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GeneralPlus GP3300 Cortex A8 Processor and Android Tablet Reference Design

I’ve recently come across Eken D70 Tablet which is a typical 7″ Android ICS tablet, except it’s product description shows a Cortex A8 chip called GP33003. After some research, I found that this chipset is provided by GeneralPlus (previously part of Sunplus). GP3300x application processor features a cortex A8 clocked at 1 GHz together with a PowerVR SGX531 GPU, and comes in 216pins LQFP package.  This SoC integrates LVDS and HDMI, and the company told me that the GP33XX targets “higher resolution displays, but still keep the lower PCB cost, compared to its current competitors”.  It also features an hardware video decoder and encoder (up to 1080p), and can handle a 720p full-duplex video conference. That’s about all the information I could get about the SoC itself. I’ll update this post If I find out more. The company also provides a tablet reference design (GP3300xA Tablet) with the following specifications: […]

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Open Source Mali 200/400 Drivers (LIMA) Demo on Android Tablet

Luc Verhaegen, the lead developer of LIMA open source project, provided an update at LinuxTag 2012 last week-end. This open-source MALI GPU driver isn’t ready for consumers yet, but the LIMA team has made some progress and showcased an OpenGL ES demos running on a Chinese tablet running Android. Luc said the tablet used for the demo is the same hardware as the Spark KDE/Vivaldi tablet, so the video demo below must be running on an AMLogic 8726-M processor with a Mali 400 GPU. The drivers already (partially) work on both Mali-200 and Mali-400 GPUs. The fragment shader instructions set is fully known and they have disassembler and assembler fully implement, but they still need to work on the compiler. The vertex shader instruction set is 80% known, they have a simple shader disassembler and are working on the assembler. You can also watch the 40 minute presentation at LinuxTag […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Archos Arnova G3 Tablets: Arnova 10b G3 and Arnova 9 G3

Archos has announced (actually just listed them on their website) the third generation low cost Arnova tablets based on Rockchip RK2918 (Cortex A8 @ 1GHz) with 1 GB RAM and running Android 4.0 (ICS) with Arnova 10b G3 and Arnova 9 G3 Here are the specifications of the devices: CPU • Rockchip RK2918 (Cortex A8) @ 1 GHz System Memory • 1GB RAM Operating system • ANDROID 4.0 Capacity • Flash memory: 8 GB or 4 GB • Extendable via micro SDHC Slot Display characteristics • Arnova 10b G3 – 10.1” Resistive Dual Touch screen, TFT LCD (Resolution : 1024 x 600) • Arnova 9 G3 – 9.7″ Capacitive 5 points MultiTouch Screen with IPS Technology (Resolution: 1024 x 768) Video Playback • H.264 up to 1080p resolution – 30 fps • MPEG-4– 30 fps • Container formats: .avi .mp4 ,mkv, .mov, and .flv Audio Playback • MP3, WAV, APE, […]

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Cross-compiling VMWare View for ARM Linux (in Debian/Ubuntu)

Earlier this month, I wrote an article about PCoIP Technology which shows an Android application (VMWare View) running on an OMAP4 Tablet displaying a Windows 7 desktop. This remote desktop technology relies on a powerful server to do the processing and thin clients (in that case Tablets) to display the desktop. Since only pixels are transferred any OS (supported by the server) could be displayed in the thin client. That made me wonder if there was an open source PCoIP client that could run on low end Linux client such as the Raspberry Pi. VMWare View Open Client provides just what we need, but is only available in source code so we need to cross-compile it for ARM or build it in an ARM machine. Today, I’ll show the instructions I followed to cross-compile it for ARM in Debian using Emdebian Toolchain. First download and extract VMware View Open Client […]

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Trimble Yuma: A Military-Grade Rugged Ubuntu Tablet

SDG Systems announced an Ubuntu version of the Trimble Yuma, a rugged tablet for the industrial and military applications. The company also sells the product with Windows 7. This tablet enables the use of open source geospatial applications such as GRASS or Quantum GIS, as well as other Linux-based applications. The water- and dust-proof tablet  meets the military MIL-STD-810F standard and run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS netbook edition, although the company said other Linux distributions are available on request with a minimum purchase agreement or engineering fee.. Here are the Yuma Trimble specifications: Processor: Intel Atom Z530 1.6 GHz processor Memory: 1 GB DDR2 Storage: 32 GB Solid State Hard Drive Expansion: SDIO memory slot ExpressCard 34mm slot Display: 7″ widescreen 1024×600 WSVGA 650 nit Standard Batteries: Dual hot-swappable Lithium-Ion batteries, 2600 mAmp each Extended Batteries: Dual hot-swappable Lithium-Ion batteries, 5100 mAmp each I/O: USB 2.0 port (x2), 9-pin serial port […]

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Opersys Releases Their Android and Linux Training Materials

Opersys has decided to release their courseware under a Creative Common license (CC-BY-SA 3.0). The materials are available in PDF and ODP format for the following classes: Embedded Android – 5-days hands-on class covering Android (AOSP) for Embedded Systems (not only smartphones and tablets) Presentation Slides: PDF | ODP Exercises: PDF | ODT Android App Development – 5-day class to learn how to build your own Android Apps using Google’s SDK Presentation Slides: PDF | Tarball with Beamer files Exercises: PDF | ODT Embedded Linux– 4-days hands-On class learning about cross development, the kernel, the rootFS and the bootloader Presentation Slides: PDF | ODP Exercises: PDF | ODT Linux Device Drivers– 3-days hands-on class about modules, locking, interrupts and memory management, as well as  char, block, network and USB drivers training. Presentation Slides:PDF | ODP Exercises: PDF | ODT You can freely use this material to learn more about Android and […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Penandfree PT- Pen Transforms Your Laptop into A Tablet

Penandfree has unveiled the PT-pen  (Presentation pen) at the 2012 ISE exhibition. The company claims this pen can transform ordinary laptops or netbooks  into touch-screen tablets, replacing the need for both a mouse and keyboard. PT-Pen can be used for capturing handwritten notes,  digital signatures and all sorts of creative sketches. MINT Interactive software is included with the PT-pen and provides access to a full color pallet, a variety of line thicknesses, a virtual keyboard and a handwriting recognition mode. Penandfree explains that PT-pen allows navigation in web browsers and can be used with office software such as Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint as it conforms with Microsoft tablet and standard HID specifications. Mint Interactive Software can be download for Windows XP/Visata/&, MacOS and Linux. For Android Tablet and/or iPad users, Penandfree unveiled the “Legato Smart-Pen”. The PT-pen digitally “inks” a laptop’s LCD using ultrasonic technology.  A magnetized receiver sits at […]

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Parrot AR.Drone 2.0: Linux based Augmented Reality Helicopter

Parrot announced a revised version of its Linux-based Parrot AR Drone “quadricopter” flying drone at CES 2012. The drone can now be operated with any Android device such as smartphones and tablets, whereas the previous version could only be controlled by an iPhone or iPad. Another new software features is the auto-pilot. The quadricopter body has been redesigned and reinforced, and fitted with a new 720p HD front-facing navigational camera which can record video and help the pilot navigating the drone. There is also a vertical camera that was present in the first generation. Here are the technical specializations of the Drone’s motherboard: 1 GHz 32-bit ARM Cortex A8 processor (Maybe OMAP3?) 800Mhz video DSP (TMS320DMC64x) 1GB DDR2 RAM USB 2.0 WiFi b/g/n . 3-axis accelerometer 3-axis gyroscope 3-axis magnetometer Pressure sensor for altitude measurement (altitude > 6m) Ultrasound sensor for ground altitude measurement (lower altitude) 60fps vertical QVGA camera […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC