CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

Building the Linux Kernel 3.0.8 For Telechips TCC8925 mini PCs (CX-01, Z900, TizzBird N1…)

Yesterday, we got Linux kernel 3.0.8 source code from Telechips, as well as some files related to Android 4.0 (Webkit + OMX). Today, I’ve had a look at the kernel source code and found a few very interesting things. First let’s get the code from github:

git clone git://github.com/cnxsoft/telechips-linux.git

1	git clone git://github.com/cnxsoft/telechips-linux.git

Good news! The code for the latest Telechips TCC892X is present in arch/arm/mach-tcc892x, and there is support for 3 types of boards: board-m805_892x – TCC8923 M805 board board-tcc8920 – TCC8920 evaluation board board-tcc8920st – TCC8920 STB evaluation board TCC8920 STB evaluation board appears to be relevant to products such as Diyomate A6, but if it’s also used for TCC8925 HDMI Dongle such as CX-01 mini PC, Zero Devices Z900 or ValuePlus TizzBird N1. Now let’s have a look at the default config directory for arm (arch/arm/configs):

ls | grep tcc89
tcc8920st_defconfig
tcc8920st_hdb892s_defconfig
tcc8925st_dongle_defconfig
tcc8925st_donglehs_defconfig
tcc8925st_hdb892f_defconfig
tcc8925st_isdbt_module_defconfig
tcc892x_defconfig

ls | grep tcc89

tcc8920st_defconfig

tcc8920st_hdb892s_defconfig

tcc8925st_dongle_defconfig

tcc8925st_donglehs_defconfig

tcc8925st_hdb892f_defconfig

tcc8925st_isdbt_module_defconfig

tcc892x_defconfig

Nice! tcc8925st_dongle_defconfig and tcc8925st_donglehs_defconfig look particularly interesting! A quick comparison shows that the only difference is […]

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

ARM TechCon 2012: Software & System Design Schedule

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2012 will take place on October 30 – November 1, 2011, in Santa Clara, and UBM Electronics has already posted the detailed schedule for the event. The first day (October 30) will be Chip Designs day and the other 2 days will focus on Software & System Design. Even if, like me, you are not be able to go there, it’s still interesting to know what will be discussed at the conference, to have a better idea where ARM is going, and what new technologies and/or development techniques are (or will become) available. There will be around 70 sessions categorized in 15 tracks: Android / Open Source – Development tools, middleware for native application development, and optimized drivers for Android, Linux, FreeRTOS etc … Compute Platforms – Development and implementation of standards and specifications, from board/module design to consumer and server designs Developing / Debugging – […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Raspberry Pi Releases Raspbian SD Card Image Based on Debian Wheezy ARMHF

The Raspberry Pi foundation announced the very first stable release of the Raspbian distribution, which is based on Debian 7.0 “Wheezy” armhf rootfs in order to take advantage of the FPU in Broadcom BCM2835. This distribution offers up to 40% performance improvement on several tasks, and for some specific tasks such as MP3 encoding is can boost the speed by nearly 6 times thanks to hard-float support. It is now the recommended distribution for the Raspberry Pi, runs LXDE environment, and comes with Midori browser, development tools and example source as per the previous Debian distros. omxplayer by gimli (XBMC developer) is also pre-installed in the image, and will allow you to play videos using hardware acceleration. You can download Raspbian via: Bittorrent – 2012-07-15-wheezy-raspbian.zip.torrent HTTP – 2012-07-15-wheezy-raspbian.zip The default credentials are pi / raspberry. Adam Armstrong has run some benchmarks to compare Raspbian (armhf) with the previous Raspberry Pi […]

July 17, 2012July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Telechips Releases Linux Kernel 3.0.8 and Android ICS Source Code

Telechips has just uploaded the GPL source code for kernel 3.0.8 and Android 4.0 to the open source section of their website. If downloading from telechips website is too slow, you can also try alternate downloads (Thanks Gabe!): Kernel-3.0.8.tar.gz Ics.tar.gz I’ve also created 2 repositories in github: telechips-linux – Linux kernel source code telechips-android – Android platform open source code (webkit + OpenMAX source code) It haven’t looked into the source code in details yet, but hopefully, this will allow developers to customize the firmware running on Telechips TCC8925 based mini PCs such as CX-01 mini Android TV Box or Zero Devices Z900.

July 17, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

HackBerry: AllWinner A10 Development Board with 1GB RAM

After the Raspberry Pi, the Gooseberry, here comes the HackBerry. This is another AllWinner board similar to the Gooseberry, but which Ethernet, a full sized USB ports, an IR sensor and 1GB RAM. Here are the board specifications : SoC – AllWinner A10 System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – 4GB Flash + SDHC slot USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports Connectivity: 10/100Mbit Ethernet Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n Video Output – 1 x HDMI + 1x Composite Audio I/O – Headphone + microphone IR sensor The board runs Android 4.0, but since it’s an AllWinner device, you can run what you want. In a way it’s similar to the Mele A1000, except it has more memory, but lacks SATA, VGA output and has one less USB port. I can’t see the serial port pins on the PCB picture either. There is pricing information or availability yet, as Jasbir only […]

July 17, 2012July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Qualcomm Showcases Quad Core Snapdragon APQ8064 Application Processor

Way back in February 2011, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon APQ8064, a quad core application processor clocked at up to 2.5 GHz, that was (and still is) supposed to be available in products end of 2012, beginning of 2013. They now have samples, and showcased the processor in an Android tablet reference design at UpLink 2012. The APQ8064 is part of SnapDragon S4 Pro family and features 4 Krait cores running at up to 1.5 GHz when all four cores are running, or up to 1.7 GHz when only one core is active, according to Anandtech. So it appears they did not follow up on the 2.5 GHz promise. APQ8064 is the first SoC featuring Adreno 320 GPU, and will be followed by MSM8960 later on. The demo below shows the 3D performance of the Qualcomm processor and GPU, and Raj Talluri, Senior Vice President, Product Management at Qualcomm, claims the […]

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

July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Digi Launches XBee Modules Examples Website To Get Started with IoT Development

Digi International has launches an example section on their website to showcase what can be done with their XBee 805.15.4, ZigBee and WiFi Modules, as well as their IoT gateway. They provide examples to use different type of sensors, control lights, motors, and more. They show demos on the website and explain how each components can be linked together, hooked to computers and connected to the internet. They currently just have a few tutorials only, but plan to add more overtime: Basic XBee 802.15.4 & Zigbee Chat 802.15.4 PWM and Digital Output with an LED 802.15.4 Digital Input with a Button 802.15.4 Analog Input with a Potentiometer Light Switch XBee – A wireless wall switch that can control lamps, fans, motors or your homemade robot The first four examples look good to get started, but the Light Switch XBee is the most interesting, and they describe 8 steps to show […]

July 16, 2012July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Emdebian Grip 2.0: Debian For Embedded Systems

I’ve used Emdebian ARM toolchain for several things such as building Raspberry Pi kernel, or cross-compiling VMWare-View, but I must have not paid attention enough, as I only discovered that Emdebian also offered a lightweight Linux distribution for embedded systems called Debian Grip. There was also another distribution called Debian Crush, a customized Emdebian installation without perl, but development stopped after Debian 5.0. Debian Grip is binary compatible with Debian and supports i386, amd64, powerpc, armel, armhf, mips and mipsel. Ports for powerpcspe and sh4 are available for Emdebian unstable. The current stable version Debian Grip 2.0 is based on Debian 6.0 “Squeeze”. You can install Emdebian grip using CD /DVD ISO images or with multistrap (preferred method). Visit the Installation instructions page for details. Here’s how the installation sizes compare between Emdebian Grip (unstable) and Debian (unstable): A basic multistrap of Emdebian Grip (sid-grip) comes out at 56MB installed, […]