. XMC specifies a 5th connector (“P15”) that supports PCI Express (VITA 42.3) or other high speed serial formats such as Serial RapidIO (VITA 42.2) and Parallel RapidIO (VITA 42.1). VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) is an organization developing and promoting open technology standards that you can download for a fee. Here are the specifications of the board: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 dual […]

MINIX MINI HD PC Based on Intel Atom D2550 Sells for $119

MINIX MINI HD PC is a barebone x86 computer without RAM or hard disk that has been announced last year, and it has just come to my attention that the system sells for just $119 on Geekbuying (excluding shipping), so once you add (up to 4GB) DDR3 RAM, and a SATA hard drive, you may have a basic x86 Linux or Windows system for about $200. MINIX MINI HD PC specifications: CPU – Intel dual-core (4 threads) D2550 processor @ 1.86GHz Chipset – Intel NM10 GPU – Intel GMA 3600 Series System Memory – 2x 1.5V DDR3 @ 800/1066MHz SO-DIMM sockets supporting up to 4GB of system memory (GeekBuying reports that “8GB (4GB x 2) memory is supported unofficially, stability will not be guaranteed by Intel”) BIOS – 1 x 16Mbit flash with AMI BIOS. Supports Plug & Play, Advanced Power Management ACPI, STR, CPU temperature, Fan speed, System Voltage […]

$25 Babuino Stick & Board Let You Control Your Devices with Your Smartphone and Vice Versa

Babuino Stick and Babuino Board are tiny low cost Arduino-compatible USB dongle and board featuring Atmel AVR MCU, and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR connectivity. Both have basically the same hardware, but Babuino Stick is more suited to control a computer or Smart TV via your smartphone, and Babuino Board can be used for robotics and automation projects. The device can also be used to control your smartphone (e.g. to write SMS) from your PC or Mac. Here are the specifications of these “Babuini”: MCU – Atmel ATXMega128A1 @ 32 MHz with 128KB flash program memory, 8KB boot code section, and 8KB SRAM. Master/Slave selectable Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR module Infrared transmitter and receiver USB – micro USB (board) and USB port (stick) User and reset push-buttons Headers (Board only) – ICSP pins, ADC & DAC, PWM, I2C & SMBus, SPI and UART LEDs – Bluetooth and User LED for both, […]

Bluetooth Versions Walkthrough, and Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Development Resources

I’ve seen more and more Bluetooth 4.0 LE devices in the last few months including RFDuino, Wimoto Motes, TI SensorTag, and Scadanu Scout, so I thought it would be good to write a bit about Bluetooth. First, I’ll write about the different version of Bluetooth, since I was still confused with the practical implications between the versions, and then I’ll show some development kits and software resources to play around and/or develop Bluetooth 4.0 LE applications both on devices and hosts. Bluetooth Versions Bluetooth v1.0 and v1.0B The Bluetooth 1.0 Specification was released in 1999, and according to an entry in Wikipedia, 1.0 and 1.0B devices had many issues, mainly interoperability issues. You won’t find any Bluetooth 1.0 device today. Bluetooth v1.1 Bluetooth v1.1 was ratified as IEEE Standard 802.15.1-2002 in 2002. It fixed many issues found in the previous specifications, added the option to use non-encrypted channels, as well […]

Win Enterprises MB-60830 Single Board Computer Powered by AMD Embedded G-Series SoC

At the end of last month, AMD announced their first Embedded SoC family that combines a CPU, a GPU, and a controller hub into one chipset. Win Enterprises is one of the first companies to release a board based on the platform with MB-60830, a single board computer powered by AMD G-Series dual core or quad core SoCs. The board is designed for embedded applications such as digital signage, gaming, medical imaging, kiosks/POS, thin client and factory automation. The board specifications are as follows: SoC –  AMD Embedded G-Series SoC dual or quad core. System Memory – 1x DDR3 @ 1600MHZ / SODIMM up to 4GB Storage – 1x SATA 6.0 Gb/s, 1x Half-size Mini-PCIe supporting mSATA for SSD Connectivity – Intel i211 AT Gigabit Ethernet Video Outputs: 1x VGA 1x dual channel 24-bit LVDS 1x HDMI with Optional Chrontel CEC Support Digital I/O – 8-bit programmable LPC – 1x […]

Sailfish OS SDK Adds Support for Windows and Mac OS X

At the end of February, Sailfish OS SDK Alpha was released with support Linux 32- and 64-bit only. The latest version of Sailish OS SDK can also be installed in Windows and Mac OS X. If you’re developing in Linux, it’s just the same SDK as released in February. The SDK and quick start guide is available from Sailfishos.org, or you can click directly on the links before to download and install the SDK. Windows SDK installer – SailfishOSSDK-windows-offline.exe Mac OS X installer –  SailfishOSSDK-mac-offline.dmg The SDK is still at the Alpha stage with several known issues, and probably a few more yet-to-be-known bugs. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

Tizen 2.0 SDK and Source Code (Magnolia) Release

Tizen developers have just announced Tizen 2.0 source code and SDK release. This release includes many new features and improvements over Tizen 1.0 released in April. The highlights of this release include: Enhanced Web framework that provides state-of-the-art HTML5/W3C API support Web UI framework, including full-screen and multi-window support Additional Tizen device APIs, such as Bluetooth and NFC support, and access to the device’s calendar, call history, and messaging subsystems Web Runtime framework supporting new configuration elements for specifying the required features and privileges, and providing the basic runtime environment for NPRuntime plugins Native framework supporting full-featured application development and providing a variety of features such as background applications, IP Push, and TTS (Text-To-Speech) Core and native reference applications including Calendar, Contacts, Gallery, Phone, Settings, and Video Player Enhanced Web IDE providing WYSIWYG design environment, Chrome-based JavaScript inspector, and JavaScript log viewer Native IDE providing a project wizard, WYSIWYG design […]

XBMC 12.0 Frodo Stable Release

XBMC developers have just announced the release of XBMC 12.0 (Frodo) which is available for desktop platforms (OSX, Linux / Ubuntu, Windows),  Apple TV, iOS, Android (HW support limited), and even as a specific build for the Raspberry Pi. Other key features for this release include: HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, via XBMC AudioEngine Live TV and PVR support h.264 10bit (aka Hi10P) video software decoding for anime 64bit support in OSX to match the 64bit support in Linux Improved image support, allowing the database to accommodate numerous additional image types and more interesting and complex skins Improved AirPlay support across all platforms, including AirPlay audio in XBMC for Windows to match the other platforms Improved controller support in Windows and Linux Advanced Filtering in the library Video library tags to complement movie sets Advanced UPnP sharing Default video languages now match the language being used by XBMC Translations […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC