iRobot Ava 500 Telepresence Robot Roams Autonomously, Recharges Itself

Earlier this week, I watched Edward Snowden interview at TED2014 in Vancouver. For obvious reason he was not physically in Canada, but instead used some telepresence robots  that could be controlled remotely, and allowed Snowden to move around and see the audience. I thought I may have to look into this type of solutions to write in CNX Spftware, but I eventially did not need to as Linux Gizmos wrote about a similar product called iRobot Ava 500. This robot will automatically learn about its environment, roam the office or factory floor as needed for meetings, and even go back to a docking station to recharge itself when it’s needed. The pictures above show Ava 500 with Cisco Telepresence EX60 solutions that comes with the following specifications: Cisco TelePresence EX60 display 21.5″ LCD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 aspect ratio, 1000:1 contrast ratio 170° viewing angle 5ms response time Cisco TelePresence […]

Mi World PCS is a Portable ARM mini PC with the Specifications of an High-end Smartphone (Crowdfunding)

Most ARM based mini PCs sell because they are cheap, low power and come in a small form factor. At about $600, Mi World PCS (Portable Computer System) is not cheap, but thanks to its battery it’s fully portable, and it has specifications similar to the latest flagship smartphones with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core processor, 2 GB RAM, wireless charging support, and more. Mi World PCS specifications: SoC – Qualcommon Snapdragon 800 (8074) quad core Krait processor up to 2.4 GHz with Adreno 330 GPU, Hexagon QDSP6 DSP System Memory – 2 GB DDR3 memory Storage – 64 to 512 GB hot swappable SD RAID storage Video Output – Micro-HDMI for output in displays up to 4k Connectivity – Wi-Fi (802.11 AC),  Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS IZat location technology USB – USB 3.0 Battery –  Capacity N/A, up to 30 hour battery life Dimensions – N/A Weight – […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Technical Glossary

Throughout all articles in this blog, I use a lot of technical terms and acronyms that you may not be familiar with. This glossary will include technical terms used in Android and Linux devices, development boards, and embedded platforms. If one or more relevant terms or acronyms is/are missing, please let me know in the comment section or via the contact form. 0-9 – A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z 0-9 1-Wire – A single-wire (plus ground) communications protocol used for  memory products, interface solutions, and by SW tools. 10GbE – 10-Gigabit Ethernet 10Base2 – So-called Thin Ethernet, using RG-58 coax cables and BNC connectors […]

Compulab Fit-PC4 Fanless mini PC Powered by AMD GX-420CA Quad Core G-Series SoC

CompuLab has just announced fit-PC4, a miniature fanless PC based on AMD GX-420CA G-Series SoC with four “Jaguar” cores clocked 2.0GHz,and Radeon HD 8400E graphics, and supporting up to 16 GB RAM, and storage via SATA, mSATA or a micro SD card. This if for the Pro version, but there’s also a Value version powered by A4-1250 APU. Fit-PC4 specifications: SoC / APU fit-PC4 Pro –  AMD GX-420CA quad core processor @ 2.0 GHz with AMD Radeon HD 8400E Quad-core (25W TDP) fit-PC4 Value – AMD A4-1250 dual core APU @ 1.0 GHz with amd Radeon HD 8210 (8W TDP) System Memory – Up to 16 GB DDR3/DDR3L/DDR3U (2 SODIMM) Storage – Internal 2.5” HDD/SSD + mSATA + micro-SD Display – 2x HDMI 1.4a up to 1920 x 1200 + CEC support Audio – S/PDIF 7.1 input/output + stereo line-out / MIC in Connectivity 2x Gbit Ethernet (Intel i211 Ethernet controllers) […]

$65 Cheerlink B712 and B716 Android Media Players Powered by Actions Semi ATM7029

Actions Semi ATM7029 is a quad core ARM Cortex A5 class SoC usually found in low cost Android tablets. A manufacturer, which might be Egotronics, has decided to make Android STBs with the processor, and B712 and B716 are now sold for about $65 on dx.com under the brand Cheerlink. This price should make them one of the cheapest full size quad core Android TV boxes on the market, albeit with much lower performance compared to devices based on Rockchip RK3188 or AllWinner A31. Cheerlink B712/B716 specifications: SoC – Actions Semi ATM7029 Quad Core ARM Cortex A5 @ 1.2 GHz with Vivante GC1000 Plus GPU System Memory – 1GB SDRAM DDR3 (512MB as an option) Storage – 4 GB NAND Flash (8GB/16GB as options) + microSD slot up to 32GB Video & Audio Output – HDMI 1.4A, AV (3.5mm jack) Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi USB – 2x […]

AMLogic S802 / M802 Android 4.4 SDK, Documentation and Reference Schematics Are (Almost) Available

We’ve seen in the past AMLogic sometimes pushes some updated GPL software releases on their Open Linux website. So I went to have a look a few days ago, and to my surprise they already had instructions to download and build Android 4.4 for AMLogic M802 (Tablet) and S802 (STB), “user’s guides”, as well as links to reference schematics for the tablets… Nice!!! I started with 4.4_ReleaseInfo for “Mbox” (S802), which explains how to get the SDK release on 2014-01-27 (kk-amlogic-20140127):

Unfortunately the joy stopped right there, as you need to send your SSH public key to your representative. I’ve just done that, and sent an email to support [at] amlogic.com, and mbox-android [at] amlogic.com on Sunday, and I have yet to gain access. I’ve found the “mbox-android” email in from Mbox page (similar to screenshot above) in a field right of “reference schematics” column, which has been removed […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

Intel Bay Trail Graphics Overview – FOSDEM 2014

Bay Trail SoCs are new low power Intel ICs for tablets (Bay Trail-T, Z3000 series), mobiles (Bay Trail-M, N2800, N2900 and N3500 series), desktops (Bay Trail-D, J1800, J1900 and J2900 series) and embedded / industrial platforms (Bay Trail-I, E3800 series). Many Atom processors used to features PowerVR GPU, but it has now been replaced by Intel HD graphics in Bay Trail SoC. Jesse Barnes, working at Intel on software and drivers for Intel graphics devices, gives a presentation about Bay Trail SoCs with a focus on graphics. After an overview, and some ARM bashing regarding performance (Nvidia Tegra 4 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 800), and even power consumption (Tegra 4 only), he describe further details about Intel HD graphics found in the new Intel processors. Everything is basically in mainline, and you’ll need Linux 3.10 or greater, Mesa 9.2 or greater, and libva 1.2.1 or greater for proper support. Some initial […]

How to Build and Run Tizen 2.0 on AllWinner Boards – FOSDEM 2014

Leon Anavi has spent some time building and running Tizen for Olimex A10s-OLinuXino-MICRO board based onAllWinner A10s cortex A8 processor, and gave a short presentation at FOSDEM 2014 showing the main steps involved in the project. The final result is basically a non-portable Tizen tablet with a main board connected to an LCD display. If you have an LCD screen, you could also use a monitor (VGA/HDMI) instead. After a short description of the hardware, and explaining it should also work on other AllWinner platforms such as Cubieboard, Leon gave a few no-nonsense recommendations he learned from his mistakes: Get a USB serial board for debugging Use recommended accessories from the manufacturer such as power supply or LCD display to make development easier Buy a board that can boot from micro SD or SD card, again for ease of development If something does not work… Restart the board! 🙂 In […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC