Nordic Semi Announces nRF51 DK Arduino Compatible Board, and nRF51 Dongle with Bluetooth Smart, ANT, and 2.4GHz Connectivity

Nordic Semiconductor has introduced two new low cost development boards supporting Bluetooh LE, ANT/ANT+, and proprietary 2.4GHz applications based on their nRF51 series SoCs: nRF51 DK, an Arduino UNO Rev.3 compatible board that can be used for various IoT and wearables applications, and nRF51 Dongle, a USB dongle to connect to a PC or board, which can be useful for packet sniffing and BLE peer connection. nRF51 DK Development Board Key features listed for the board: SoC – Supports nRF51822 (BT/2.4Ghz) and nRF51422 (BT/ANT) SoCs based on an ARM Cortex M0 processor, with 128kB or 256kB flash memory, and 16kB or 32kB RAM. Connectivity Bluetooth Smart, ANT/ANT+ and 2.4GHz proprietary Integrated PCB antenna Connector for RF measurements Expansions Headers Arduino Uno Rev. 3 compatible connector for use with 3rd party shields All I/O and interfaces available via connectors Debugging Segger J-Link OB and ARM CMSIS-DAP Program/Debug supported Support for Program/Debug […]

BungBungame Photon2 Tablet Features AMD A10 Micro–​​6700T Mullins Processor

AMD A10 Micro–​​6700T is the most powerful AMD Mullins low power processor (4.5W TDP) that competes with quad core Intel Bay Trail-T processors, and even outperforms them in terms of performance, especially GPU performance with Radeon R6 graphics, but possibly not in terms of power consumption. BungBungame Photon2 may be the first tablet to feature this AMD processor, so let’s have a look. BungBungame Photon2 technical specifications: SoC – AMD A10 Micro-6700T quad core APU @ 1.2 to 2.2 GHz. with Integrated AMD Radeon R6 Graphics System Memory – 4GB DDR3L-1333 Storage – 64GB SSD + micro SD card slot up to 128GB Display – 10.1″ touchscreen display, 1920×1200, 16:10 aspect ratio Video Output – Micro HDMI 1.4a Connectivity – 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/MIMO Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC Camera – 2MP rear and front webcams USB – 1x micro USB 2.0 Battery – 31Wh battery good for 6 to 8 hours usage. […]

Amazon Introduces $39 Fire TV Stick to Compete with Chromecast, Roku Streaming Stick

Amazon has decided to put Fire TV media player functionality into a low cost HDMI TV stick called “Fire TV stick” to offer an alternative to the likes of Google Chromecast, and Roku Streaming Stick. The device is based on a Broadcom BCM28155 dual core processor with the same VideoCore IV GPU/VPU found in BCM2835 SoC used in the Raspberry Pi. Fire TV stick hardware specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM28155 (Capri) dual core ARM Cortex A9 processor @ 1.0 GHz with VideoCore IV GPU/VPU System Memory – 1GB RAM with half reserved to the system, and the other half dedicated to video. Storage – 8 GB internal storage Video / Audio Output – HDMI 1.4b output, w/HDCP 1.4. Resolution: 720p and 1080p up to 60fps Video Codecs – H.264 Audio – AAC-LC, AC3, eAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus), FLAC, MP3, PCM/Wave, Vorbis Connectivity – dual-band/dual-antenna 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi (2×2 MIMO),  Bluetooth 3.0 […]

Add Wireless Charging to (Almost) Any Smartphone or Tablet

Flagship mobile devices often come with wireless charging capability, but there’s an easy way to add (Qi) wireless charging to almost any smartphone, or possibly tablet, thanks to wireless charging receivers that simply connect to the micro USB port of your mobile device, and can be purchased for as low as $7 on Aliexpress, Ebay, DX.com, etc… I’ve also seen Adafruit made a Qi Wireless Receiver module for Arduino with a 2.54mm pitch connector. They come in various sizes and shapes, but they’re all extra thin (1 mm), with a micro USB connector oriented upwards or downwards depending on your mode, and a thin cable, that allows you to place it inside your phone between the battery and the phone cover as shown in the picture below. It’s not always possible however, as for example the receiver would cover my phone’s rear camera lens, but you could always attach it […]

