CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 15, 2011December 15, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Android 4.0 Hardware Graphics Acceleration Coming to More Platforms

The Linaro Android Platform Team has just posted a weekly update to their progress. They are going to release 11.12 very soon with hardware graphics acceleration to 2 of their members development boards: ST Ericsson Nova A9500 Snowball and Samsung Exynos 4212 Origen boards. So if you have any boards or products based on those processors you should be able to get an hardware optimized version very soon. Hardware acceleration is already available on all OMAP4 platform such as Pandaboard, since this was the default Android ICS target. They also introduced support for the ARM DS-5 debugger, an Eclipse plug-in to help developer create high performance performance and low power native software by integrating a graphical debugger for code generated for the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) and a basic version of the ARM Streamline performance analysis tool. Here’s a list of this week achievements: Key Points for wider discussion […]

December 15, 2011December 15, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Build the bootloaders (U-boot & X-Loader) for Pandaboard

I’ve tried to compile u-boot and x-loader for Pandaboard by following the instructions given at http://omappedia.org/wiki/Get_started_with_ubuntu_on_omap4#Bootloaders. I did this in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with Linaro gcc compiler. Here are the instructions for the build: Create the folders:

mkdir bootloader
cd bootloader

1 2	mkdir bootloader cd bootloader

Get u-boot and checkout the omap4_dev branch:

git clone git://git.omapzoom.org/repo/u-boot.git
cd u-boot
git checkout L24.9

git clone git://git.omapzoom.org/repo/u-boot.git

cd u-boot

git checkout L24.9

You may use a different tag. Simply run “git tag -l | grep L24” to see the list of tags. (I used the latest at the time of this post). Build u-boot for OMAP4

make ARCH=arm distclean
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- omap4430sdp_config
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-

make ARCH=arm distclean

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- omap4430sdp_config

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi-

At this point, you should get U-boot (u-boot.bin). get x-loader and checkout the omap4_dev branch:

cd ..
git clone git://git.omapzoom.org/repo/x-loader.git
cd x-loader
git checkout L24.9

cd ..

git clone git://git.omapzoom.org/repo/x-loader.git

cd x-loader

git checkout L24.9

N.B: Both u-boot and x-loader folders must be at the same directory level. build x-loader for OMAP4:

make ARCH=arm distclean
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- omap4430sdp_config
make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- ift

make ARCH=arm distclean

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- omap4430sdp_config

make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabi- ift

The x-loader (MLO) should now be ready. Finally, you simply need to copy MLO and u-boot.bin files to the SD card.

December 15, 2011December 15, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

AnDevCon III: Android Developer Conference – 14-17 May 2012

The Android Developer Conference III will take place in San Francisco on 14-17 May 2012. This technical conference is exclusively reserved to Android developers and provides classes, workshops and keynotes related to Android development. There will also be an exhibition hall where Android apps and development tools will be showcased. The workshops and classes schedule does not appear to be available just yet for AnDevCon III, but the different sessions will be organized into five subject area: Developer Essentials: These technical classes and workshops are for all Android developers and cover all programming topics. Android Enterprise: These technical sessions cover topics specific to building and managing apps for employees, business customers and partners, such as back-end integration corporate data center communications, ERP or CRM systems. Android Business: These classes and workshops are for entrepreneurial developers who want to learn the most effective ways of distributing and selling Android apps, including […]

December 14, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Archos 80/101 G9 Firmware Version 3.2.77 Released

Archos has just released a new firmware for Archos 80 G9 / 101 G9 and A70B. Here’s the changelog: Version 3.2.77 – December 6th, 2011 Google apps: new Honeycomb release 6 integrated. It fixes Video GTalk crash when switching cameras on devices with only one camera. Now Google+ is part of the firmware. Archos media server: allow connected TVs to play video from your tablet via network Network shortcuts: it is now possible to create network shortcuts in file/music/video browsers Accessories: external USB audio cards (DAC) support has been added Media center: a new progress bar slider indicates resume position on videos already played Media center: in regular list view, the title of the TV show episode is appended after the season and episode numbers File manager: support of zip files Music: fix repeat mode Audio: decrease loud volume glitches on notifications while playing music Media database: remove muSD card […]

December 14, 2011July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Solid-Run CuBox: Open Source Platform for Android TV, Media Center and NAS Development

Solid-Run CuBox is a miniature open source development platform based on Marvell Armada 510 SoC (88AP510) and aimed at applications such as multimedia, set-top-box, network attached storage (NAS), thin client, digital signage, automation… CuBox measures 55mm x 55mm x 42mm (so it’s not a Cube) and consuming less than 3 watts. The device runs Android 2.2 or Linux 2.6 on an 800MHz Marvell Armada 510 CPU (ARMv7 architecture) with 1GB of DDR3 memory and a microSD slot. It also includes eSATA, USB, infrared, S/PDIF, HDMI and gigabit Ethernet interfaces. CuBox Developer Platform includes the following key features – Marvell Armada 510 SoC – 800 MHz dual issue ARM PJ4 processor, VFPv3, wmmx SIMD and 512KB L2 cache. 1GByte DDR3 at 800MHz 1080p Video Decode Engine OpenGL ES 2.0 graphic engine HDMI 1080p Output (with CEC function) Gigabit Ethernet, SPDIF (optical audio), eSata 3Gbps, 2xUSB 2.0, micro-SD, micro-USB (console) Standard Infra-red receiver […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

December 14, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

99 USD MIPS Android 4.0 Tablet Hands-on Video

Following the announcement of the 99 dollars Ainol Novo 7 Android ICS last week, MIPS’s Amit Rohatgi, Mobile Principal Architect at MIPS released a longer demo video of the device, showcasing the following: Angry Bird Game with framerate around 50 FPS. Kindle Reader Web Browser Rear & Front Camera Photo Gallery (transition are a little sluggish) Email (Exchange account) 1080p video playback both an the device and mirroring on HDTV via an HDMI cable He also explain that on of this friends could watch 3 full-length movies on a battery charge.

December 13, 2011December 13, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Adding a Project to Gitorious with a Windows Computer

If you are developing software in Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, here are the steps to follow to push your project to Gitorious. Register and create a new project on Gitorious, if you haven’t done already. Install msysGit to have git on your Windows machine Click on “Git Bash” to start the command line Generate the SSH Key with “ssh-keygen -t rsa” and press ‘Return’ in every question. Go to your Gitorious dashboard, click on “Manage SSH Keys” then “Add SSH Key“, copy the content of “cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub” in Gitorious and click save Then go to your local project directory and follow the “getting started instructions” given in Gitorious, which should look like: git config –global user.name “Your Name” git config –global user.email “user@domain.com” git checkout master git remote add origin git@gitorious.org:your-project/your-project.git git push origin master Then wait until the code is pushed to the Gitorious server. If […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products