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Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview Release

Google I/O 2016 has started, and among several announcements, Google released Android Wear 2.0 develop preview which according to the company is the “most significant update” since the launch of Android Wear two years ago. Some noticeable changes include: Standalone apps – Android Wear apps can now access the Internet directly over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or cellular, without relying on a paired smartphone or tablet. New system UI – New notification design and app launcher, as well as a new watch face picker. Material design for wearables Keyboard and handwriting input methods added Google Fit platform – Improvements to the Google Fit platform make it easier to app developers to use fitness data and detect activity. Android N Support – Data Saver, Java 8 Lambda support, emojis, etc… A new Complication API has also been added to display small pieces of information directly on the watch face. Preview images for LGE Watch […]

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NXP Unveils i.MX 8 Multisensory Enablement Kit with Hexa Core ARMv8 Processor

Freescale, now NXP, i.MX 8 processors have been a long time coming, but finally the company has now unveiled a Multisensory Enablement Kit based on i.MX 8 hexa core ARMv8 processor combined with a Vulkan-ready & OpenCL capable GPU. Key features of the development kit: Multisensory Processor Board Multisensory Expansion Board Isolation and separation of secure, safe and open domains Rich compute (6x ARMv8 64-bit main CPUs, OpenCL GPU) Vulkan-ready GPU with HW tessellation and geometry shading Efficient, multi-screen (4x) support via HW virtualization Failover-ready display path Up to 8x camera input for 360 degree vision Integrated vision processing HDR enhanced video Multi-sensor fusion and expansion Multi-core audio and speech processing NXP radio solution integration However, at the time of writing, there’s very little information about i.MX8 processors themselves, but I’m confident much more info should soon surface as NXP FTF 2016 is taking place now until May 19, 2016. […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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Linux 4.6 Release – Main Changes, ARM and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 4.6 earlier today: It’s just as well I didn’t cut the rc cycle short, since the last week ended up getting a few more fixes than expected, but nothing in there feels all that odd or out of line. So 4.6 is out there at the normal schedule, and that obviously also means that I’ll start doing merge window pull requests for 4.7 starting tomorrow. Since rc7, there’s been small noise all over, with driver fixes being the bulk of it, but there is minor noise all over (perf tooling, networking, filesystems,  documentation, some small arch fixes..) The appended shortlog will give you a feel for what’s been going on during the last week. The 4.6 kernel on the whole was a fairly big release – more commits than we’ve had in a while. But it all felt fairly calm despite that. Linux 4.5 added […]

Wio_Link_LED_Strip
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Getting Started with Wio Link Starter Kit, Visual Programming Android App, and IFTTT

Wio Link is a board based on ESP8266 WiSoC that is supposed to be easy to set up thanks to Grove modules – no breadboard and mesh or wires – and, as I first understood it, to program thanks to a drag-and-drop mobile app that does not require any actual programming. More advanced users can also use a RESTful API in Python, JavaScript, Node.js, PHP, Objective-C or Java. I’ve been sent a $49 Wio Link Starter Kit including the board, a USB cable, and six Grove modules to evaluate the kit. I’ll start by having a look a the kit, before experimenting with the Wio Link Android app. Wio Link Starter Kit Unboxing The kit is sent in a red plastic case. Wio Link board is lodged in the top cover, and other accessories are placed in bags in the main part of the case. Let’s check the board first. […]

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Star Cloud PCG02U Ubuntu TV Stick Unboxing and Teardown

Star Cloud PCG02U is one of the rare device selling pre-loaded with Ubuntu 14.04, and MeLE, who owns Start Cloud brand, sent me one sample for review. While many Android & Windows devices can be “hacked” to run Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Star Cloud PCG02U is the first device that I’ve ever received that’s actually shipped with Ubuntu 14.04. So it will be very interesting to find out how it performs, but today, I’ll check the device and its accessories, as well as the hardware design. Star Cloud PCG02 Unboxing The TV stick ships  in a Ubuntu orange retail packaging with Star Cloud branding, and mention of Ubuntu and Intel. I had already published the specifications in my first post, a confirmation on the package is always good. The TV stick ships with a 5V/2A power adapter and multi-country plug adapters, a female to female HDMI adapter, a Quick […]

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VoCore2 WiFi IoT Module Features Mediatek MT7628AN Processor

When Vocore WiFi module launched in 2014 on Indiegogo, it quickly became popular as at the time it was hard to find cost effective and small WiFi modules with GPIOs, and its compact Ethernet dock solution was also a hit. The developer has now been working on VoCore2 for several months, and recently announced a beta testing program. Vocore2 preliminary specifications: SoC – Mediatek MT7628AN MIPS processor @ 580 MHz System Memory –  64 or 128 MB DDR2 Storage – 16MB NOR FLASH, 1x SDXC via I/O pins Connectivity – WiFi 802.11n 2T2R up to 300 Mbps with either 2 u.FL connector or 1 u.FL connector + on-board chip antenna (Max signal output >19.5dbm peak); 2x 10/100M Ethernet interfaces via I/O pins I/Os – About 30 GPIOs multiplexed with 3x UARTs, 1x I2C, 1x I2S, 1x reference clock, 1x USB 2.0, 1x PCIe 1.1, 1x high speed SPI (40Mbps max), […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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How to Run Ubuntu 16.04 Aarch64 (64-bit ARM) Cloud Images on Your Intel/AMD Linux Computer with QEMU

With the recent launch of several low cost Cortex A53 development boards, 64-bit ARM hardware is now pretty common and inexpensive, but if you want to run 64-bit ARM code on your x86 Linux computer, Riku Voipio, a software engineer working for Linaro, wrote some instructions to run Ubuntu 16.04 Aarch64 Cloud image in QEMU. Ubuntu cloud images are “the official Ubuntu images and are pre-installed disk images that have been customized by Ubuntu engineering to run on public clouds that provide Ubuntu Certified Images, Openstack, LXD, and more. ”  So the instructions are also useful if you want to easily try such packages on 64-bit ARM platform. I’ve tried those instructions myself on my Ubuntu 14.04 machine with and AMD FX8350 processor, and they worked pretty well, and the only things I had to find out by myself was to install a recent version of qemu. First, we’ll need […]

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LX IoT Cores Are Made for IoT and Wearables with Bluetooth LE, ANT+, 2G/3G, Sigfox, LoRa, and More

LX Group, an Australian company specializing in electronics design and embedded systems, has introduced three wireless modules for IoT and wearables which they call “LX IoT Cores”, and embeds various wireless protocol such as Bluetooth LE/Ant+, 2G/3G connectivity, WiFi, Lora, Sigfox, Taggle, etc… Let’s go though the main technical specs for the three modules, one of which it itself modular (hence the max and min size) depending on your requirements. LX Cellular Core (Right) MCU – STMicro STM32F217IGH6 ARM Cortex-M3 MCU @ 120 MHz with 1MB flash, 128kB RAM Storage – 1x micro SD card reader Communication Interfaces Radios – 2G/3G,  WiFi,  BLE,  ANT+,  provision for LoRa,  Taggle,  SigFox, optional GPS via daughter board Wired – USB,  RS485, UART, SPI,  I2C, Digital IO, ADC Sensors – Ambient Luminosity, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, temperature, humidity, air pressure, microphone USB – 1x micro USB port Misc – Reset and 2x user buttons, 2x […]

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