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96Boards Mezzanine Add-on Boards with Sensors, Buttons, Relays, etc.. Are Starting to Show Up

Beside excellent software support, and a great community, the two most popular maker boards on the market, namely Arduino and Raspberry Pi, also have many add-on boards, respectively called Shields and Hats, to expand their user and connect sensors, buttons, displays, and so on… Several Linaro’s 96Boards compliant development board launched last year such as LeMaker Hikey and DragonBoard 410c with support for recent versions of Android and Debian, and recently three Mezzanine add-ons boards, as well as somewhat pricey USB to TLL debug board, have started to show up to make it an even more interesting platform. Linker mezzanine card starter kit for 96Boards The first kit is made by LinkSprite and includes Linker Base Mezzanine Card with several sensors and cables. Eight 4-pin connectors with ADC, UART, I2C, and GPIOs allow you connect the eight sensors ad modules provided with the kit:a button module, a red LED module, […]

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Renesas R-Car M2 Porter is a Linux Development Board for Your Car

So far, I always assumed development boards specifically designed for automotive applications would only be available to companies in the car or truck business, but as I wrote about FOSDEM 2016 schedule yesterday, I found out that one of the talk with cover FOSS software stacks that are available for automotive, and usable on hobbyist boards such as Raspberry Pi 2 and Minnowboard Max, but also on Renesas R-Car M2 Porter board specifically designed for automotive infotainment applications. Renesas Port board specifications: SoC – Renesas R-Car M2 dual core ARM Cortex-A15 processor @ 1.5­GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU, Renesas 2D graphics processor, and Multimedia Engine SH­4A @ 780 MHz System Memory – Dual channel 2GB DDR3 Storage – On-board 4 MB SPI, and 64 MB SPI, 1x SATA rev 3.1 connector, 1x SD card slot, and 1x micro SD card slot Video Output / Display I/F – HDMI and LVDS […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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FOSDEM 2016 Schedule – Open Source Hardware and Software Event in Europe

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) is a 2-day event that usually takes place on the first week-end of February in Brussels, but this year it will be on January 30-31. The event brings thousands of developers, hackers, and other person interested in open source technology who present their projects and share ideas. FOSDEM 2016 schedule is now available, and There will be 557 speakers, 612 events, and 50 tracks this year including 7 main tracks: Distros, Enterprise, Hardware, Communications, Miscellaneous, Office, Systems Administration, and Virtualization. So I’ve had a look at some of the talks, especially out of  “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “IoT” devrooms, and prepared my own virtual schedule although I won’t be able to attend. Saturday 10:30 – 10:55 – MIPS, the other side of the embedded by Alexjan Carraturo For many years MIPS processors have been involved in the embedded market, particularly […]

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NavSpark mini is a $6 Arduino Compatible GPS Board

One person asked me whether any of the low cost boards in my Raspberry Pi Zero vs CHIP vs Orange Pi One comparison post came with GPS, and the answer is not without some external hardware. The only low cost boards with GPS I could think of were LinkIt ONE and NavSpark. I wrote about the latter over 2 years ago when the board launched via a crowdfunding campaign, so I went to the update page to find out more about the current status, and found two updates made in the last 6 months, including one about Navspark mini, a tiny board with GPS support, removing the USB port and having fewer I/Os compared to its older brother. NavSpark mini specifications: MCU – Skytraq Venus828F 32bit LEON3 Sparc-V8 MCU @ 100MHz  with IEEE-754 Compliant Floating Point Unit, 1024KB Flash Memory, and 212KB RAM GPS 167 channel Venus 8 engine Uses […]

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Ten Most Popular Posts of 2015 and Statistics on CNX Software

In the second part of 2014, we saw a big jump in performance thanks to Cortex A15 and A17 based SoCs, and higher clocked Cortex A9 processors such as Rockchip RK3288 and Amlogic S812, but in 2015, TV box companies have focused on lowering the price and adding features such as HDMI 2.0, instead of looking for higher and higher CPU and GPU performance, and they’ve also moved to 64-bit ARM platform. Intel also continued its foray into low cost HDMI sticks and mini PCbased on Bay Trail, and later on Cherry Trail based devices.  The development boards story was also very much about lower cosst with the $15 Orange Pi PC, follow a few months later by the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, although people looking for performance at any price still saw the release of Nvidia Jetson TX1 board. It’s was also a big year for IoT with the […]

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ODROID-C2 Amlogic S905 Development Board is in the Works

Hardkernel ODROID-C1 and later ODROID-C1+ boards, both based on Amlogic S805 SoC, have been a popular alternatives to Raspberry Pi 2 board this year. But now that Amlogic S905 quad core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 processor has been available for a few months, people have been wondering whether the Korean company would launch an Amlogic S905 board, and it looks like ODROID-C2 might not be too far off based on firmware files on odroid.in website. The firmware includes a device tree file, which combined with other files give some clues about ODROID-C2 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905 quad core Cortex A53 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with penta-core (3+2) Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM (in doc), 2GB RAM (in Device tree) Storage – 1x micro SD card Video Output – 1x HDMI out USB – 1x USB hub, 1x USB OTG I don’t have much more information […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Hardkernel ODROID-XU4 Development Board Now Supports Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Android 6.0 source code was released in October, but so far few development boards are supporting it properly. There’s Android 6.0 for Raspberry Pi 2, but without GPU hardware acceleration is not really usable, and Intrinsyc Open-Q 820 board that will start shipping in a few days with Android 6.0 on Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, is pricey and with limited availability. So there are only two options that I’m aware of LeMaker Hikey with Android 6.0 as part of the Reference Platform Release 2015.12, and Hardkernel ODROID-XU4 with an unofficial port for Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow by voodik odroid community member, which should also work for ODROID-XU3 and XU3 Lite boards. Despite being an alpha version, the current image looks pretty good, as most required features seem implemented: Android 6.0.1 Lollipop Cyanogenmod 13.0 with Linux kernel 3.10.9 OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.0 (GPU acceleration) OpenCL 1.1 EP (GPU acceleration) Multi-user feature is enabled […]

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GoWarrior Tiger Development Board with ALi M3733 SoC To Support Android, Debian and FreeRTOS

There was a time when development boards were really hard to get for individuals with companies not wanting to waste their time with hobbyists, but the maker revolution changed all that, and now many companies want to get involved in “open source” board for the developer’s community. The latest board trying to emulate the Raspberry Pi is GoWarrior Tiger powered by ALi M3733 dual core cortex A9 processor with 1GB RAM, 4GB Flash, Ethernet and WiFi, HDMI and AV output, and two 40-pin expansion headers. Tiger board specifications: SoC – ALi M3733-AFAAA dual Cortex A9 processor @ 1.0 GHz with  ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3; dual channel 1600 MT/s, 800MHz Storage – 4GB on-board NAND Flash + micro SD slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 1.4 port up to 1080p, with support for HDCP and CEC, 3.5 mm AV jack Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC