CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 22, 2021June 24, 2021 by Saumitra Jagdale - 4 Comments

PC-based Logic Analyzers Comparison: PGY-LA-EMBD vs Logic16 Pro vs SP209

Comparison of PGY-LA-EMBD vs Logic16 Pro vs SP209

Building an embedded system requires multiple devices to communicate with the central processor, generally through an SPI or I2C bus. If your system is quite complex and things don’t work out as expected, then a Logic Analyzer might save your day. So, choosing the correct Logic Analyzer is critical to a successful project. This article gives a PC-based Logic Analyzers comparison, and we’ll compare products from three companies: Prodigy Technovations, Saleae, and Ikalogic. Factors to keep in mind while selecting a Logic Analyzer Before we dive into the comparison part, we should be aware of a few points based on which we’ll compare them. Logic analyzers come with a certain number of channels. The higher the number of channels is, the costlier is the product. So, select the number of channels appropriately depending on the size of your project. Several other technical specifications should also be considered, which are listed […]

June 22, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Posture correction smart sensor helps you sit or stand upright

It’s easy to adopt a bad posture either while sitting in front of a computer or while walking and your mobile, and over time this may lead to unaesthetic and/or painful postural disorders. To solve this issue, a posture correction smart sensor may be used in place of a posture belt with what looks like a GPS tracker placed on the back of the patient, and which notifies bad postures by vibrating and to your smartphone depending on a user-configured angle range. Specifications listed for the posture-correction-smart-sensor: Sensor – Unnamed Bosch gravity sensor Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.2 Misc Medical-grade gel patch to attach the device to the bag Vibration motor Battery – 200mAh; 30 minutes charge good for about 5 days when using it for about 8 hours per day Dimensions – 6 x 4 x 1.2 cm Weight – 16 grams. The device ships with a micro USB cable […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

June 22, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Software bills of materials (SBOM) could help improve cybersecurity

There have been some widely publicized hacks in recent months including the SolarWinds hack and the Colonial pipeline cyber attack. Those two were particularly costly and disruptive, and the US government issued an executive order that lists some of the requirements to stretch cybersecurity. Since there are many attach vectors, the list of requirements is fairly long, but one that caught my eyes in the “Enhancing Software Supply Chain Security” section reads as follows: (vii) providing a purchaser a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for each product directly or by publishing it on a public website; Bills of materials (BoM) are commonly used for hardware design, but the idea behind a software bill of materials is to make sure outdated software libraries with known vulnerabilities are not included in a specific program. The 2021 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis (OSSRA) report exposes vulnerabilities and license conflicts found in more […]

June 22, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Software-based neural video decoder leverages AI accelerator on Snapdragon 888

Sometimes hardware blocks got to work on tasks they were not initially designed to handle. For example, AI inference used to be mostly offloaded to the GPU before neural network accelerators became more common in SoC’s. Qualcomm AI Research has now showcased a software-based neural video decoder that leverages both the CPU and AI engine in Snapdragon 888 processor to decode a 1280×704 HD video at over 30 fps without any help from the video decoding unit. The neural video decoder is still a work in progress as it only supports intra frame decoding, and inter frame decoding is being worked on. That means each frame is currently decoded independently without taking into account small changes between frames as all other video codecs do. The CPU handles parallel entropy decoding while the decoder network is accelerated on the 6th generation Qualcomm AI Engine found in Snapdragon 888 mobile platform. This […]

June 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Olimex STM32MP1 SoM and evaluation board support Linux 5.10

Olimex has just announced the availability of an STMicro STM32MP1 Cortex-A7/M4 powered system-on-module (SoM) and an evaluator board with respectively STMP15X-SOM available in extended and industrial temperature variants, as well as STMP1(A13)-EVB evaluation board that works with the new STM32MP1 module, as well as earlier A13-SOM Allwinner A13 based system-on-module. Beyond the hardware, the company told us their upcoming STMP1-OLinuXino-LIME2 SBC could support mainline Linux in February, and the company prepared some Linux 5.10 based Debian Buster and Ubuntu Focal images which are now also available for the STMP15X-SOM module. STMP15X-SOM system-on-module Specifications: SoC – STMicro STM32MP151/153/157 dual-core Cortex-A7 @ 650 to 800MHz and Arn Cortex-M4 real-time core @ 209 MHz System Memory – 256 or 512 MB DDR3L Storage – MicroSD card socket Audio – On-module audio codec Board-to-board connectors GPIO-1 40-pin connector with 39 GPIOs, 3x UARTs, 1x QuadSPI, 2x I2C, 2x eMMC GPIO-2 10-pin connector with USB […]

June 21, 2021June 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

$3.5 RV-Debugger Plus UART & JTAG debug board comes with BL702 Zigbee & BLE RISC-V SoC

USB to UART debug boards are a necessity for anyone playing with single board computers, at least when using bleeding-edge bootloader or Linux kernel where the target board may not always boot, or when troubleshooting booting problems. Those are often based on FDTI or WCH chips, but Sipeed RV-Debugger Plus features Bouffalo Lab BL702 Zigbee & Bluetooth LE RISC-V SoC instead and offers both UART and JTAG interfaces. So let’s have a look at both the board and SoC. Sipeed RV-Debugger Plus USB to TLL debug boards are meant to be simple and that’s the case for Sipeed latest BL702 board as it comes with a 12-pin connector with Tx/Rx for UART, 8 signals for JTAG, plus 5V, 3.3V, and GND power signals. We can also see pads for Tx/Rx/CTS, a boot button, a crystal oscillator, and a USB-C port to connect to the host computer. What I don’t see […]

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

10BASE-T1L Ethernet chips enable up to 1.7 kilometer long Ethernet cables

The maximum length of Ethernet cables used to be 100 meters. While that may be more than enough for most applications, it does not cut it for industrial communication applications. So the 10BASE-T1L Ethernet physical layer standard (IEEE 802.3cg-2019) was approved by the IEEE on November 7, 2019 to allow for cables over one kilometer using a single twisted-pair cable. Analog Devices has launched two 10BASE-T1L Ethernet chips with ADIN1100 Ethernet PHY and ADIN1110 Ethernet MAC-PHY that allow for up to 1.7 kilometer long Ethernet cables. Let’s check out ADIN1100 specifications for reference: 10BASE-T1L IEEE Std 802.3cg-2019 compliant Cable Reach 1700 meters+ with 1.0 V pk-pk 1700 meters+ with 2.4 V pk-pk Auto-Negotiation capability Supports intrinsic safety applications MII, RMII & RGMII MAC interfaces MDIO Management Interface Unmanaged configuration using pin strapping including: Master/Slave selection Transmit amplitude PHY address 25 MHz crystal oscillator/25 MHz external clock input (50 MHz external […]

June 21, 2021July 12, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

RasPad 3 Review – Part 2: A Raspberry Pi 4 mini PC with integrated display

I started RasPad 3 review last week with an unboxing of the tablet shell for Raspberry Pi 4, together with assembly instructions, and a first boot after flashing Raspad OS to the system. In the first part of the review, I mentioned that I’d probably focus the remainder of the review on Ezblock Studio visual programming IDE, as the rest of the software is almost the same as using a standard Raspberry Pi 4, the other difference being the touchscreen-friendly RasPad launcher. But Sunfounder explained to me it would be hard to check out Ezblock as it’s designed to control robots and other hardware platforms, and requires an extra HAT (see Kickstarter campaign) to allow the Ezblock APP to connect through Bluetooth (it cannot be directly linked to Raspberry Pi through the built-in Bluetooth). Here’s an example of a robot that is compatible with Ezblock Studio: Picar-X. Finally, I was […]