Posted on

Ten Most Popular Posts of 2016 on CNX Software and Some Stats

The last day of the year is a good time to look back at what the year brought us, and I have to say it has been a fun and interesting year on CNX Software. The TV boxes news cycle has been dominated by Amlogic products, but most products have now switched to 64-bit ARM SoC, with 4K and HDMI 2.0 support, and price have kept going down, so you can now get a 4K TV box for as low as $20, although many people will prefer spending a bit more for extra memory and support. Intel based Bay Trail & Cherry Trail mini PCs have continued to be released with Windows, and in some cases Ubuntu, but the excitement seems to have died off a bit, maybe with the expectation of upcoming Apollo Lake mini PCs that should be more powerful. The year have been especially fruitful in the […]

Posted on

Allwinner V3s Dual Camera SoC Comes with 64MB DRAM

Most SoCs have a very limited amount of internal SDRAM just enough to load the bootROM code, but a few integrated a few MB of RAM on-chip such as Renesas RZ/A1H with 10MB on-chip DRAM, in order to reduce costs for some applications that may not require external RAM. Allwinner V3s, designed for dual camera solutions, appeared to be such an SoC with 64MB (512Mbit) on-chip DDR2 RAM, but the block diagram seems to imply it is a System-in-Package (SiP) instead. Nevertheless you still get a single chip with an ARM Cortex A7 processor, two ISPs, a video engine, 64MB RAM, and more. Allwinner V3s main features & specifications: CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 @ up to 1.2 GHz Memory – Integrated 64MB DDR2 DRAM Storage I/F – SD 2.0, eMMC 4.41, SPI NAND flash, SPI NOR flash Audio Codec – 92dB audio codec supporting 2x ADC channels and 2x DAC […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
Posted on

vThings WiFi CO2 Monitor Quick Start Guide

I’ve already checked out vThings CO2 Monitor hardware and we’ve seen it’s based on ESPrino ESP8266 board, and my model includes CM1106 CO2 sensor and BMP180 temperature and pressure sensor. I’ve now installed it in my kitchen, about 3 to 4 meters from the gas stove, and getting data to ThingSpeak. The door and window of my kitchen are open all day, and the wall have ventilation holes. That’s important for CM1106 sensor since it auto calibrates every 3 days in clear air. If you plan to use such sensor in a closed environment, you should buy Vthings with CM1102 CO2 sensor that costs more, but does not require calibration. Since all WiFi systems I’ve just so far starting AP mode for configuration, I first looked for an access point, but… nothing… Then I decided to read the documentation (might be useful at times), and the monitor is actually configured […]

Posted on

JeVois-A33 is a Small Quad Core Linux Camera Designed for Computer Vision Applications (Crowdfunding)

JeVois Neuromorphic Embedded Vision Toolkit – developed at iLab at the University of Southern California – is an open source software framework to capture and process images through a machine vision algorithm, primarily designed to run on embedded camera hardware, but also supporting Linux board such as the Raspberry Pi. A compact Allwinner A33 has now been design to run the software and use on robotics and other projects requiring a lightweight and/or battery powered camera with computer vision capabilities. JeVois-A33 camera: SoC – Allwinner A33  quad core ARM Cortex A7 processor @ 1.35GHz with  VFPv4 and NEON, and a dual core Mali-400 GPU supporting OpenGL-ES 2.0. System Memory – 256MB DDR3 SDRAM Storage – micro SD slot for firmware and data 1.3MP camera capable of video capture at SXGA (1280 x 1024) up to 15 fps (frames/second) VGA (640 x 480) up to 30 fps CIF (352 x 288) […]

Posted on

Eweat R9 Plus TV Box Review Part 2 – Android, OpenWrt, and HDMI Recording

Eweat R9 Plus is a device powered by Realtek RTD1295 SoC combining main functions: Android 6.0 TV box, OpenWrt NAS/router, and HDMI recorder thanks to its HDMI input port. It competes directly with Zidoo X9S which has the same features, except while Zidoo X9S has no internal SATA bay and your 2.5″ hard drive just hang outside the box, Eweat R9 Plus comes with an internal 3.5″ SATA bay that makes it much neater on your furniture… We’ve already seen that in the first part for review “Eweat R9 Plus unboxing and teardown“, and I was impressed by the hardware, but the software is even more important, and that’s what I’m going to check out in the second and final part of this review. First Boot, First Impressions and Setup. I’ve first inserted a 1TB 3.5″ SATA drive in the device, and then I connected an extra USB 3.0 hard […]

Posted on

Mediatek MT8173 Powered Emdoor 2-in-1 Laptops Run Android or Remix OS

Acer Chromebook R13 is the most powered ARM Chromebook so far thanks to its Mediatek MT8173 quad core processor combining two ARM Cortex A72 cores and Cortex A53 cores, as well as a PowerVR GX6250 GPU, 4GB RAM and a 13.3″ touchscreen display. But unless you live in the US or other markets where Chromebooks are sold, it’s pretty hard to buy, and that model is relatively expensive as it sells for close to $550 on Amazon. Emdoor, a Chinese design house, has made 2-in-1 hybrid laptops based on the processor with a 11.6″ or 13.3″ touchscreen display, 1 to 2GB RAM, and 16 to 64GB storage, which – once launched – should be easier to buy, and cost less. Both EM-T8513 and EM-T8516 models share most of the same specifications, except for the display: SoC – Mediatek MT8173 quad core processor with 2x Cortex A72 cores @ up to […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Posted on

Parallella 1024-core Epiphany-V RISC Processor Coming Soon

Parallella project’s goal is to ” democratize access to parallel computing by offering affordable open source hardware platforms and development tools”, and they’ve already done that with their very first $99 “Supercomputer” board combining a Xilinz Zynq FPGA + ARM SoC to the company’s Epiphany-III 16-core coprocessor. But the company has made progress after their 64-core Epiphany-IV, by taping out Epiphany-V processor with 1024-core last October. Epiphany-V main features and specifications: 1024 64-bit RISC processors 64-bit memory architecture 64-bit and 32-bit IEEE floating point support 64 MB of distributed on-chip SRAM 1024 programmable I/O signals 3x 136-bit wide 2D mesh NOCs (Network-on-Chips) 2052 separate power domains Support for up to one billion shared memory processors Support for up to one petabyte of shared memory (That’s 1,000,000 gigabytes) Binary compatibility with Epiphany III/IV chips Custom ISA extensions for deep learning, communication, and cryptography TSMC 16FF process 4.56 Billion transistors, 117mm2 silicon area With […]

Posted on

ESP8266 based Wireless Air Quality & Environmental Monitors Teardown – Sonoff SC and vThings CO2 Monitor

The mailman delivered two parcels today, and interestingly enough they have a similar functionality measuring air quality and environmental data such as temperature. The first package was ITEAD Studio Sonoff SC environmental sensor with ESP8266, an Atmel MCU, DHT11 temperature & humidity sensor, a dust detector, a light sensor, and a microphone, while the second was v-Air Monitor vThings CO2 monitor v3 also based on ESP8266 with a CO2 sensor and other optional sensors. I’ll test both with their stock firmware later on, but today I’ll have a look at the hardware design. v-Air Monitor vThings CO2 monitor specifications While I’ve already written about Sonoff SC, it’s the first time I cover v.Air Monitor products, so let’s start with the specifications of vThings CO2 Monitor v3: SoC – Espressif ESP8266 WiSoC Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi Optional RF315 / 433 MHz RF module Sensors CO2 Sensor (one of them) CM1106 NDIR […]

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