CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 24, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

The Open Source Robots Invasion Has Begun: BeagleMiP, uARM, and PiddyBot

In the last few days, I’ve come across three affordable open source robots either based on BeagleBone Black, or Arduino compatible boards, and I’m sure there are many other projects out there for people interested in getting started with robotics without breaking the bank. BeagleMiP Self-balancing Robot I’ve found out the first robots from a long armdevices.net video showing two Mobile Inverted Pendulum (MiP) robots, able to stand on two wheels, designed by the Coordinated Robotics Lab of The University of California, San Diego: BeagleMiP educational robotics development kit from Strawson Design. The kit features the BeagleBone Black board with Texas Instruments Sitara ARM Cortex A8 processor and Novus Robotics Cape, an add-on board that provides 9-axis IMU (Accelerometer, Gyro, Magnetometer), 6 PWM connectors to power servos or brushless ESCs, 2 user-accessible buttons and 2 LEDs, a cell balancer & overvoltage protector, H-bridges to drive 6 DC Motors, and connectors […]

January 24, 2014July 12, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Intel “Bay Trail” NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini PC is Now Available for $140

Next Unit of Computing (NUC) is a small form factor PC designed by Intel featuring “low power” Intel CPUs. It has gone through different iteration starting with Sandy Bridge Celeron CPU, then Ivy Bridge Core i3 and Core i5 processors in the second generation, with the third generation using the Haswell architecture. Intel latest model called Intel DN2820FYK NUC is based on “Bay Trail” Celeron N2820 dual-core processor @ 2.4 GHz with 7.5W TDP, and is now available for $140 on Amazon. Intel DN2820FYK NUC specifications: Processor – Intel Celeron N2820 dual core processor @ up to 2.4GHz dual-core with 1MB cache, 7.5W TDP Memory – 1x DDR3L SODIMM 1.35V, 1333/1600 MHz (down clocked to 1066 MHz), 8GB maximum Storage – Internal support for 2.5¨ HDD or SSD Graphics – Intel HD Graphics @ up to 756MHz Video Output – 1x HDMI 1.4a Audio I/O – Up to 7.1 surround audio […]

January 23, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Spreadtrum Announces Quad Core SC5735 SoC for 3G Tablets

Spreadtrum is a Chinese SoC vendor known for its low cost smartphone SoCs, but they’ve recently announced a new SoC with four ARM Cortex A7 cores and a Mali-400MP(2/4) GPU together with WCDMA support for entry-level 3G tablets. Spreadtrum SC5735 main features are listed below: Processor – ARM Cortex A7 MP4 processor, up to 1.2GHz with 32 KB L1 I-cache, 32 KB D-cache, L2 512KB cache and 32 KB dedicated on-chip SRAM. Boots from NAND, USB, UART, or eMMC Multimedia Features GPU – Mali 400 MP4 or MP2, 40MTri/s,700Mpix/s, OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 Video Decoder – MPEG4/H.263 1080P@30fps; H.264 1080P@30fps ; VP8 1080P@30fps Video Encoder – H.263/H.264/MPEG4 1080P@30fps Video Streaming – MPEG4/H.263/H.264 1080P@30fps 3G-324M Video Telephony Support MP3/AAC/AAC+/MIDI/AMR-NB/WAV format Audio codec included 5MP primary camera and up to 2Mp secondary camera External Memory Interfaces NAND flash eMMC, up to eMMC 4.5 Up to 2GB DDR3, LP DDR1, LP DDR2, (16bit and […]

January 23, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ARM Mali GPU Demos at CES 2014 – 4K 3D UI and Games, ASTC Texture Compression, XBMC + Gesture Recognition, and HEVC Video Decoding