Vsmart V52D EZCast HDMI Dongle Supports Dual Band (2.4 / 5.0GHz) Wi-Fi

EZCast wireless adapters are now pretty common, allow you to display and stream documents, pictures, music, and videos from your smartphone or computer to your big screen TV, and sell for about $20, but the vast majority come with a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi module, which may be a problem if your environment is crowded with other 2.4GHz routers. Vsmart V52D fixes that, as it includes a dual band Wi-Fi module supporting both 2.4 and 5.0 GHz frequencies. The other part of the specifications remain the same: SoC – Action Semi AM8251 @ 600MHz (MIPS) System memory – 128 MB DDR3 RAM Storage – 128 MB NAND Flash Video output – HDMI 1.3 make Wi-Fi – Dual band 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi module Standards – Miracast (EZMirror), Airplay (EZ Air), DLNA, and EZCast Video Containers – MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, MKV, MOV, RM, RMVB Audio Formats – MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, AAC, […]

Applied Micro X-Gene (64-bit ARM) vs Intel Xeon (64-bit x86) Performance and Power Usage

A group of researcher at CERN have evaluated Applied Micro X-Gene 1 64-bit ARM XC-1 development board against Intel Xeon E5-2650 and Xeon Phi SE10/7120 systems, and one of them, David Abdurachmanov, presented their findings at ACAT’ 14 conference (Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques) by listing some of the issues they had to port their software to 64-bit ARM, and performance efficiency of the three systems for data processing of High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments like those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where performance-per-watt is important, as computing systems may scale to several hundred thousands cores. Intel Xeon Phi platform based on Many Integrated Cores (MIC) computer architecture was launched the HPC market, and contrary to the table above features 61 physical cores. Applied X-Gene 1 (40nm process) was used instead of X-Gene 2 built on 28-nm process which was not available at the time. The ARM platform ran […]

Boardcon Compact 31S is an Allwinner A31s based Development Board with HDMI, VGA, and LCD Interfaces

Boardcon Embedded Design, an ODM providing industrial Computer-on-Module, and board, announced Compact A31S powered by Allwinner A31s quad core Cortex A7 processor, with 2GB RAM, 4GB eMMC, HDMI, LCD and VGA video outputs, and various other ports. Boardcon Compact A31s hardware specifications: SoC – Allwinner A31s quad core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1 GHz with 256 KB L1 cache, 1MB L2 cache, and PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU compliant with OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenCL 1.x, DX 9_3 System Memory – 2GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash + micro SD slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4, VGA (up to 1280×800), and 40-pin FPC connector for LCD with capacitive touch screen support Audio Output – HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack Connectivity – 10/100M/1000M Ethernet, Wi-Fi USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port, 1x USB 2.0 OTG port Camera – CMOS Camera interface Expansion – 1x 20-pin expansion connector for GPIOs Misc – Real Time […]

LG NUCLUN Octa-core ARM SoC Powers G3 Screen Smartphone

LG has been making mobile devices since 1997, has entered the smartphone market in 2010, and they’ve now decided to foray into mobile SoC, with their very first SoC being an octa-core Cortex A15/A7 processor called NUCLUN, and found in their latest G3 Screen smartphone running Android 4.4.4. Details about NUCLUN processor are sparse, but the company did provide some specifications for LG G3 Screen smartphone: SoC – LG NUCLUN (LG7111) Octa-Core big.LITTLE processor with four ARM Cortex A15 cores @ 1.5GHz, four ARM Cortex A7 cores @ 1.2GHz. System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 32GB  eMMC + MicroSD slot Display – 5.9″ Full HD IPS touchscreen Camera – 13MP OIS+ rear camera, 2.1MP front-facing camera Network – LTE-A Cat.6 for up to 225Mbps download speed. Battery – 3,000mAh Dimensions – 157.8x 81.8x 9.5mm Weight – 182g The phone,  also codenamed as LG Liger F490L, F490K or F490S (depending […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC