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Engimusing DIY Home Automation Modules Are Managed with openHAB installed on ODROID-C1 Board (Crowdfunding)

Engimusing has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for their home automation solutions comprised of tiny modules (20x20mm) based on Silicon Labs Gecko EFM32 MCUs, some sensor modules and a server based on ODROID-C1 board and enclosure pre-installed and configured with openHAB open source home automation software. There are not that many technical details about the EFM32 modules, but they come into two variants: standalone & DF11-10 I/O, the latter allowing you to vertically stack multiple modules. This video shows how DF11-10 IO connectors work. The modules are said to be programmable with the Arduino IDE. The openHAB server is a standard ODROID-C1 board (Amlogic S805, 1GB RAM) with 4GB flash (eMMC or micro SD), and a black enclosure. If you value your money more than your time, and/or already have another computer or board (Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black…) that runs Linux, you could also install and configure openHAB by […]

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Radxa Rock Lite Board Price Drops to $39

When the new Radxa Rock Lite was announced for $59 in September 2014, it was one of the most inexpensive quad core ARM Linux development board available on the market. But ODROID-C1 board in December 2014, and especially Raspberry Pi 2 board in February 2015 changed all that, as these two quad core boards sell for $35 before shipping and taxes. So the company has now decided to drop the price to $39 for the Radxa Rock Lite board. Let’s remind us of Radxa Rock Lite specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3188 ARM Cortex-A9 quad core @ 1.6Ghz + Mali-400 MP4 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 @ 800Mhz Storage – micro-SD SDXC up to 128GB Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p@60hz, and AV output. LVDS interface. Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet port, WiFi 150Mbps 802.11b/g/n with antenna Audio I/O – Audio S/PDIF, headphone jack Camera – CSI interface USB […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Kodi 15 Alpha 1 Adds Support for H.265 on Android, Drops Some Older OS Versions and Hardware

Kodi 15 Isengard got its first public Alpha release, with 400 pull-request for code merges, 1322 commits and thousands of code lines changed compared to Kodi 14 release with modifications of all operating systems ports, and changes to newer OS versions. Major changes for Kodi 15.0 Alpha 1 include: Added adaptive seeking through audio and video playback, also know as “skip steps” Android HEVC H.265 HW decode support for some chipsets Improved webserver caching control External subtitles over UPnP Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as “update library” Allow different sort orders for different sort methods Start of integration binary add-ons and changing the build system around it Improved CC (Closed Captions) support for Live TV ffmpeg 2.5.4 update Remove remaining SDL code New OS Requirements: Minimal Mac OSX 10.7 Lion requirements (Only OSX 64-bit builds provided, no more 32bit builds) Minimal […]

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GroBotz Interactive Robot Project is Made of Easy to Assemble Smart Blocks (Crowdfunding)

GroBotz makes me think of Lego applied to robotics. The project consists of modules such as motors, sensors, buttons, switches, or cameras that snap together in order to create a robot on wheels, games, toys, a musical instrument, or whatever idea you may have, and the hardware is then programmed using a graphical user interface. A Raspberry Pi board is used for the brain of the robot, and Microchip PIC MCUs for the smart blocks. The software is programmed in C# using Xamarin, the user interface is based on Unity, OpenCV is used for image processing, and during development a plastic part where printed with Makerbot, and schematics and PCB layout designed with CadSoft EAGLE. The company has now come up with a number of modules as shown in the picture below. Your robot can then be controlled over Wi-Fi with GroBotz app which works on Windows, Mac OS, iOs, […]

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Voltera V-One is a Low Cost PCB Printer and Solder Paste Dispenser (Crowdfunding)

The traditional hardware development cycle involve sending PCB Gerber files to a manufacturer, wait a few days (or weeks), get the boards back, find and fix bugs, send a new revision of the gerber files to the manufacturer and so on. This wastes a lot of time, so PCB printers capable of handline single and dual layer PCBs have started to see the light of the day, for example with BotFactory Squink. The latter can also do pick and place, but costs over $3,500. Luckily if you’d like something cheaper, Voltera V-One will do many of the same tasks, for but for only $1,500. Voltera V-One specifications: Minimum Trace Width – 8mil (~0.2mm) Minimum Passive Size – 0603 (0402 for solder paste) Minimum Pin-to-Pin Pitch – 0.8mm (0.5mm for solder paste) Resistance – >12 mOhm/sq @ 70um height Max Heated Bed Temperature – 250C Heated Bed Ramp Rate – ~2C/s […]

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Power Consumption of Amlogic S812 and Rockchip RK3288 TV Boxes

The recent post comparing the power consumption of ODROID-C1 vs Raspberry Pi boards, as made me want to give another try at power consumption measurements. Regular reader already know I made a power measurement board and cables capable of hading different connectors (micro USB, mini USB, power barrels,  etc..), but eventually it failed to deliver enough current to the boards for any meaning testing. But since I now have a better power supply, and multi-meter, it was worth another try, especially since I could draw some pretty charts. I decided to test the three most popular Chinese SoCs for mini PCs namely Amlogic S812 (4x Cortex A9), Rockchip RK3288 (4x Cortex A17), and Allwinner A80 (4x Cortex A15 + 4x Cortex A7) using respectively Eny M8S, Open Hour Chameleon, and A80 OptimusBoard. If you are paying attention, you must have noticed Allwinner A80 is not part of the title, that […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Linux 3.19 Release – Main Changes, ARM and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 3.19 yesterday: So nothing all that exciting happened, and while I was tempted a couple of times to do an rc8, there really wasn’t any reason for it. Just as an example, Sasha Levin used KASan and found an interesting bug in paravirtualized spinlocks, but realistically it’s been around forever, and it’s not even clear that it can really ever trigger in practice. We’ll get it fixed, and mark it for stable, and tempting as it was, it wasn’t really a reason to delay 3.19. And the actual fixes that went in (see appended shortlog) were all fairly small, with the exception of some medium-sized infiniband changes that were all reverting code that just wasn’t ready. So it’s out there – go and get it. And as a result, the merge window for 3.20 is obviously also now open. Linus Linux 3.18 improved performance of […]

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FOSDEM 2015 Schedule – January 31 – February 1 2015

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) takes place every year during the first week-end of February. This year the developer-oriented event expects to bring over 5000 geeks to share ideas and collaborate on open source projects. Contrary to most other events, it’s free to attend, and you don’t even need to register, just show up. FOSDEM 2015 will take place on January 31- February 1 in Brussels. There will be 551 sessions divided into 5 keynotes, 40 lightning talks, 6 certification exams, and with the bulk being developer rooms and main tracks,  divided into 7 main tracks this year: Languages, Performance, Time, Typesetting, Hardware, Security and Miscellaneous. I’m not going to attend, but it’s still interested to see what will be talked about, and I’ve concocted my own little virtual program out of the main tracks and developers’ rooms. There’s a few minutes overlap between some talks […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC