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MangOH Red Open Source Hardware Board Targets Cellular Industrial IoT Applications

Sierra Wireless has announced MangOH Red open source hardware platform designed for IIoT (Industrial IoT) applications with a snap-in socket for 2G to 4G & LTE-M/NB-IoT modules, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, various sensors, a 26-pin expansion header, and more. MangOH Red board specifications: Snap-in socket to add any CF3-compatible modules, most of which based on Qualcomm MDM9215 ARM Cortex A5 processor including: Airprime WP7502 LTE Cat 3, HSPA, WCDMA, EDGE/GPRS module Airprime WP7504 LTE Cat 3, HSPA, WCDMA, CDMA module Airprime WP7601 LTE Cat 4 module Airprime WP7603 LTE Cat 4, WCDMA module Airprime WP8548 HSPA, WCDMA, EDGE/GPRS, and GNSS module AirPrime HL6528RD quad-band GSM/GPRS Embedded Wireless Module designed for the automotive market And more…. Storage – micro SD slot Wireless MCU Module – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.2 BLE module with an ARM Cortex-M4 core MCU (Mediatek MT7697) providing access to real-time I/Os Wireless Connectivity “Accessories” Micro SIM card […]

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Micro SD Cards for Development Boards – Classes, Tools, Benchmarks, Reliability, and Tips & Tricks

When people plan to use a development board for their project, they mainly focus on the requirements of the development board itself, as well as software support. But selecting the right accessories may be just as crucial for good performance and stability. For example, selecting a proper power supply is important, as the board may freeze or randmly rebooted if it is not feed at the right voltage. Part of this is selecting a micro USB cable, as you’ll want a cable with minimal resistance which can be achieved through shorter cables and/or a low AWG value. Another important item that can impact stability and performance of the systems are micro SD cards when used to run the operating system in development boards. Understanding SD Card Performance Metrics & Classes Until a few years ago, (Micro) SD cards were primary used to store data such as photos, videos and music. […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Apple Opens HomeKit Accessory Protocol Specification to Non-Commercial Projects

HomeKit is a software framework that allows Apple users to control smart devices with their iPhone or iPad. But so far, you had to become an MFI licensee to design a HomeKit compatible device, you product had to be tested by Apple, and – according to a story on Hackster.io – also required a special cryptographic chip for authentication. Developers creating commercial devices still need to become an MFI license, but Apple has now opened HomeKit Accessory Protocol Specification for non-commercial projects, meaning you can now use the Framework on Arduino, ESP8266 boards,  Raspberry Pi, and other development boards using software authentication. You could already use HomeKit on Raspberry Pi board previously using HomeBridge, but the advantage now is that you don’t need to breach Apple’s terms and conditions, and you can talk directly to your phone without the need for a bridge. If you want the specifications got to […]

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ROCK64 is a Rockchip RK3328 Development Board with Up to 4GB RAM, 4K HDR, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.0

Rockchip RK3328 Android TV boxes such as A5X Plus or A95X R2 have been on the market for a couple of months, but since the processor is rather inexpensive, yet supports 4K UHD video output, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 interfaces, Pine64 has decided to create a new development board called ROCK64 with a form factor similar to Raspberry Pi 3 board. ROCK64 board specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad core Cortex A53 processor with ARM Mali-450MP2 GPU System Memory – 1, 2, or 4 GB LPDDR3 @ 1866 MHz Storage – eMMC flash module socket + micro SD card slot + 128 Mbit SPI flash Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDR10 and HLG support, 3.5mm AV port (composite video + stereo audio) Video Codec – 4K VP9, H.265 and H.264, 1080p VC-1, MPEG-1/2/4, VP6/8 Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet USB – […]

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Amazon AWS Greengrass Brings Local Compute, Messaging, Data Caching & Sync to ARM & x86 Devices

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides cloud computing services to manage & store data from IoT Nodes over the Internet, but in some cases latency may be an issue, and Internet connectivity may not be reliable in all locations. AWS Greengrass provides a solution to those issues by running some of the IoT tasks within the local network in ARM or x86 edge gateways running Linux. You can still manage your devices from AWS cloud, but a Linux gateway running Greengrass Core runtime will be able to run AWS Lambda functions to perform tasks locally, keep device data in sync, and communicate with devices running AWS IoT Device SDK. Greengrass benefits include: Response to Local Events in Near Real-time Offline operation – Connected devices can operate with intermittent connectivity to the cloud, and synchronizes with AWS IoT once it is restored Secure Communication  – AWS Greengrass authenticates and encrypts device data […]

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ACT Power unveils its Project-X A1 production ready development board at Computex 2017

These days developer boards are a dime a dozen, but Taiwanese ACT Power has taken a different approach from most companies out there by making their addition production ready. The Project-X A1 is the first in what is expected to be a series of boards that will utilize the same mezzanine board connectors, to make it easy to change hardware platforms over time. The board on display at Computex is still an early prototype and some things will change before the final product launches. Specification wise we’re looking at: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU @ 600 MHz System Memory – 1 GB DDR3 Storage 8GB eMMC flash, SD card slot Video Output – 1x HDMI 1.4a up to 4K @ 30 Hz Audio Output – HDMI, I2S via pin-header Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet with optional PoE support USB – Two […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Flexible & Adhesive LEGO TAPE Could Be Useful for Makers / DIY Projects

I remember when the Raspberry Pi board first launched, there was no case, and LEGO case designs were popular, and there are certainly various ways you could use LEGO in your projects. But I’ve just discovered LEGO tape that could bring much more flexibility to your design. It’s just like LEGO, but flexible, and with an adhesive flat side, so you can cut it to any size you want, and stick it anywhere. “Back to Realitee” shop sells those for $12.95 for 1 meter tapes. available in various colors. This allows kids to play differently with LEGO by sticking to wall, or making special shapes. If times are stuff, and you’d like to spend less, Aliexpress has similar LEGO tapes, with the cheaper ones without a sticky side, so you’d have to use you own double sided sticky tape. Prices start at $0.89 shipped for 25cm, and $3.79 for 1 […]

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Top Programming Languages & Operating Systems for the Internet of Things

The Eclipse foundation has recently done its IoT Developer Survey answered by 713 developers, where they asked  IoT programming languages, cloud platforms, IoT operating systems, messaging protocols (MQTT, HTTP), IoT hardware architectures and more.  The results have now been published. So let’s have a look at some of the slides, especially with regards to programming languages and operating systems bearing in mind that IoT is a general terms that may apply to sensors, gateways and the cloud, so the survey correctly separated languages for different segments of the IoT ecosystem. C and C++ are still the preferred languages for constrained devices, and developers are normally using more than one language as the total is well over 100%. IoT gateways are more powerful and resourceful (memory/storage) hardware, so it’s no surprise higher level languages like Java and Python join C and C++, with Java being the most used language with 40.8% […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC