I’ll show a few digital signage applications based on Sigma Designs EM8620 and SMP8630 series that are currently used in Hong Kong and China. Bus Digital Signage SinoCDN is a Hong Kong company providing broadband media delivery solutions. SinoCDN currently provides a digital signage solution for Hong Kong – China cross boarder buses called IPAD. Their solution is based on EM8623L Sigma Designs and allows content update thru Wifi at the border between China / Hong Kong. If you’ve ever been at the Hong Kong / China border (Lok Ma Chau) and seen some Wifi access points whose names starts with sinocdn, they are used for this purpose. Digital Signage & POS (Point-of-Sale) Heng Yu Technologies is another Hong Kong company specialized in the manufacturing of “customized input and display technology for the industrial markets” They provide point of sales and advertizing platform based on several Sigma Designs platforms, including […]
Resources for Cirrus Logic EP93XX – EP9301, EP9302, EP9307, EP9312 & EP9315
A few years ago, we used EP9307 in combination with a MPEG Video Decoder chip (ES6425 – now phased out) for the development of a Karaoke system for the Chinese Market. The advantage with Cirrus Logic (and many American companies) is that documentation and support can very easily be found online including datasheets, software development kit and support forum. This was so good that we really had to get the involvement of the FAE once or twice. That’s a sharp contrast with some other companies where is there a dearth of support and FAE are seldom able to help you resolve issues you may have with their products, especially if you work for a smaller company. Basically to develop for EP9307 and other EP93xx platform most of the software and hardware resources are available at http://arm.cirrus.com/ including: Linux 2.6 Documentation & Linux 2.6 Source for EP93xx Linux 2.4 Documentation & […]
Optimizing hard disk and compact flash performance in Linux Embedded Systems
Compact flash are often used in Digital Signage applications and hard-disks used in both signage application and IP set-top-box to play high definition videos. However, sometimes the performance of those devices and the performance limitations of embedded systems may make the task difficult especially for higher bit-rate videos. Choosing the right file system Once of the easiest way to improve performance is to select an appropriate file system. The best performance is achieved by ext-2, followed by ext-3, fat 32 and ntfs on the embedded system I worked with at least (e.g. Sigma Designs EM8620 and SMP8630 series). Basically, if your CF card/HDD is not supposed to be taken out of your device, then ext-2 is the obvious choice. However, if your user for whatever reasons need to take the devie out and connect it to a Windows PC FAT 32 or NTFS might be a better choice, although it […]