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Raspberry Pi Now Has Experimental Support for VP6, VP8, MJPEG and Ogg Theora Video Codecs

The guys working on the Raspberry Pi (mainly dom) have added preliminary support for VP6, VP8, MJPEG, and Ogg Theora free video codecs, as well as Ogg Vorbis audio codec. Unlike H.264, MPEG-2 and VC1, those are not handled by the hardware video decoder in Broadcom BCM2835 processor, but are accelerated by the Videocore GPU. This means that only SD (and possibly 720p) videos are supported for those codecs. The best way to get support is probably to patiently wait for the Raspberry Pi foundation to release a new Raspbian image, but in case you couldn’t possibly wait, here are the steps to follow: Download and run Hexxeh’s rpi-update script in the Raspberry Pi in order to get the very latest build:

Add the following two lines to /boot/config.txt:

Reboot the Raspberry Pi The GPU firmware is now updated, but you still need the latest version of omxplayer. […]

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MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Let’s Compare Them!

MK802 mini PC quickly went viral as it launched in May 2012 for $74 US, and since then many Chinese manufacturers have jumped into the market bringing both new faster devices, and the price down. AllWinner A10s, a low cost version of AllWinner A10 used in MK802, was also launched specifically for this market to bring costs even lower. Today, I’ve been informed an HDMI TV dongle based on AllWinner A10s that sells for $36.55 on Tinydeal.com which is a very good price, but decided to check on Aliexpress to look for comparable deals, and found one shop selling MK802 II for $34.91 including shipping via China Post, which makes it cheaper than the Raspberry Pi model B selling for $35 excluding shipping. Both products target 2 different markets, as MK802 is oriented to the consumer market, and Raspberry Pi targets the educational market, but in practice, it appears people […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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3.95 Euros RPI-UEXT Breadboard & UEXT Adapter for Raspberry Pi is Now Available

Last month, I wrote about an upcoming T-shaped adapter for the Raspberry Pi that can easily plug  into a breadboard, and provides a UEXT connector that can bring new features (RTC, GPRS, sensors, relays…) to the Raspberry Pi via low cost external UEXT modules. Olimex has just announced the RPI-UEXT adapter is now available for 3.95 Euros. To connect RPI-UEXT adapter to the Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to purchase a 26-pin ribbon cable and a breadboard if you don’t have these already. Olimex provides those 2 for respectively 2 & 2.95 Euros. That means a complete set would cost 8.90 Euros. As discussed on my first RPI-UEXT post, what makes this little board really interesting are all the existing UEXT modules (over 20) that bring new features at very low cost. Olimex uploaded a video showing the Raspberry Pi, the RPI-UEXT and the MOD-IO UEXT module connected together, with the Raspberry […]

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libavg on Raspberry Pi

libavg development team has recently announced a beta port of their multimedia library to the Raspberry Pi. libavg is a high-level development platform for media-centric applications using Python as scripting language and written in C++. I came to know this platform as I tried Xibo Digital Signage, and I tested it on ARM platforms. Up to know this would only work using software rendering/decoding, and everything was painfully slow on ARM, but libavg developers are now making use of OpenGL ES to boost graphics speed. More work is needed, and they intend to eventually support features such as hardware video decoding (OpenMAX possibly via gstreamer) and compressed textures. Installing libavg on Raspberry Pi. Pre-built packages are available for Raspberry, so installation is pretty straight forward:

Running Samples Apps 32 samples are located in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/libavg/samples/ directory, and they rely on X11, so first start LXDE:

Open a serial console (LXTerminal) […]

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SliTaz armhf: 46MB Linux Distribution for Raspberry Pi

SliTaz armhf is a minimal Linux distribution based on SliTaz Linux, that uses the hard-float ABI for the Raspberry Pi. The compressed SD card image is 46M, the rootfs 18.6 MB, and Slitaz uses just about 7 MB RAM after boot. Slitaz armhf rootfs comes pre-loaded with the following packages: busybox 1.20.2 dropbear 2012.55 – Light SSH client and server. nano 2.2.6 – GNU Nano Text Editor. retawq 0.2.6c –  Text mode Web browser. tazpkg 5.0 – SliTaz packages manager (Tiny autonomous zone packages manager). ytree 1.97 – file manager for file and archives. Slitaz armhf comes with tazpkg package manager which allows to install packages just like you would do with apt-get in Raspbian. There are over 3,300 packages available for Slitaz (x86), and for now, over 250 packages are available for Slitaz armhf. Let’s get try it out. First, download slitaz-armhf-mini-2012-12-14.zip, extract it, and copy it to an […]

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Le Labo Citoyen Gasser – Raspberry Pi Based High Precision Pollution Monitoring System

“Le Labo Citoyen” is a recently founded French non-profit organization aimed at “promoting and experimenting with innovating and free technologies for the citizens and the environment”.  Their first project is to gather pollution data (NO2, O3, and SO2 levels) in Paris using 2 (soon to be) open source components: Gasser – Self-contained mobile sensor currently powered by the Raspberry Pi ThingStream – Open source IoT datastore which should be similar to iDigi Cloud, except you can just store data in your own server or on “Le Labo Citoyen” servers. Gasser has four main parts: Sensor(s) – Alphasense B4-series sensors (black and red component in the top left of the  main box) with accuracy of up to <10 ppb (parts-per-billion). Cost: ~110 Euros. They currently only use the NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) sensor. ADC & Computer – Raspberry Pi (Cost: ~30 Euros) & Delta-Sigma ADC (Cost: ~30 Euros). Communication Medium – Huawei […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Olimex to Provide $5 Raspberry Pi GPIO to Breadboard & UEXT Adapter

At $25 and $35 is Raspberry Pi is currently the cheapest board you can buy to develop for ARM Linux, however the expansion boards such as the Gertboard ($60) and the recent PiFace Digital ($32) are not as cheap considering the few components they have on board. This is why Olimex has designed a Raspberry Pi GPIO to breadboard & UEXT adapter (RPI-UEXT) which should be available in 2 weeks for 3.95 Euros (~$5).  You then just need to add a breadboard for 2.95 Euros (~$3.8 ), which means for just $9 you can start prototyping easily with the Raspberry Pi. The RPI-UEXT adapter (PCB Layout pictures on the right) also features – as the name implies – a UEXT (Universal EXTension) connector which consists of 10 pins which provide power (+3.3V/GND), and access to asynchronous serial I/O, I2C & SPI signals. This connector allows to connect other UEXT modules […]

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£20 PiFace Digital I/O Expansion Board for the Raspberry Pi Board

Elements14 has just announced that it will be the exclusive distributor of the PiFace Digital I/O expansion board for the Raspberry Pi and sell it for 20 GBP. The PiFace Digital board, whose first prototype was unveiled back in May, is an expansion board allows you to interact with the outside world and control and sense physical devices such as lights, motors and sensors like the Gertboard, but has the advantage of fitting neatly on the top the Raspberry Pi, which should allow it to be used with some of the existing Raspberry Pi cases. Detailed technical information is scarce on the Mk2 version of PiFace Digital (the one sold by Elements14), but the board apprars to include 2 relays (which can be disabled by jumper), a buffered I/O interface with 8 inputs and 8 outputs, and buttons & LEDs. If will primarily be an education platform and free educational tools […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products