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XBMC on ARM News: Updated XBMC Image for i.MX6 Boards, Geniatech Releases XBMC for Android Source Code

Stephan Rafin has recently released a new XBMC image for Freescale i.MX6 based Wandboard development boards (dual and quad only) and Utilite computers. The images have been built with Yocto 1.5 (Dora) released last month, and are based on XBMC Gotham Alpha 9, the latest alpha before feature freezes. That means this is not a stable image just yet, but features won’t change, and this version of XBMC is now going though bug fixes. Stephan’s XBMC image includes the following: iMX6 hw accelerated decoding (VPU) for most standard formats iMX CEC support (for utilite only as wandboards are not properly wired) WIFI configuration thanks to network manager addon Support for HDMI/SPDIF/Analog sound outputs (including pass-through for HDMI and SPDIF) SMB/NFS/uPNP network shares and other standard XBMC features Bug fixes against previous version – No more transient black screens, trick modes (ffwd, frwd, ..) are now working, and smoother video playback. […]

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Hardkernel ODROID-XU2 Development Board with Exynos 5420 Coming Up in Q1 2014

Insignal recently announced that Arndale Octa with an Exynos 5420 was available for pre-order with shipping expected in December 2013, making it the first company providing a low cost big.LITTLE development board. But there will be some competition as Hardkernel will launch ODROID-XU2 also based on Samsung Exynos 5420 octa-core processor according to a tweet by SamsungExynos official twitter account. The board is also briefly mentioned in an article in Samsung website as it was showcased at ARM Techcon 2013. That’s actually all the information I have. There’s a brochure on ARMFlix’s video, but it’s unreadable. However, we can derive (guess) some of the specifications based on the picture above and ODROID-XU specs: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5420 octa core SoC with 4x Cortex A15 cores up to 1.8 GHz, 4x Cortex A7 cores up to 1.3 GHz in big.LITTLE configuration, and ARM Mali T-628 MP6 GPU System Memory – […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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$179 Arndale Octa Developement Board Gets an Upgrade to Exynos 5420 big.LITTLE SoC

Hardkernel ODROID-XU may have been the first low cost big.LITTLE development board, but since it’s using Exynos 5410 SoC, big.LITTLE processing is limited to cluster migration that means using A15 cores or A7 cores. Insignal’s Arndale Octa was also initially announced with Exynos 5410, but the good news is that we’ll soon get a fully functional big.LITTLE development board as Arndale Octa has been upgraded to Exynos 5420 Octa-core SoC. This board will support both In-Kernel Switching (IKS) and Global Task Scheduling (GTS) implementations, and be officially supported by Linaro like the first Arndale board based on Exynos 5250 dual core Cortex A15. Here are the specifications of the board (derived by me from several pages, and pictures): SoC – Samsung Exynos 5420 octa core SoC with 4x Cortex A15 cores up to 1.8 GHz, 4x Cortex A7 cores up to 1.3 GHz in big.LITTLE configuration, and ARM Mali T-628 […]

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$25 Flutter is a Wireless Arduino compatible Board with Up to 1 km Range

There are already several ways to add wireless connectivity to your hardware project. For short ranges, we can use protocols such as Bluetooth (e.g. RFDuino, BLEDuino projects, or Bluetooth USB dongle), for much longer ranges 3G/4G connectivity may be required, and achievable via a 3G/4G USB dongle, or SparqEE CELLv1.0 project for example. But what if you want something in the middle with a range closer to 1km? Flutter boards using the 915MHz band (US only) can provide such range, and are software compatible with the Arduino. There are two version of the board: Flutter Basic – Board with an low-profile integrated antenna. It features micro USB for power, an LED, and a button, as well as several digital and analog I/O. Flutter Pro – Board with external antenna (and probably longer range). It comes with all features found in Flutter Basic, and adds battery charging, an additional button, and […]

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Linux-Rockchip Developers Community Up, Rockchip Development Boards Coming Soon?

Companies like Freescale and Texas Instruments provide good software support, and documentation, which is why they can be found in many embedded devices, because without documentation or source code low-level customization is nearly impossible or extremely time consuming. They also usually open most of the documentation and code, because they understand this can foster the use of their chips. On the other hand, Chinese-based SoC manufacturers focus on high-volume platforms such as tablets and smartphones, and usually management don’t understand the advantage to make documentation and GPL source code available, or even may consider it bad for business. Some individuals and small companies do not see it that way however, and they either want to access to the source code to improve existing mobiles devices, or use low cost Chinese SoCs to provide highly customizable hardware and software solutions. So source code and documentation have started to leak, and tools […]

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F&S armStoneA9 is a Pico-ITX Board Powered by Freescale i.MX 6 with up to 4GB RAM

F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH has announced the armstoneA9, a pico-ITX board featuring Freescale i.MX 6 Solo/Dual or Quad Cortex A9 processor with up to 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, and 128 MB flash (1GB+ flash optional) that available in both commercial and industrial temperature range. Here are the specifications of the board: SoC – Freescale i.MX 6 Cortex-A9 (Quad-/ Dual-/ Single-Core) @ 800 MHz to 1 GHz with Vivante GPU System Memory – 1GB (standard version) to 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM Storage – 128MB Flash (1GB+ optional), micro-SD Card Slot, and SATA interface Display: up to SVGA (800 x 600, 65536 colors) via RGB up to WUXGA (1920 x 1200, 18Bit/ 24Bit) via 2x LVDS up to FullHD (1920 x 1080, 24Bit) via HDMI Touch Panel – 4-wire, analogue resistive and PCAP-Touch Interface via I2C Interfaces: 1x 10/100/1000MBit Ethernet 3x Serial (2x RS232, 1x TTL 3.3V Level) 1x USB 2.0 Host, 1x […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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Wandboard Releases Updated Android and Ubuntu Linux Images and Source Code

Since I’ve received my previous short review of the Wandboard Dual development board, there has been more work on done the platform with new Android and Ubuntu images, Jelly Bean source, Linux SDK release, and git repo setup. I’ve tried the binary images, and had a quick look at the source code and corresponding documentation. Android 4.1.2 Image and Source Code Wanboard has release an improved Android image on the 14th of March which you can download for both Solo and Dual version of the development board with the following Changelog: Fix HDMI audio/playback issue with certain monitor. Add support for wifi on wandboard-dual. Known issue: Might need to turn off “Avoid poor connections”  in Wi-Fi ->Advanced to keep connection alive. I’ve given it a try in Wandboard Dual, and it seems Ethernet support is gone (Sorry my mistake, Ethernet IS working, but there’s no indication when it’s connected, and […]

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mbed 2.0 SDK Released, becomes Open Source and Supports $12.95 Freescale Freedom Board

The mbed community has had a pretty busy week, with first the announcement that mbed SDK would become open source, the release of mbed 2.0, and finally support for the low cost Freescale Freedom board FRDM-KL25Zpowered by Kinetis Cortex M0+ KL25Z MCU. mbed becomes open source The mbed Software Development Kit (SDK), a C/C++ MCU software platform, has always been free (as in free beer) for both commercial and noncommercial use, and the large community around mbed has written tons of code for ARM microcontrollers. But now that the SDK has now a stable API, and the developers achieved transparent portability for code based on the SDK across multiple controllers and multiple toolchains, they decided to release the SDK source under an Apache 2.0 license. Although sharing modifications is encouraged, this license allows users to keep the changes closed if they wish to do so. mbed developers explain that the 3 […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications