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Three Add-on Boards for UP Board and UP Squared – UP-AUDIO HAT, UP-CAMERA HAT, UP-POE HAT

AAEON has announced three add-on boards for their Intel based UP board (Cherry Trail) and UP Squared board (Apollo Lake): UP-AUDIO HAT –  Features external ports for a microphone and speakers/headphones UP-CAMERA HAT – Comes with two FPC/FFC connectors for 2M security camera UP-POE HAT – Adds WAN and LAN Gigabit Ethernet ports and PoE support UP-AUDIO HAT AAEON’s UP-Audio HAT currently only works with UP board, and features the following: Audio Codec – Realtek ALC5672 3.5mm Audio Jacks – 1x Line out, 1x MIC Headers – 2x speaker Built-in Components – 2x digital microphones, 1x buzzer Connects to board via 40-pin GPIO female header Dimensions – 85 mm x 56 mm The board is supported in Windows 10, Android 6, and Ubuntu 16.04. UP-CAMERA HAT The camera board works with UP Board, UP Squared and UP Core boards. UP-CAMERA HAT specifications & features: 2x MIPI CSI-2/ DSI DPHY Re-timer […]

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Armbian History, Infrastructure, and Progress Report

Many of us rely on Armbian Debian and Ubuntu images for our cheap Arm development boards since they usually offer better support than vendor supplied firmware images. The community has just updated Armbian website, but the thing that caught my eye in the announcement was a link to a 45-minute presentation by Igor Pečovnik, working full-time on the project, that details the history about Armbian, and provides a relatively recent progress update as it was made at BalCCon – Balkan Computer Congress in November 2017. I’ve embedded the video further below, but first I’ll provide summary of the key point made during the presentation. It all started with Cubieboard (A20) as Igor was trying to fix some issues, and learn how to improve software support on the board. Several people joined his efforts on Cubieboard forums, and eventually Armbian website launched in mid 2014 running on the Cubieboard then ODROID-XU4 […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Measy RCA220 is a $35 Wireless AV Transmitter / Receiver Kit with a 200m Range

There are several ways to send video & audio data over a distance without using long cables, from professional DVB-T transmitters with up to 10km range, to cheaper DIY SDR solutions with a shorter range , and HDMI transmitters leveraging your existing electrical cables. Those all work for different target applications (drones, video signal extender), but cost at least a few hundred dollars. If you just intend to transmit composite video (PAL/NTSC) and audio within a house or building, Measy RCA220 will be a more cost effective solution with a range of up to 200 meters. Measy RCA220 AV transmitter / receiver specifications: Connectivity – 2.4GHz wireless transmission with up to 200m range; built-in antenna, 8x selectable channels Video / Audio Ports Transmitter – RCA composite input, 2x RCA L/R audio input Receiver – RCA composite output, 2x RCA L/R audio output Misc – IR jack, channel selection button, front […]

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Ugoos Releases Android 7.1.2 Nougat (Beta) for Rockchip RK3288 TV Boxes

Rockchip RK3288 quad core Arm Cortex A17 processor was first released in early 2014 with Android 4.4, and TV boxes that are still sold with the processor – e.g. Lenovo G66 – often still come with Android 4.4 or Android 5.1, and development boards do barely better as ASUS Tinker Board supports Android 6.0.1, while Firefly-RK3288 may never get its expected Marshmallow update. However, Ugoos decided to support their RK3288 TV boxes for a longer time, and has now released a beta version of Android 7.1.2 firmware for Ugoos UM3, UT3, and UT3s TV boxes. Some of the features and Ugoos specific settings available in the firmware include: CIFS & NFS Clients Support, Samba Server Masked HDMI Screen Rotation Root access Hardware Monitor Wireless Assistant Gamepad Settings Debug Settings User Scripts USB Mode Settings If you want more details about what each setting does, read the post about Ugoos settings. […]

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Linux 4.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.16: So the take from final week of the 4.16 release looks a lot like rc7, in that about half of it is networking. If it wasn’t for that, it would all be very small and calm. We had a number of fixes and cleanups elsewhere, but none of it made me go “uhhuh, better let this soak for another week”. And davem didn’t think the networking was a reason to delay the release, so I’m not. End result: 4.16 is out, and the merge window for 4.17 is open and I’ll start doing pull requests tomorrow. Outside of networking, most of the last week was various arch fixlets (powerpc, arm, x86, arm64), some driver fixes (mainly scsi and rdma) and misc other noise (documentation, vm, perf). The appended shortlog gives an overview of the details (again, this is only the small stuff in […]

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A List of Cellular IoT Development Boards

We’re starting to have a decent choice of cellular development boards, and as the number of products is getting larger having some sort of list would be useful. That’s exactly what Hologram has done. While the list is not quite exhaustive, they’ve pushed the CSV list to Github, and plans to update it. Hologram also encourages pull requests, so manufacturers may consider updating it with their own boards. The list focuses on development boards acting as cellular IoT endpoints, so you won’t find gateways, WiFi hotspots, end-user devices, and modules that needs to be soldered onto your own board. I have imported the list to WordPress to make it searchable, let people select the number of rows to display, and customize visible fields. The table is not automatically synchronized, so for the latest version always check out Github.

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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RushUp KITRA Board Family is based on Samsung Artik 020, Artik 520/530, or Artik 710 Modules

Samsung first announced their Artik IoT modules almost three years ago,  and until recently most Artik related products or development kits came from Samsung themselves, with no third party involved. But this has started to change recently with announcements such a Seeed Studio Eagleye 530s low cost development board based on Artik 530 module, and Resin.io Project Fin combining RPI CM3L module with an Artik 020 module for low power Bluetooth connectivity. But as I flicked through Resin.io supported hardware, I discovered they also supported Linux powered Artik 520 and Artik1020 module,  as well as some new “KITRA” boards I had never heard of, and if we visit RushUp company website, we can see they have a bunch of Kutra boards and one IoT gateway based on Artik modules: KITRA 520 – Samsung ARTIK 520 product accelerator for advanced IoT KITRA 710 – Samsung ARTIK 710 product accelerator for advanced multimedia […]

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Gumstix Chatterbox is a Customizable, AVS-Ready Development Platform based on Toradex Colibri i.MX7 SoM

There are several official Amazon Voice Service (AVS) development kits, and we’ve already covered a few of them with the likes of Allwinner 3-Mic Far Field AVS Development Kit or Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit, but you can also design your own board conformant to Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service functional design guide. That’s exactly what Gumstix has done with Chatterbox carrier board for Toradex Colibri i.MX7 system-on-module powered by NXP i.MX7 Arm Cortex A7 processor. Designed in Geppeto, the board includes a 2.5-Watt speaker driver, an on-board microphone, and Line IN and headphone jacks, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and Ethernet for connectivity.   Gumstix Chatterbox specifications: Colibri iMX7 SO-DIMM socket Storage – microSD card slot Audio – On-board microphone; 2.5W speaker driver; Line-in & headphone jacks Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi & Bluetooth 4.1 LE (TI WiLink8 WL1831) with u.FL antenna connector USB – 1x micro USB […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC