Avnet has recently introduced Xilinx Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC Mini-ITX Development Board powered by the top of the range Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 dual ARM Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC with 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM, PCIe Gen2 x16 Root Complex slot (x4 electrical), SATA-III interface, 10/100/1000 Ethernet PHY, and more. Target applications include PCI Express, embedded controllers, general-purpose prototyping, networking and communications, storage and servers and video applications. Here are the motherboard specifications: SoC – Xilinx XC7Z045/XC7Z100-2FFG900 dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 800 MHz + Kintex-7 FPGA with respectively 350K Logic Cells (~5.2M gates) and 444K Logic Cells (~6.6M gates). System Memory – 1 GB PS DDR3 SDRAM, 1 GB PL DDR3 SDRAM Storage – 32 MB of QSPI Flash, 8 KB of I2C EEPROM, SATA-III Interface, and microSD Card Interface Real-Time Clock Connectivity – 10/100/1000 Ethernet Interface Video – LVDS Touch Panel Interface, HDMI Interface Audio – Audio input […]
Firefox OS Running in InFocus New Tab F1 Tablet Powered by AllWinner A31
So far the only products I’ve seen selling with Firefox OS are entry-level phone such as ZTE Open. Mozilla is now also working on Firefox OS for tablets, with the chosen tablet being InFocus New Tab F1, powered by AllWinner A31 quad core processor with 2GB RAM, and featuring a 10.1″ IPS capacitive multi-touch screen. Here are the specs of the tablet: SoC – AllWinner A31 quad core ARM Cortex A7 processor @ 1.0GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB Flash + micro SD slot Display – 10.1″ IPS capacitive multi-touch screen @ 1280×800 Camera – 2MP front camera, 5MP rear camera Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, Sensors – Gyroscope USB – micro USB port Audio – Headphone jack, speakers Battery – 7000 mAh Dimensions – 266 x 170 x 9.7 mm Weight – 580 g This mid-range tablet originally runs Android […]
Yacy P2P Non-Tracking Search Engine and YaCyPi Linux Distribution for Raspberry Pi
With the revelations by Edward Snowden of NSA’s large scale spying programs, people have become more and more aware that there’s very little privacy online, and in 2013 several companies have tried to solve this online privacy issue, by launching services and products such as Onion Pi and Safeplug Tor Server, or even the recently announced privacy-focused Blackphone. One of the best way to get tracked is to use Google or Bing search engines, which use your search data to deliver relevant ads. Yacy, a peer-to-peer search engine, tries to solve this issue. You can install it on your computer, and you’ll soon be able to run YaCyPi on your Raspberry Pi. The search engine is described as follows: YaCy is a free, as in open source, search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. When contributing to […]
Getting Started with Raxda Rock – Building an Android 4.2 Image from Source
I’ve posted some pictures, and show some basics how to get started in my first post about Radxa Rock. Today, I’ll post my experience trying the instructions to build Android for Radxa Rock in Ubuntu 13.10. Many of the instructions are also valid for other RK3188 devices. The source code is currently located in a private git repository, and if you’re sure you want to get the Android source code, you should send an e-mail to support@radxa.com to be granted access to their private repo. Within minutes, I’ve received an email with the subject “GitLab | Account was created for you” to register an account. You’ll then need to add an SSH key just like you’d do for Github. Assuming you’re already using a service like github, you should already have SSH key. Simply type cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, copy the output, and go to git.linux-rockchip.org/profile/keys, login if needed, and click on […]
FOSDEM 2014 Schedule and A Selection of Sessions
It’s soon time for FOSDEM 2014, a 2-day event where thousands members of the open source communities meet, share ideas and collaborate. Like the other years, it’s free to attend, and there’s no registration, and this year, FOSDEM 2014 will take place on February 1-2 in Brussels. There are 8 main tracks: Tracing and debugging Memory and storage IPv6 Mail Mathematics Hardware Miscellaneous Security FOSDEM 2013 had 7 tracks, but most topics changed with only Security and Miscellaneous tracks featured in the 2014 edition. There will also be four keynotes and devrooms for a total of 464 sessions (vs. 488 last year). Developers rooms that may particularly be of interest to readers of this blog are: Energy-efficient computing devroom – e.g. energy scavenging, battery life improvements, power measurements in embedded systems, open source power measurement tools and low power devices, etc… Internet of things devroom – 6LoPWAN, LTE in Linux, […]
Qualcomm QPrize Competition Targets Innovative Startups with Wireless Devices or Apps
Qualcomm Venture, Qualcomm’s venture investment arm, has recently announced the launch of QPrize 2014. QPrize is a seed investment competition designed to provide entrepreneurs their first level of funding so they can launch their idea into a successful start-up business. The competition is open for residents of 7 “regions”: China, Europe, India, Israel, Korea, Latin America and North America. However, China QPrize is apparently a separate event, and it may be too late for this year. You’ll have to submit your business plan to Qualcomm by April 18, 2014 (no NDA allowed), and the company will then select finalists for each region which will compete in regional finals (dates and venues to be defined0, with the winner getting $100,000. The 7 regional winners will compete during the Grand Finals which are scheduled to take place at the Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit event, June 9-10, 2014 in Sausalito, CA, with the […]
Amaryllo iCam HD is a Smart Wireless IP Camera Controllable via Skype
Amaryllo iCam HD is a Linux based smart network HD (720p) Camera with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + WPS connectivity, infra-red vision, 100 degrees view angle, and 360 degrees view possible via remote pan-and-tilt, a microphone, a speaker, a micro SD card slot for video recording, a motion sensor, and a micro USB port for power via a standard USB power adapter or a USB power bank. On top of that, you can easily remotely access the camera via Skype by calling from your computer or your smartphone just like you would do to call a friend or family member. The camera can be used to watch after your loved ones: babies, aging parents, pets…, and for home security. I could also envision using it with people who are close to you that are not comfortable with computers. You could just set it up for them, and call them directly without […]
Building a Low Power Fanless Intel “Bay Trail-D” mini PC for $250
Yesterday, I wrote about MSI J1800i, a motherboard based on Intel Celeron J1800 “Bay Trail-D” processor with 10W TDP, that is expected to sell for $60 by the end of the month. I’m sure some fully assembled fanless small form factor computers based on Bay Trail-D processor will eventually show up, but I’ve decided to find out what would be needed to build a complete fanless PC with this mini-ITX motherboard, and how much it would cost. First we’ll need a mini-ITX enclosure with a fanless PSU. I’ve found M350 Universal Mini-ITX enclosure (pictured above) coupled with picoPSU-80 80W picoPSU-90 90W 12V fanless power supply, and a 12V 60W AC-AC power adapter would probably fit the bill. The mini-ITX casing and power adapter are available from E-ITX.com, and the picoPSU power supply can be found on Amazon. I’ll also add a 1TB SATA HDD, and a 4GB SO-DIMM DDR3 memory […]