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Android Things Developer Preview 4 Released with Google Assistant SDK Support

Earlier this month, Google released a preview of the Google Assistant SDK that works on boards running Debian like the Raspberry Pi 3, and even launched AIY Project Voice Kit for the later. You can now play with Google Assistant on Android Things as the company has just released Android Things Developer Preview 4 with support for Google Assistant SDK. The operating systems works on any Android Things certified devices, but the example instructions  for Google Assistant API on Android Things also include steps to use Raspberry Pi 3 board together with AIY Projects Voice kit. The developer preview 4 also adds I2S to the peripheral I/O API and is demonstrated in the aforementioned example, and new hardware support with NXP i.MX7D based Pico Board equipped WiFi & Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB ports, an audio jack, and an I/O expansion port. Android Things DP4 also brings the ability for developers to […]

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Creality CR-10 3D Printer Review – Part 2: Tips & Tricks, Octoprint, and Craftware

Hey Karl again with part 2 of my 3D printing experience with the CR-10, after the first part describing CR-10 3D printer setup and first prints. The intent is to share my experiences with the CR-10 with the perspective from a noob. I have to say if you are hard heading like I am, and do a lot of research but don’t fully listen to what you are reading, you are going to waste a lot of filament and time. I spent a couple hours a day for weeks with trial and error and watching the printer and how it works adjusting about a billion settings and testing. I am hoping this will help any current or future CR-10 owner speed up the learning curve. Measuring Filament Diameter The single biggest thing to improve my print quality I found was measuring the filament. I read about this several times but […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Wandboard QuadPLUS Development Board Gets i.MX 6QuadPlus Processor, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1

The first Wandboard development boards launched in 2012 nearly 5 years ago based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo and Dual processor, with Wandboard Quad launched a few months later. The boards were fairly popular at the time due to their better specifications, and especially Freescale’s much better documentation and software compared to the competition such as Broadcom (Raspberry Pi) and Allwinner (Cubieboard). Since the boards are based on TechNexion EDM system-on-modules they could also be used by companies working on their own products based on the system-on-module. It’s also a good platform if you want to test various version of Android, because the company released Jelly Bean, Kitkat, Lollipop, and Marshmallow images for the boards, and I’m expecting a Lollipop version soon. However, albeit the company worked on other NXP boards such as PICO-IM6UL Android Things, there had not been any hardware upgrade for Wandboard for nearly 4 years, but last […]

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MAXOAK K2 Laptop Power Bank Review – Part 2: Tests with Laptops, Phones and Development Boards

MAXOAK K2 is a large capacity (50,000 mAh) power bank designed for laptop with ~20V and 12V outputs, but it can also charge USB devices thanks to its 4 USB ports. Since I’ve already checkout the device and specifications in the first part of the review, I’ll report results from my tests with the power bank in the last couple of weeks. Since the power bank had some charge, more exactly between 50 and 75% (2x LEDs on, 1x LED blinking, 1x LED off), I decided to start by charging my phone, Vernee Apollo Lite, which is equipped with a 3,180 mAh battery. So I connected the phone to one of the two 5V/2.1A USB port, together with USB Charger Doctor to monitor voltage and current, and with 50% charge, the phone would draw around 5.07V @ 1.15 A. Note that the voltage and amperage will change depending on battery […]

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ESP8266, Mongoose OS & Grove Sensors – An Alternative Solution for Hackathons

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Cesanta If you walked into any Hardware hackathon over the last year, you would see they are about innovation and bringing new ideas to this world and most of them are centered around the connected devices nowadays. However, just walk the floor, talk to the teams and you can quickly see an elephant in the room. The Hackathons are about connected devices, but with the ‘recommended’ and frequently sponsored hardware distributed to the teams such as Intel Galileo, Raspberry Pi, etc…. developers may struggle for a long time to even connect it to the cloud! Not to mention the innovation is usually hindered by a tedious environment setup which takes hours, things to learn about the specific hardware and how it can be programmed using low level languages. So many teams spent most of the time fighting with those issues and oftentimes still […]

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Azul Systems’ Zulu Embedded is a Build of OpenJDK for ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and x86 Compliant with Java SE standard

Yesterday as I wrote about the Embedded Systems Conference 2017 schedule I came across a potentially interesting talk entitled “Building A Brain With Raspberry Pi and Zulu Embedded JVM” by Azul Systems that will explain how to build a brain emulator using a cluster of Raspberry Pi boards. I wanted to find more about it, but I have not been able to find any details about the project/demo at this stage. However, I could still learn a bit more about Zulu Embedded, which is said to be an open source Java Virtual Machine based on OpenJDK, compliant with Java SE standard, working on 32-bit & 64-bit ARM & x86, MIPS, and PowerPC, as well as  multiple operating systems. Some of the key features of Zulu Embedded include: Java Support – Java 6, 7, 8, and 9 when available Java Configurations – Headless, headful, or compact Java Compact Profiles Hardware – […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Embedded Systems Conference 2017 Schedule – May 3-4

The Embedded Systems Conference 2017 will take place over two days in Boston, US on May 3-4, and the organizers have published the schedule of the event. Even if you’re not going to attend, you’ll often learn something or find new information by just checking out the talks and abstracts, so I’ve created my own virtual schedule with some of the most interesting sessions. Wednesday, May 3rd 08:00 – 08:45 – Combining OpenCV and High Level Synthesis to Accelerate your FPGA / SoC EV Application by Adam Taylor, Adiuvo Engineering & Training Ltd This session will demonstrate how you can combine commonly used Open source frameworks such as OpenCV with High Level Synthesis to generate a embedded vision system using FPGA / SoC. The combination of OpenCV and HLS allows for a much faster algorithm development time and consequently a faster time to market for the end application. 09:00 – 09:45 […]

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Is NodeMCU ESP-32S Board Now Selling for $8.50 Shipped?

ESP32 SoC with WiFi and Bluetooth launched last September for around $3, followed soon after by ESP32 modules for $7, and a few weeks later, easier to use ESP32 development boards were introduced, but sold for around $20 likely due a mismatch between supply and demand. That’s not overly expensive, but in a world of $4 ESP8266 boards and $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W with Linux, WiFi and Bluetooth, it may feel that way. But today, I noticed DealExtreme sold GeekWorm ESP32 board with ESP-WROOM-32 module for just $11.64 shipped. That’s good progress, but surely Aliexpress must now have cheaper options, and sure enough, I could find NodeMCU ESP-32S board (now confirmed NOT to be an official NodeMCU devkit) sold for $6.95 + shipping, which brought the price up to about $8.50. NodeMCU ESP-32S specifications: Wireless Module – ESP-WROOM-32 with Espressig ESP32 dual core processor with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC