CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 10, 2011December 10, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Renault R-Link In-Vehicle Infotainment System

During LeWeb 11 exhibition, Renault announced the R-Link, a 7″ touchscreen tablet that will equip Renault’s cars starting with the Zoe Electric car and the new Clio (Clio 4) in 2012 for a cost of between 500 to 1000 Euros. The R-Link features a 7″ resistive touchscreen display and comes with steering wheel-mounted controls and speech recognition to make sure the driver keeps an eye on the road. This tablet is said to be running a modified version version of Android 2.2 on a Texas Instruments ARM Cortex A8 processor clocked at 800 Mhz. Renault says the R-Link covers all the car’s functions and data while offering access to a menu of useful and community applications already available on Smartphone such as Tom Tom GPS, Emails, an application finding available parking (Apila), public transport routes (Metro), multimedia applications to play music & video and display picture… At the time of its […]

December 9, 2011May 2, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Mono for Android 4.0 (.NET Framework)

Xamarin has provided .NET support for Linux via the Mono project for a while. It has recently announced the availability of an Android 4.0 version of its Mono software in order to let .NET and C# developers use Microsoft Visual Studio to build Android applications. Mono for Android follows upon Xamarin’s MonoTouch framework for iOS (iPhone and iPad development) and consists of a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio, a core Mono runtime, a Software development and bindings for native Android APIs. Such software is designed to leverage existing .NET applications, libraries and tools for Android development. With Mono for Android, developers can also call upon their native skills in .NET and the C# programming language in developing Android apps. Xamarin says that Mono for Android 4.0 provides access to all the new features, native APIs and UI toolkits in Android 4.0. Mono for Android 4.0 brings those key improvements and […]

ArmSoM CM5 - Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC

December 9, 2011December 9, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Ubuntu Smartphone and Television UI Mockups

Ubuntu developers announced they wanted to port their OS beyond desktop by 2014, and would like to use it on smartphones, tablets and televisions. Following the announcement, the community has made a few mockup. Here are a few samples: Unity Mobil Mockup by JMMING: I quite like this design (Samsung Nexus Series U) similar to Android with the Ubuntu theme. My Ubuntu Phone by Musl1m: muls1m mockup is also based an icon grid, but keeps the Ubuntu icon bar on the left. Ubuntu with mobile Unity by ginjaninja405 This mockup is similar to the one above, but the icon bar can be located either to the left or to the right, and the bottom image shows phone related notifications such as missed phone calls, SMS and Facebook messages and notifications. There are also other interesting Ubuntu smartphones mockup, including a full phone design (casing + UI) based on Ubuntu theme. If […]

December 9, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Metaio Releases Mobile Augmented Reality SDK

Yesterday Qualcomm released QCAR SDK 1.5 Beta, and today Metaio announces its Mobile SDK 3.0 for augmented reality application development on Android and iOS. The metaio Mobile SDK brings with it patented gravity-awareness and visual tracking technology for 2D and 3D objects, now three times more robust than the previous version. These features combined will ensure AR experiences that are more natural, more intuitive, and more realistic, says the company. Metaio recently announced formal collaborations with ARM, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments to fully take advantage of the GPU hardware provided by those companies and the Mobile SDK is optimized for ARM Mali GPU (both graphics and compute), ST Ericsson Nova and NovaThor mobile processors and TI OMAP processors. The metaio Mobile SDK also includes its own 3D rendering engine – now with advanced shader support – and a plugin to make use of Unity3D (3D game engine). You can watch […]

December 8, 2011May 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Archos Is Working on a 300 Euros Asimo-like Robot

Archos is known for its Android Tablets and MP3 player. But Henri Crohas, Archos’s CEO, would like to release a human robot with the height of a child for 300 Euros, a bit like a small version of Asimo, the Honda human robot. In an article about Henri Crohas, published by Liberation (French Newspaper), it is mentioned “No, Crohas rejoices when we mention the evolution of Archos advances: thinner and thinner tablets and on the domotics (Home Automation) side, a robot of the height of a child sold for less than 300 Euros”. Archos has since then confirmed to PC World France, they worked on this type of products, but would not provide further details at this point. But such robot could be used as a toy or it could be programmed to do some simple tasks. Rumours are that they work with another French company, Alrebaran Robotics, which designed […]

December 8, 2011December 8, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

How to Access the Old Youtube Layout (December 2011)

YouTube has recently launched a new version of the website with a new layout. There are several things I do not like, but the main annoyance is that apparently I can not remove the videos I have already watched from the feed. If you are like me and prefer the old layout, you can do so by accessing: http://www.youtube.com/index_ajax. It seems to work fine showing your subscriptions and friends activities, but it just displays “Authorization Error. ” at the top. I have not found any problem for now, but it’s possible that a few things do not work.

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

December 8, 2011December 8, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Demo of Archos 101 G9 Turbo 1.5Ghz Powered by OMAP4460

After Android ICS Preview on Archos G9, Charbax has uploaded another video showing the new Archos 101 G9 Turbo with TI OMAP4460 clocked at 1.5GHz running Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) and comparing it to the Archos 101 G9 Classic (OMAP4430 @ 1.2 GHz). The quadrant score is about 38% percent faster for the Turbo version (2176) compared to the Classic version (1576). He then does some side by side web browser benchmark comparison between the Archos 101 G9 Classic and Turbo and the Turbo version appears to be much faster. However, the web browser tests were done with sites hosted on the internet (amazon and cnn sites), so there are a quite of lot of factors than can affect the loading times and these types of benchmark are better performed in the local network. Archos plans to release the Turbo version (at 1.5Ghz) in January 2012 for a recommend retail price […]

December 8, 2011February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Qualcomm Releases Augmented Reality SDK 1.5 Beta for Android

Qualcomm has just announced the availability of QCAR SDK version 1.5 Beta 1 for Android. is now available for download. The Key features and improvements in this version of the QCAR SDK include: Video background texture access: The SDK now provides a simple and streamlined way of accessing the video background texture. Developers can now write custom special effects using powerful shaders resulting in far more exciting application experiences. Swapping datasets at runtime: If your app needs to augment more than 60 images, you can now create multiple datasets – using the web-based Target Management System (My Trackables tool)- and load the appropriate dataset at runtime. You no longer have to upgrade your app to change the target dataset, and you can now build AR experiences that work on a large number of images. Improved tracking performance: The new SDK features several enhancements that reduce jitter in the augmentations, speed […]