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Project OWL Open Source Hardware Ophthalmoscope is 25 Times Cheaper than Commercial Products

Medical grade equipments are usually very expensive, partly because of their complexity, but also because of certifications,   legal reasons, and low manufacturing volumes. That’s where open source hardware can make a big difference, and there has been several open source hardware prosthetic hands or arms such as Openbionics hand, but Ebin Philip and his team has tackled another issue with Project OWL, an open indirect ophthalmoscope (OIO) designed for screening retinal diseases, which normally costs between $10,000 to $25,000, but their open source hardware design can be put together for about $400. The design features a Raspberry Pi 2 board connected to a WaveShare 5″ Touchscreen LCD, a Raspberry Pi Pi IR Camera (M12 lens mount) with 16mm FL M12 lens, a 3 Watt Luxeon LED, two 50x50mm mirrors, a linear polarizer sheet, a 20 Dioptre disposable lens, and various passive components. While the Raspberry Pi board is not open […]

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Evive is an Arduino Compatible Platform with Enclosure, Lots of I/Os, Buttons, and an 1.8″ Display (Crowdfunding)

Engineers at Agilo Technologies, an Indian startup based in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, felt that the wire mess often produced while learning or prototyping with Arduino boards could be an issue, and it was easy to mis-wire your setup, so they’ve decided to create a user and student friendly Arduino compatible system with many of the items you’d normally use with Arduino board such as buttons, probes inputs, an 1.8″ color display, headers for ESP8266, Bluetooth, and XBEE moduels, etc.. and all of that enclosed in a neat case. Evive was born. Evive specifications: MCU – Atmel ATmega2560 8-bit AVR MCU @ 16 MHz with 256KB flash, 4KB EEPROM, 8KB SRAM Storage – micro SD slot up to 32GB Display – 1.8″ TFT display; 160×128 resolution; 18-bit color User inputs – Tactile and slide switches, joysticks, and potentiometers Probes inputs – Voltage / Intensity sensing inputs USB – USB device port Expansion Headers […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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Official Rockchip Github Account and Wiki Launched

Following the popularity of RK3066 and RK3188 processors in 2013, a community of developers for Rockchip Linux and Android development was created with corresponding linux-rockchip github account, mailing list and #linux-rockchip IRC channel, and now most of the information can be gathered from development board manufacturers like Firefly. However, I’ve just been pointed out to some VA-API driver for Rockchip RK32xx processor, on rockchip-linux (not linux-rockhip) github account, with the following tagline: An open source software for Rockchip SoCs, This site maintained by Rockchip The only person currently registered to this account, Jacob Chen (陈豪), is a software engineer working for Rockchip, so it does indeed look to be official. The github account also links to rockchip.wikidot.com with links to communication channels established by linux-rockchip community, and lots of entries about Linux, Android, U-boot, and so on, most of which are currently placeholders. So it still looks like work in […]

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4Duino-24 is an Arduino compatible 2.4″ Color IoT Display Module with Atmel MCU and ESP8266 Module

I played with ITEAD Studio NEXTION serial color displays for Arduino boards and the likes a few months ago, and while the hardware seems good and the company offer a large choice of 2.4″ to 7″ models at a very affordable price, I didn’t find the Windows software to create the user interface to be very user-friendly. 4D Systems, an Australian company specializing in “graphics solutions”, will soon launch a similar 2.4″ display, but integrated into an Arduino compatible board also featuring an ESP8266 module for WiFi connectivity. 4Duino-24 “LCD  IoT Display Module” specifications: MCU – Atmel ATmega32U4 micro-controller with 32KB flash, 2.5KB SRAM, 1KB EEPROM Storage – micro SD card slot (FAT16 support) for data and logging WiFi Module – ESP8266 based with 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, 1MB flash, support for Wi-Fi Direct (P2P), soft-AP Display – 2.4” LCD-TFT resistive touch display module with 240×320 resolution, 65K colors, and powered […]

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How to Resolve Slow Boot Times in Ubuntu 16.04

I’ve recently upgraded my machine from Ubuntu 14.04.4 to Ubuntu 16.04.1, but while my computer used to boot in about 40 seconds, after the upgrade boot times increased considerably to 2 to 3 minutes. The first easy check was to look at dmesg:

There’s a bit 87 seconds gap between checking for the floppy, and VirtualBox drivers loading. So there’s definitely an issue here, but the log does not exactly give a clear queue. I’ve read you could use systemd-analyze to find which process(es) may be slowing down your computer at boot time:

Two processes are taking close to 8 seconds, but those 16 seconds still do not explain why it takes 2 minutes more to boot…Eventually, I realized systemd-analyze has a few more tricks up its sleeves:

The first command shows there’s no problem with the kernel itself, and something is slow in user space. The […]

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Rikomagic MK22 Amlogic S912 TV Box is Coming Soon

We already know Amlogic S912 TV boxes are coming, after several Amlogic S912 TV box boards surfaced, and products such as Qintaix Q912, and Beelink GT1 were announced. So it’s no surprise that Rikomagic has announced their own Amlogic S912 TV box with MK22. Rikomagic MK22 Specifications: SoC – Amlogic S912 octa-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ up to 2.0GHz with ARM Mali-820MP3 @ up to 750MHz System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash and micro SD slot up to 32GB Video Output – HDMI 2.0 and AV ports Audio Output – HDMI, AV, and optical S/PDIF Video codecs – VP9-10/ and H.265 up to 4Kx2K@60fps, H.264, WMV, MPEG-1/2/4, VC-1, AVS, and RealVideo up to 1080p@60fps Audio codecs – MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, FLAC, Ogg, and programmable with 7.1/5.1 down-mixing Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual band WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports, 1x […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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Tanix TX5 Pro TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Teardown, and Hands-on

Karl here with Tanix TX5 Pro S905X review. This is my first s905x box. I am splitting this into 2 parts because software is not quite up to snuff yet. I ran into some issues with language reverting back to default which is Chinese. This happens so frequently it is unbearable. I can almost read Chinese now. Youtube only shows green square with audio, and finally most apps show incompatible in the Play Store. I have notified Gearbest who is going to contact the manufacturer. On the bright side I am very pleased with UI compared to the s905 boxes I have reviewed. Specs pulled from GearBest Website General Model: TX5 Pro Type: TV Box GPU: Mali-450 System: Android 6.0 CPU: Amlogic S905X Core: 2.0GHz,Quad Core RAM: 2G ROM: 16G Max. Extended Capacity: TF card up to 32GB (not included) Color: Black Media Supported Decoder Format: H.265 Video format: 1080P,H.264,H.265,MPEG-1,MPEG2,MPEG4,VC-1,VP9 […]

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Inside LG 4K TV, and My (Unsuccessful) Attempt at Repairing It

Long time readers of this blog may remember that I organized a crowdfunding event aiming at raising funds to buy equipment to test 4K TV boxes and mini PCs in early 2015, and one of the items I ended up purchasing was LG 42UB820T 4K television. It worked well for over a year, but I started to notice a single vertical appear on the TV in June, or about 18 months after purchase. A few more lines appeared in the following week, and it appears to have stabilized as shown in the picture below. While I understand that in Europe a 2-year warranty period is legally required, I’m based in Asia, and all I got was a one year warranty for the TV. So I had three choices: Ignore the problem Pay for the repairs Try to repair it myself So far, I’ve selected solution 1. because that’s the easiest […]

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