Posted on

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 […]

Posted on

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 […]

ArmSoM CM5 - Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC
Posted on

Dragino OLG01 Outdoor Single Channel LoRa Gateway Runs OpenWrt, Supports Passive PoE

Dragino Technology, a Shenzhen based startup focusing on the Internet of Things, had already designed LoRa shields & Hats for Arduino & Raspberry Pi boards which can be useful for LoRa nodes, but the company has now launched Dragino OLG01 LoRa gateway running OpenWrt that communicates with nodes over LoRa, and to the cloud using WiFi, Ethernet, or 3G/4G. Dragino OLG01 specifications: WiSoC – Atheros AR9331 MIPS processor @ 400MHz System Memory – 64MB RAM Storage – 16MB flash MCU – Atmel ATMega328P AVR MCU with 32KB flash, 2KB SRAM Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi with antenna 2x 10/100M Ethernet with support for passive PoE Optional 3G/4G module connected to internal USB socket (TBC) Semtech SX1276/78 LoRa wireless module + SMA connector (antenna not provided) up to 5~10 km range USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port Power Supply – 12V DC power jack or PoE Three models are offered with […]

Posted on

FOSDEM 2017 Open Source Meeting Schedule

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) is a 2-day free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate that happens on the first week-end of February, meaning it will take place on February 4 & 5, 2017 this year. FOSDEM 2017 will features 608 speakers, 653 events, and 54 tracks, with 6 main tracks namely: Architectures, Building, Cloud, Documentation, Miscellaneous, and Security & Encryption. I won’t be there, but it’s always interesting to look at the schedule, and I made my own virtual schedule focusing especially on talks from “Embedded, mobile and automotive” and “Internet of Things” devrooms. Saturday 4, 2017 11:00 – 11:25 – Does your coffee machine speaks Bocce; Teach your IoT thing to speak Modbus and it will not stop talking, by Yaacov Zamir There are many IoT dashboards out on the web, most will require network connection to a server far […]

Posted on

How to Use Sonoff POW ESP8266 WiFi Power Switch with MQTT and ThingSpeak

ITEAD Studio’s Sonoff is a family of cheap home automation products based on ESP8266 WiSoC, and I’ve already tested Sonoff TH16 wireless switch with a humidity and temperature sensor using the stock firmware and eWelink app for Android or iOS. It works, but up to recently it required a registration to a cloud service (the company will now allow use from the local network), and the source code is closed. So for the second device under review, namely Sonoff POW wireless switch with a power consumption monitor, I decided to install ESPurna firmware working on ESP8266 Sonoff devices and NodeMCU, as it’s open source, supports Sonoff POW natively, includes a web interface to control the device from the LAN, and includes an MQTT client. MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a lightweight publish/subscribe messaging protocol used to control IoT sensors and devices, and it’s a popular method to gather data […]

Posted on

UP Squared Apollo Lake Development Board Comes with Up to 8GB RAM, 128 GB Storage for 89 Euros and Up (Crowdfunding)

AAEON Introduced a Intel Atom X5 based Raspberry Pi-like development board named “UP Board” last year that sold for as low as 89 Euros via a Kickstarter campaign. The company is now back with the first Apollo Lake development board for makers I’ve seen so far, powered by either a dual core Celeron N3350 or a quad core Pentium N4200 processor, featuring an Altera MAX 10 FPGA, and called UP2 (“UP Squared”). There are six variants of UP Squared board sharing most of the same technical specifications: SoC Intel Celeron N3350 dual core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.4 GHz with 12 EU Intel HD graphics 500 @ 200 MHz / 650 MHz (6W TDP) Intel Pentium N4200 quad core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.5 GHz with 18 EU Intel HD graphics 505 @ 200 MHz / 750 MHz (6W TDP) FPGA – Altera Max […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
Posted on

Fujitsu Launches F-Cue 96Boards Compliant Board Powered by SocioNext MB86S71 Processor

While 96Boards platforms may not be selling like Raspberry Pi boards, the form factor is quite popular with vendors, as there are now around 10 development board either directly supported by 96Boards, or at least compliant for the form factor. Fujitsu has also made their own 96Boards compliant F-Cue board powered by SocioNext MB86S71 quad core Cortex A15/A7 processor, as well as F-Cue extension board with Ethernet & PCIe interfaces. F-Cue board specifications: SoC – Socionext MB86S71 big.LITTLE quad core processor with 2x Cortex-A15 cores @ 1.2GHz, 2x Cortex-A7 cores @ 800MHz, and Mali-T624 GPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 1333MHz Storage – 16GB eMMC 4.51 flash, micro SD 3.0 UHS-I slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 1.4b Multimedia Capabilities – 1080p@30fps encode/decode, 4 stream H.264 decode; 32k x 32k JPEG codec Connectivity – 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi , Bluetooth 4.2 USB –  1x USB 3.0 host port, 1x USB […]

Posted on

The Eclipse Foundation Releases Open Source Smart Home & IoT Gateway Frameworks, MQTT & oneM2M Implementations

The Eclipse Internet of Things (IoT) Working Group has released – or soon will be releasing – four open source projects for the Internet of Things with Eclipse SmartHome 0.8 framework, Eclipse Kura 2.0 IoT gateway framework, Eclipse Paho 1.2 MQTT & MQTT-SN clients, and Eclipse OM2M 1.0 implementation of oneM2M standard. Eclipse SmartHome 0.8 Eclipse SmartHome is a framework for smart home solutions that runs on embedded devices, including Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black or Intel Edison development boards. The latest SmartHome 0.8 release includes a new REST API and corresponding “Paper UI” administration interface, support for new devices including Sonos speakers, LIFX bulbs, Belkin WeMo devices, digitalSTROM systems, EnOcean devices (via a new OSGi EnOcean Base Driver) and others, as well as a new rule engine supporting templates for beginners, JavaScript for automation rules and graphical rule editors. You can find more details on Eclipse SmartHome page, and/or download SmartHome 0.8, […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products