Posted on

Rosetta@Home Now Supports 64-bit Arm SBC’s and Servers in the Fight against COVID-19

Folding@Home and Rosetta@Home projects aim to perform biomedical research using the computing power of volunteers. Basically, you just need to install a program on your computer, and it will use idle computing power to perform complex calculations without slowing down your computer as long as you are not short in RAM. The projects are now working on COVID-19 to understand how SARS-CoV-2 protein is structured which could help find a cure. The programs have been available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 targets for years, but very recently Rosetta@Home has been made available for 64-bit ARM targets so people can also run BOINC program on Arm Linux SBCs such as Raspberry Pi 4, NVIDIA Jetson Nano, or Rock64, or even powerful Arm servers to help with Rosetta@Home project’s COVID-19 research. As explained in an article on miniNodes, you’ll need a board with at least 2GB […]

Posted on

KDE Plasma Bigscreen for TVs and TV Boxes Offers a Linux Alternative to Android TV

KDE Plasma is a desktop environment initially developed for Linux Desktop PC or SBCs, but that’s also available on Linux phones with Plasma Mobile (previously known as Plasma Active). The developers have now decided to work on a version for the big screens with Plasma Bigscreen suitable for TVs and TV boxes and offering an open-source, Linux-based alternative o Android TV. Plasma Bigscreen is community supported, completely free and open-source, and offers an interface fairly similar to Android TV launcher. It is optimized for IR remote control use including (experimental) CEC support, as well as voice control through MyCroft open-source AI & voice assistant and Bluetooth or RF remotes with a built-in microphone such as WeChip G20 or W2, or a USB microphone. By default, Plasmas Bigscreen connects to Mycroft’s Home server, which uses Google’s STT (Speech to text) sending anonymized utterances to Google, but it’s also possible to switch […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
Posted on

ARM9 in 2020 – Meet Microchip SAM9X60 SoC & Evaluation Kit

In my first job, I wrote code for a MIPS processor for VoIP phones, then I switched to NEC/Renesas MCUs for CD and DVD players, before going back to Linux and my first experience with an Arm processor: Cirrus Logic EP9307 with a single ARM9  (ARM920T) core clocked at 200 MHz. That was in 2005, and according to Wikipedia various ARM9 cores were released between 1998 to 2006, and now such cores are not recommended for new IC designs with most companies now building their chips around Arm Cortex-A/M/R cores. At the end of last year, we wrote about Banana Pi BPI-F2S SBC based on Sunplus SP7021 “Plus1” quad-core Cortex-A7 processor with ARM9 and 8051 co-processor. Odd enough but at least the ARM9 core is not the main processor, however, while looking at the upcoming Linux 5.6 Linux kernel log I read an entry about a new SAM9X60 ARM926-based SoC […]

Posted on

$4 ITEAD CC2531 Zigbee USB Dongle Works with Zigbee2MQTT Out of the Box

Some of ITEAD Studio’s Sonoff home automation devices include Zigbee connectivity with for instance Sonoff BASICZBR3 smart switch or a version of Sonoff S31 smart socket with integrated Zigbee. Those devices usually work via a Zigbee enabled gateway that could be a router, Raspberry Pi SBC, or mini PC, which ITEAD did not offer so far. But to help people making their own Zigbee gateway the company is now selling a low-cost ($3.99) CC2531 USB dongle preloaded with CC2531ZNP-Prod firmware (Zigbee coordinator firmware), and compatible with Zigbee2MQTT open-source Zigbee to MQTT bridge once plugged into a PC, Raspberry Pi, or another Linux SBC. ITEAD CC2531 Zigbee USB dongle specifications: MCU – Texas Instruments CC2531F256 Zigbee and IEEE 802.15.4 wireless MCU with 8kB RAM, 256kB Flash pre-loaded with CC2531ZNP-Prod firmware for zigbee2mqtt application Host Interface – USB 2.0 male port Expansion – 8-pin unpopulated header with 8 I/Os Debugging – Debug […]

Posted on

A First Look at Otii Arc Power Supply, Power Meter, and DAQ Unit

I have recently been contacted by a Swedish company called Qoitech about their Otii solution that aims to help hardware and software engineers achieve long battery life for their IoT devices or apps. At the heart of Otii is Otii Arc hardware that acts as a power supply, voltage and current meter, and data acquisition (DAQ) unit. The company has now sent me a unit for review. I’ll start with a first quick post describing the device and checking out the hardware and interfaces, before writing my experience, or a getting started guide, with Otti hardware and software. Otii Arc specifications: Current/Voltage Measurement Current Accuracy – ±(0.1% + 50 nA) Sample Rate – in ±19 mA range:  4 ksps;  in ±2.7 A range: 1 ksps;  in 0 – 5 A range: 1 ksps Analog Bandwidth (3dB) –  400 Hz Voltage Total accuracy –  ±(0.1% + 1.5 mV) Sample Rate –  […]

Posted on

Wio Terminal Features Microchip SAMD51 MCU, Dual-Band WiFI & Bluetooth WiFI, and 2.4″ LCD

Microchip SAM D5x Arm Cortex-M4 microcontrollers were introduced in 2017, and the next year we started to see Arduino or MicroPython compatible board brought to market including Adafruit Metro M4 or Tachyon boards. Seeed Studio has now introduced its own Arduino & MicroPython compatible SAMD51 platform with Wio Terminal also integrating an RTL8720DN dual-band WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 chip, and 2.4″ LCD display. There are also Grove connectors to add sensor modules, and a 40-pin header to use the device like a Raspberry Pi HAT. Wio Terminal features and specifications: MCU – Microchip SAMD51 (ATSAMD51P19) Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 120 MHz (can be overclocked to 200 MHz) with 192KB RAM, 512KB flash Storage – 4MB external SPI flash, MicroSD card slot up to 16GB Display – 2.4″ LCD screen with 320×240 resolution (ILI9341 driver) Audio – Microphone and buzzer Connectivity – Dual-band WiFi 4 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 5.0 via […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
Posted on

Octavo Systems Announces Development Boards based on OSD32MP1 System-in-Package (SiP)

Announced in February 2019, STM32MP1 Cortex-A7/M4 processor family recently got an update with 24 new SKU’s boosting the Cortex A7 core frequency to 800 MHz instead of just 650 MHz for the SoC’s announced last year. One of the first companies to take advantage of the new parts will be Octavo Sytems that unveiled OSD32MP1 system-in-package (SiP) last year combining STM32MP15x MPU, up to 1GB RAM, 4K EEPROM, STPMIC1 power management IC, two oscillators, and over 100 passive components into a single chip. The company also introduced two upcoming development kits for the STM32MP1 based SiP: OSD32MP1-BRK “Flexible Prototyping Platform” and the more featured OSD32MP1-RED evaluation & development board. Both boards are supported by OpenSTLinux which we covered in our previous articles about STM32MP1. OSD32MP1-BRK Breakout board for OSD32MP1 SiP The first board aims to provide easy access to the I/O of the STM32MP1 processor via breadboard compatible headers, and […]

Posted on

ODYSSEY-X86J4105800 SBC Combines Intel Gemini Lake SoC and Arduino Compatible MCU

Would it be good to have an all-in-one Windows platform used to both develop Arduino code and run that code to control I/O of your project? Or alternatively, have a single board computer capable of video processing and real-time I/Os? That platform already exists. UDOO X86 II SBC features an Intel Braswell processor combined with an Arduino Leonardo compatible Microchip ATmega32U4 MCU. But there’s now another, more powerful option courtesy of Seeed Studio with the oddly named ODYSSEY-X86J4105800 SBC equipped with an Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core Gemini Lake processor to run Windows 10 or Linux distributions, and a Microchip SAMD21 ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller compatible with Arduino Zero. ODYSSEY-X86J4105800 SBC specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core processor @ 1.5/2.5 GHz (Turbo) with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 @ 250-750 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage Optional 64GB eMMC flash (fitted to ODYSSEY-X86J4105864 model), 1x SATA III data […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC