CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 24, 2013May 7, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

$149 Inforce Computing IFC6410 Board Features Qualcomm APQ8064 Quad Core SoC

I’ve only seen Qualcomm SoC in smartphones and tablets, as well as their own development boards, but Inforce Computing has just changed that thanks to IFC6410 single-board computer powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 quad core krait processor @ 1.7GHz. This Pico-ITX SBC comes with 2GB RAM and 4GB eMMC flash, HDMI out, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi and more. Here are the specifications of this board: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 Quad Core Processor (1.7GHz) + Adreno 320 GPU System Memory – 2GB on-board PCDDR3, up to 533MHz Storage – 4GB eMMC + μSD card connector + SATA interface Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (Atheros QCA6234) Bluetooth 4.0 (Atheros QCA6234) 10/100/1000bps Ethernet (Atheros 8151) Video and Audio Interfaces: μHDMI (1080p) LVDS MIPI-CSI2 (4-lane, up to 20MP camera) HD Audio and Mic-in USB – 2x USB 2.0, 1x USB OTG Misc I/O – 1x I2C, 1x SPI, 1x UART, UIM, […]

April 24, 2013April 24, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Freescale i.MX 6 TV Dongle Schematics, PCB Layout, and Application Notes

We already had the source code for Freescale i.MX6 HDMI TV dongle, and some work has been done on the Linux front by imx6-dongle community to make Ubuntu work on Hi802 and GK802 mini PCs. Today, I’ve just found out Freescale has also released the hardware files and some application notes for their HDMI TV dongle reference platform (MX6x_HDMI_DONGLE). There are 2 files for download: hdmi_dongle_hardware_design_package.rar.zip – Hardware files for i.MX 6 mini PC app_note.rar.zip – Zip file with some hardware application notes Let’s have a look at the hardware design files: wifi_rtl8192ce.zip – Schematics in PDF and DSN (OrCAD) format, gerber files, BoM and manufacturing files for the Wi-Fi module. bom_hdmi_dongle_revb2_20130116_1500.xls – Bill of materials for i.MX 6 HDMI dongle pcb_hdmi_dongle-revb2-20130116_1700.rar – PCB layout (.brd) and gerber files sch_hdmi_dongle_revb2_20130116_1500.rar – Schematics for i.MX6 mini PC in PDF and DSN formats. We also have three application notes: AN4397 Common Hardware […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

April 23, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

STMicro STiH416 Dual Core Media Processor and Linux SDK

STMicro announced STiH416 SoC for media players at CES 2012 with very few details, but we’ve still known that it is a dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.2 GHz coupled with a quad core Mali-400 manufacturer and an hardware video decoder supporting commonly used codecs such as H.264, VC-1, AVS and MPEG2. Yesterday they put out a press release about a STB development platform based on this solution, and I found out we’ve got much more information now. Key features include: ARM Cortex-A9, dual core CPU, SMP NEON SIMD engine yielding up to 6000 DMIPS ARM Mali-400 quad core GPU yielding up to 1600 Mpixels/s fill rate and supporting up to 1080p60 or 1080p30 stereoscopic 3D graphics Dual HD H.264/VC-1/AVS/MPEG2 video decoder or SVC video decode MVC video decode for 3DTV: supports up to 1080p60L/60R, 3D video formats Dual HD internet video decoding: real video 8/9/10, DivX, Xvid, MP4p2, Adobe […]

April 22, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

You-Get – Video Download Script for YouTube, YouKu, DailyMotion, and More

YouKu is the equivalent of YouTube in China, and earlier today I wanted to download a video from the service, so I’ve looked for an application or script that can do the job in Linux. I’ve finally come across you-get, a python 3 script that claims to be able to download videos from an impressive number of websites, namely: YouTube Vimeo Coursera Blip Dailymotion Facebook Google+ Google Drive Tumblr Vine SoundCloud Mixcloud Freesound JPopsuki VID48 Niconico (ニコニコ動画) Youku (优酷) Tudou (土豆) YinYueTai (音悦台) AcFun bilibili CNTV (中国网络电视台) Douban (豆瓣) ifeng (凤凰视频) iQIYI (爱奇艺) Joy.cn (激动网) Ku6 (酷6网) MioMio h NetEase (网易视频) (v.163.com) PPTV.com QQ (腾讯视频) (v.qq.com) Sina (新浪视频) (video.sina.com.cn) Sohu (搜狐视频) (tv.sohu.com) 56 (56网) Xiami (虾米) Baidu (百度音乐) (music.baidu.com) SongTaste I won’t try all, but just test it with YouKu and YouTube. First things first, let’s install it:

git clone git://github.com/soimort/you-get.git
cd you-get
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-setuptools
./you-get -V
make install

git clone git://github.com/soimort/you-get.git

cd you-get

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-setuptools

./you-get -V

make install

Time to go to youku.com and download a video:

you-get http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTQ1OTk3NTAw.html
Video Site: Youku.com
Title:      1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with  A10
Type:       Flash video (video/x-flv)
Size:       5.45 MB (5711001 Bytes)

Downloading 1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with  A10.flv ...
100.0% (  5.4/5.4  MB) [========================================] 1/1

you-get http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTQ1OTk3NTAw.html

Video Site: Youku.com

Title: 1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with A10

Type: Flash video (video/x-flv)

Size: 5.45 MB (5711001 Bytes)

Downloading 1 second boot QT app in linux-sunxi with A10.flv ...

100.0% ( 5.4/5.4 MB) [========================================] 1/1

Success! […]

April 22, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Booting Linux in Less Than 1 Second in AllWinner A10 Devices? Yes! You Can!

threewater, a Chinese developer, has just posted a very interesting demo on linux-sunxi mailing list showing a device based on AllWinner A10 boot linux within 0.85s, and if you add a Qt app, the total time is just about 1.2s. This appears to be a custom hardware (EM6000), but we do know it’s based on AllWinner A10, comes with 512 MB RAM, and 4GB NAND Flash. On the software side, the device runs kernel 3.4 from linux-sunxi, with a customized version of uboot, a squashfs rootfs, and a Qt 4.7.4 app showing a gauge. Both the rootfs (7MB) and the kernel (2MB) have been compressed with LZO. All that boots from NAND flash for optimal speed. The 1.2 second time includes kernel + rootfs + app time, and the total time is a bit longer, but this is still impressive. Here’s the boot log:

[1.690000 1.690000] U-Boot SPL 2013.01-05984-g2120a27-dirty (Apr 17 2013 - 14:22:02)
[0.009000 0.009000] Board: EM6000
[0.012000 0.003000] DRAM: 512MB
[1.014000 1.002000] init startup v1.1
[1.016000 0.002000] mount usr data error 2
[1.158000 0.142000] Could not read calibration: "/data/etc/pointercal"
[1.166000 0.008000] Couldnt open tslib config file: No such file or directory
[1.175000 0.009000] QWSTslibMouseHandlerPrivate: ts_config() failed with error: 'No such file or directory'
[1.187000 0.012000] Please check your tslib installation!
[1.200000 0.013000] qt show

[1.690000 1.690000] U-Boot SPL 2013.01-05984-g2120a27-dirty (Apr 17 2013 - 14:22:02)

[0.009000 0.009000] Board: EM6000

[0.012000 0.003000] DRAM: 512MB

[1.014000 1.002000] init startup v1.1

[1.016000 0.002000] mount usr data error 2

[1.158000 0.142000] Could not read calibration: "/data/etc/pointercal"

[1.166000 0.008000] Couldnt open tslib config file: No such file or directory

[1.175000 0.009000] QWSTslibMouseHandlerPrivate: ts_config() failed with error: 'No such file or directory'

[1.187000 0.012000] Please check your tslib installation!

[1.200000 0.013000] qt show

If you just boot to […]

April 22, 2013May 11, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

How to Detect if an ARM ELF Binary is Hard-float (ARMHF) or Soft-float (ARMEL)

If some cases you may want to know if a library or binary built for the ARM architecture is using hard-float (armhf) or soft-float (armel). You can analyze ELF binary using readefl utility, so let’s have a try. First let’s install some armel and armhf files on a computer running Ubuntu by install gcc/g++ toolchain for armel and armhf:

apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabi  g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf

1	apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabi g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf

We now have armhf and armel libraries installed in /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib and /usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib respectively. Let’s check the output of readelf filtered with “FP” string for libm.so.6 for armel:

readelf -a /usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib/libm.so.6  | grep FP

Tag_FP_arch: VFPv3-D16
Tag_ABI_FP_denormal: Needed
Tag_ABI_FP_exceptions: Needed
Tag_ABI_FP_number_model: IEEE 754
Tag_ABI_HardFP_use: SP and DP

readelf -a /usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib/libm.so.6 | grep FP

Tag_FP_arch: VFPv3-D16

Tag_ABI_FP_denormal: Needed

Tag_ABI_FP_exceptions: Needed

Tag_ABI_FP_number_model: IEEE 754

Tag_ABI_HardFP_use: SP and DP

and armhf:

readelf -a /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libm.so.6 | grep FP

Tag_FP_arch: VFPv3-D16
Tag_ABI_FP_denormal: Needed
Tag_ABI_FP_exceptions: Needed
Tag_ABI_FP_number_model: IEEE 754
Tag_ABI_HardFP_use: SP and DP
Tag_ABI_VFP_args: VFP registers

readelf -a /usr/arm-linux-gnueabihf/lib/libm.so.6 | grep FP

Tag_FP_arch: VFPv3-D16

Tag_ABI_FP_denormal: Needed

Tag_ABI_FP_exceptions: Needed

Tag_ABI_FP_number_model: IEEE 754

Tag_ABI_HardFP_use: SP and DP

Tag_ABI_VFP_args: VFP registers

Great, so there’s an extra line for armhf (Tag_ABI_VFP_args) that seems to confirm the library is hard-float. With readelf compiled from elftoolchain-0.6.1 (source code), the extra line will be a bit different: “Tag_ABI_VFP_args: AAPCS (VFP variant) AAPCS stands for ARM Architecture Procedure Call Standard. You can read more details on ARM website. There are also two other possible values […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025

April 21, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

How to Use Libhybris and Android GPU Libraries with Mer (Linux) on the Cubieboard

You may have heard about libhybris, a library that cleverly loads Android HW adaptations and convert calls from bionic to glibc. One of the greatest achievement of this library is to allow Android GPU drivers to be used with Linux, and is notably used by Canonical, although they did not write it, for Ubuntu 14.04 which will be compatible with any recent Android smartphones or tablets. One way to get started with libhybris is to port a device to Ubuntu Touch, but this may take a while. However, I’ve found a faster and easier way to play with libhybris thanks to Martin Brook (vgrade) who wrote a tutorial on how to use libhybris with Mer on the Cubieboard. Mer is an open source mobile Linux distribution powered by Qt/QML and HTML5, that’s born from the ashes of Meego, and is now used in the upcoming Sailfish OS. You’ll need to […]

April 20, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Payter NFC Watch Can Be Used to Make Payments, for Identification, and More

The first time I heard about NFC was when it was implemented in Android 2.3, and the Google Nexus S featured it, but it’s quite older than that, as the initial specifications were published in 2006, and the very first phone to feature the technology was Nokia 6131. If you’ve ever been to Hong Kong, you may have used Octopus cards which are used for contactless payments for public transport and shopping. Those cards use Felica RFID technology which is part of NFC, and has also been included in some watches (since 2010), so you can easily pay for subway or bus by hovering your watch on the card reader. I’ve been wondering why I could not see more of those, and I think NFC may be a feature of upcoming smart watches, so I started to look for existing solutions this morning, and found Payper NFC Watch designed by […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications