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The World’s Cheapest Linux Computer? Pogoplug Mobile Now Sells for $7

Somebody asked “Anyone knows a computer cheaper than a Raspberry Pi with a network interface?” on Google+ mini PCs community. Some OpenWRT routers such as TPLink WR703N selling for about $20, or the VoCore Wi-Fi module selling for about the same price (Wi-Fi only) were parts of the answers, and I also mentioned some HDMI TV dongles that now sell for around $35, which is still a little cheaper than the Raspberry Pi model B when one considers shipping. But I found the answer by dhead666 particularly interesting: Pogoplug Mobile goes for 7$ on Amazon and that includes psu and network cable. It run Linux great (I’m using Arch) but you will want to have a ttl-usb cable and soldering iron available in case you manage to mess u-boot (go to the doozan’s forums for more info about the u-boot). Let’s have a look. Pogoplug Mobile is not a new […]

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Raspberry Pi Model B+ with 4 USB Ports, a micro SD Slot, and More GPIOs Coming Soon

With over 3 million boards sold, the Raspberry Pi is by far the most popular ARM Linux board on the market, but people are often asking for hardware upgrades with a faster processor, more RAM and so on. The good news is that a new Raspberry Pi board seems on the way, but since the real competitive of the Raspberry Pi is not the cheap hardware only, but software support and the community around the little ARM board. So instead of designing of completely new board, they’ve kept Broadcom BCM2835 and 512MB RAM, and mostly made some changes to the ports, and form factor. Since the board has not been officially announced just yet, the full details are available, but according to various reports, the specs should be as follows: SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 processor @ 700MHz with VideoCore IV GPU System Memory – 512 MB SDRAM (PoP) Storage […]

ArmSoM CM5 Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC
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More Details on Mediatek MT2502 Aster SoC and Linkit Platform for Wearables (Video)

Last month, Mediatek announced their Mediatek MT2502 SoC for wearables, codenamed Aster, as well as the Linkit development platform targeting the developer’s community. But at the time they did show the actual hardware, and thanks to Charbax we know have more interesting details about Aster and Linkit. First they compare a design based on Aster to Samsung Galaxy Fit wearable band, and show why it uses less space, will cost less, and they claim  over twice the battery life. Simple and smaller design (~36% reduction in size) Aster solution – MT2504 (6.2 x 5.4 mm) plus all required resistors, capacitors and inductors require 89.97 mm2 Galaxy Fit – MCU. Bluetooth Transceiver,  external memory, a linear charger, and all required resistors, capacitors and inductors require 140.97 mm2 Battery life – Samsung Galaxy Fit is supposed to last between 1 and 1.5 days on a charge, whereas devices based on Aster should last about […]

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Renesas RZ/A1H Starter Kit and Emtrion DIMM-RZ System-on-Module Run Segger embOS RTOS or Linux with 10MB SRAM

Announced just about a year ago, Renesas RZ/A1 ARM Cortex A9 processor family can be used for human machine interface applications, and has the particularly to embed large amount of SRAM, especially the RZ/A1H series with 10 MB SRAM which allows the development of some applications without external RAM chip, lowering both board size and BoM cost. I’ve just come across a development kit dubbed “RZ/A1H Starter Kit”, and the just released Emtrion DIMM-RZ system-on-module both powered by Renesas RZ/A1H SoC. Renesas RZ/A1H Starter Kit+ (RSK) The development kit includes the mainboard, a 7″ TFT LCD (Optional), a detachable Colour LCD Board Pmod Compatible,a detachable AD Adjustment Shaft, Segger J-LINK Lite debugger, various connection cables, a power supply, a Quick Start Guide, and a DVD-ROM with documentation, ARM DS-5 IDE (with 32K code limit), KPIT GNU compiler for Cortex A9, Segger debugger drivers. and sample code. The mainboard has the […]

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AllWinner V10 and V15 SoCs Target Video Recording Applications

AllWinner A-series that can be found in tablets and media players are pretty well known, but AllWinner also has V-Series processors with V10 and V15. A first glance, AllWinner V10 is quite similar to AllWinner A31 with a quad core Cortex A7 CPU coupled with a PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU, and AllWinner V15 has the same CPU/GPU combo as AllWinner A10 (CortexA8/Mali-400). But AllWinner V-Series are actually video encoders targeting applications such as IP cameras, car DVRs, and sports digital video cameras thanks to features such as motion detection, video scaling, and digital watermarking. Let’s go through AllWinner V10 specifications, and I’ll mark differences with AllWinner A31, or features not mentioned in A31 specs, in bold: CPU – Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 with· 256KB L1 cache, 1MB L2 cache GPU – PowerVR SGX544MP2 compliant with OpenCL 1.1 EP and delivering up to 20GFLOPS. Memory – 32-bit DDR3/LPDDR2 SDRAM controller, supporting up to […]

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Eny Technology Introduces EM6Q-MXQ Android STB Based on Amlogic S805 SoC

In the last few months, we’ve seen a few Amlogic S802 powered Android media players such as Tronsmart Vega S89, SZTomato/Eny M8, and MINIX NEO X8(-H), which have the fastest Cortex A9 processor on the market with a relatively powerful octa core Mali-450MP6 GPU, as well as 4K decoding and output capabilities. But if you’d like something a little more affordable, don’t care about 4K, and would do with a quad core SoC that’s not quite as powerful, but more power efficient, and still supports HEVC, you may consider one of the upcoming devices based on Amlogic S805. Eny Technology is one of the first company to announce an S805 media player with their EM6Q-MXQ. You can check S802 / S805 / S812 comparison for details. The enclosure and remote control both look pretty familiar, and the hardware specifications are quite similar to GBox Midnight MX2, except for the Amlogic […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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VidOn.me AV200 Android TV Box Review

After providing some pictures of VidOn.me AV200 media player, and its PCBA, it’s now time for a review. I’ll start by giving my first impressions, and checking out the system settigns and user’s interface, go through my library of video test files, and cover most hardware features. As usual, I’ll also test Wi-Fi performance, but I’ve now added more tests including Ethernet performance, and USB hard drive support and performance with NTFS, FAT32, EXT-4, and BTRFS partitions. First Boot, Settings and First Impressions The device comes with an IR remote control with lots of buttons, including shortcuts, D-Pad control, digit keys and trick modes (play/pause, fast forward and rewind, next and previous), but the two required AAA batteries were not included, and I did not have spare batteries, so I did not use the remote control, which looks pretty OK for XBMC, and just control the device with my Mele […]

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Unboxing of VidOn.me AV200 Android Blu-Ray Box

I had only reviewed on device based on AllWinner A31 before, namely CS868 mini PC which turned out to be disappointing. And recently I’ve reviewed quite of few Amlogic and Rockchip TV boxes, so I’m happy to get a change and try again with another AllWinner A31 based device thanks to VidOn.me AV200 Android Blu-ray Box. I’ll start by listing hardware specifications and showing pictures of the device and the board today, and I’ll write a complete review in a few days. VidOn.me AV200 Specifications AV200 is an Android TV box with a metallic enclosure very similar to the one used for Mele X1000 Android Blu-ray box, and with the following specifications: SoC – AllWinner A31 quad core Cortex-A7 @ 1.3GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage: 8GB + SD/SDHC card reader Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – HDMI, optical S/PDIF, and 3.5mm headphone jack […]

Boardcon EM3562 Rockchip RK3562 SBC with 8 analog camera inputs