Phill Smith, Demo Manager at ARM, has filmed and uploaded four very interesting demos of what new features will be possible thanks to new generation ARM Mali-450 and Mali-T6xx GPUs including 4K 3D user interfaces and games, ASTC texture compression, and OpenCL accelerated gesture recognition and HEVC / H.265 video decoding. 4K Resolution 3D User Interface and Game Demo The first demo showcases a Geniatech box (ATV1800?) powered by AMLogic AML8726-M8 featuring an ARM Mali-450MP6 GPU running Android with a user 4K 3D interface designed by Autodesk using Scaleform UI. The rest of the video shows Timbuku 3D gaming demo running at 3840×2160 (4K2K) @ 24 fps. The frame rate appears to be low, but that’s because the box is using HDMI 1.4, which limits UHD output to 24fps. 2160p60 is only available via HDMI 2.0. ASTC Compression Demo on Samsung Galaxy Note 3 3D Textures are getting bigger and […]

January 22, 2014January 23, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Cisco Edge 340 Digital Media Player Targets Digital Signage & Business Applications

Most of the time I feature low cost (Chinese) media players in this blog, but today I’ve had a look at a media player at the other side of the market that targets business users with applications such as webcasting and video sharing, digital signage, and business IPTV. Cisco Edge 340 digital media player (DMP) comes in two flavors “Wireless” and “non-wireless”, and boast features such as PoE or RS-232 which are not often found in consumer devices. Cisco Edge 340 Specifications: SoC – Dual 1.60 GHz processor with integrated GPU @ 400MHz, most probably Intel Atom Z2560. It turns out it could be Intel Atom CE5335 instead. System Memory – 2GB DDR3 @ 800 MHz Storage – 32GB SSD (70MB/s write speed) and SD card slot Connectivity – 1x Ethernet 10/100/1000-Gbps port with PoE and PoE+ support. Wireless version only: Dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 Video […]

January 22, 2014January 22, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

TransferJet Wireless Technology is NFC on Steroid with up to 560Mbps Transfer Speed

Today, our devices communicate between each others wirelessly thanks to standards such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and more, and the list of Wireless standards is getting bigger as I’ve just found out about TransferJet while reading an article about a new Toshiba ultra-small wireless chip for smartphone. TransferJet can transfer data at a peak speed of 560 Mbps, with an effective throughput up to 375 Mbps over a few centimeters, and appears to work in the similar fashion as NFC, except it’s focusing on large file/data transfers (no payment), and is much faster, about a 1000 times faster actually, as the latter is limited to 424 kbit/s. In real-time benchmarks, it has also been shown to be 5x faster than Wi-Fi to transfer a video. Here are TransferJet keys specifications: Center Frequency – 4.48 GHz Transmission Power – At or below -70dBm/MHz (average). Corresponds to low intensity radio wave regulation in […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

January 20, 2014January 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux Kernel 3.13 Release

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.13 yesterday: The release got delayed by a week due to travels, but I suspect that’s just as well. We had a few fixes come in, and while it wasn’t a lot, I think we’re better off for it. At least I hope so – I’ll be very disappointed if any of them cause more problems than they fix.. Anyway, the patch from rc8 is fairly small, with mainly some small arch updates (arm, mips, powerpc, s390, sparc, x86 all had some minor changes, some of them due to a networking fix for the bpf jit). And drivers (mainly gpu and networking). And some generic networking fixes. The appended shortlog gives more details. Anyway, with this, the merge window for 3.14 is obviously open. Kernel 3.12 brought new features to BTRFS and XFS file systems, PC’s GPU drivers improvements, better memory handling, […]

January 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

Telechips TCC893x Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 + Cortex M3 SoCs: TCC8930, TCC8933, TCC8935

Sometimes last year, Telechips discreetly released a triple core SoC comprised of 2 ARM Cortex A9 cores and one Cortex M3 core for tablet, set-top boxes, media player and car AVN (Audio, Video & Navigation). A dual core release in 2013 may not be that interested, but the addition of a Cortex M3, and high performance interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 may make it interesting. Let’s have a look. There’s very little information on Telechips TCC893x page, apart from the block diagram above and the following description: The TCC893x is a system-on-chip with powerful multimedia solution and high performance such as dual decoding. It is ideal for high-end multimedia devices such as Set top box, Media Box, Car AVN, and Tablet. TCC893x multimedia application processor based on Cortex-A9 Dual & M3 has multi-format hardware video accelerator optimized to reduce power consumption, high-performance 2D/3D graphic engine for rich […]