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A Quick Look at SAMART Strong Black “Free” DVB-T2 Receiver in Thailand

Thai government has made digital television a priority, so they’ve launched a program to give a 690 Baht voucher ($21) to all households in Thailand. The voucher is send by registered mail to your home, and delivery has to be signed by a Thai person. Then you can go to a shop equipped with a Thai ID card and house registration book copy, present this voucher, and get a free (except for tax payers of course) DVB-T2 receiver, or use it to buy something a more advanced set-top box or digital TV package with 690 Baht discount. We decided to get a free DVB-T2 receiver, and ended up with a box called SAMART Strong Black supporting SD and 1080p video streams over DVB-T2, EPG (Electronic Program Guide), and with a USB port to connect devices for recording programs or time-shifting. SAMART is a Thai company whose name means “can” (formal) […]

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Infocus CS1 A83 (C2107) Android Tablet Review

I’ve already shown some pictures, listed specs and reported Antutu benchmark results for Infocus CS1 A83 Android tablet powered by Allwinner A83T octa core processor. I’ve been using this tablet as my main mobile device for about a week, and for about 3 to 5 hours a day, and I’m now ready to write a full review reporting my experience with this Full HD tablet. General Impressions I mainly use a tablet to browse the web, check emails, play some casual games like Candy Crush Saga, watch some YouTube videos, and Skype calls, and I could not really fault the tablet for any of these applications. Having said that, my reference device is only ThL W200 smartphone powered by Mediatek MT6589T processor with a 5″ display @ 1280×720, and for all the tasks listed Infocus tablet is much better because it’s more responsive, the 1920×1200 is crisp, and the cameras […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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MINIX NEO X8-H Plus Review

I posted pictures of MINIX NEO X8-H Plus media player a few days ago, and in this post I will report my impressions and testing results for the box, the first Amlogic S812 device I’ve fully reviewed so far, which adds H.265 video decoding up to 2160p, Gigabit Ethernet, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi to the original MINIX NEO X8-H. You can check my previous post for the full specifications of MINIX NEO X8-H Plus. First Boot, Settings and First Impressions The package includes both MINIX IR remote, and MINIX NEO M1 RF air mouse. I did not use the infrared remote at all, and instead I mostly used the provided air mouse, together with Mele F10 Deluxe air mouse when I needed to input text, or for comparison. NEO M1 comes with a built-in battery, and Off/On button, and can be used as a standard remote control, or as a wireless […]

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Boot Ubuntu (Linux) or Android from an SD Card on Rockchip RK3288 Devices

There’s already a method to boot Android from an SD Card on RK3188 devices, which should work with all Rockchip RK3188 devices. Ian Morrison (Linuxium) has now provided a instructions to boot Linux or Android from a (micro) SD Card in Rockchip RK3288 based devices, leveraging work from linux-rockchip community, and especially naobsd. The Android flashing method is slightly different between RK3188 and RK3288, because most Rockchip RK3288 devices make use of eMMC flash, while older Rockchip RK3188 products feature NAND flash, and it appears Rockchip RK3xxx boot priorities (in the BootROM stored in the SoC itself) are as follows: eMMC, SD card, and NAND flash. All that means is that an updated version of the bootloader is needed which looks for a bootable SD card, and although very unlikely, your device could end up being bricked during this procedure. This is not a problem for Open Hour Chameleon since […]

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Mediatek MT8173 Quad Core big.LITTLE ARM Cortex A72/A53 Processor Code Submitted to Linux Mainline

[Update: MT8173 processor has now been announced, and it’s using Cortex A72 and A53 instead of A57/A53, as initially shown in the Linux kernel source code] Mediatek is not exactly known to compliant with open source licences, or be involved with the open source community. But the company is certainly going into the right direction with their cooperation with Google leading to source code release for Android One smartphones, and the recently launched Mediatek Labs for community projects, starting with LinkIt One IoT platform. Mediatek is also regularly submitting code to the Linux ARM Kernel mailing list, and yesterday code was submitted for Mediatek MT8173 SoC, a 64-bit ARMv8 processor with two Cortex 53 and two Cortex 57 cores in big.LITTLE configuration. As far as I know, it could be the first Mediatek SoC with “big” Cortex A57 cores. Code snippet from mt8173.dtsi related to CPU cores:

A short […]

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Android 4.4 and Ubuntu 14.10 Tested on Ugoos UM3 mini PC (Rockchip RK3288)

A few days ago I posted pictures of Ugoos UM3, a cute mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A17 processor, with 2GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, a few USB ports, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac connectivity. There are so many Rockchip RK3288 based TV boxes and sticks on the market, that it has become difficult to differentiate, so Ugoos has decided to support not only Android 4.4 like all their competitors, but also Ubuntu 14.10, and they’ve provided an alpha release of dual boot Android / Ubuntu images for Ugoos UT3 and UM3 models. Yesterday, I flashed the latest Android/Ubuntu firmware for UM3, and tested the image, so today I can report my findings. First of all, I’d like to point out that I received an earlier sample with various flaws that I reported to Ugoos, and they’ve already committed to fixes: 5V/2A power adapter is not powerful […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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Linux 3.18 Released

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 3.18 last Sunday: It’s been a quiet week, and the patch from rc7 is tiny, so 3.18 is out. I’d love to say that we’ve figured out the problem that plagues 3.17 for a couple of people, but we haven’t. At the same time, there’s absolutely no point in having everybody else twiddling their thumbs when a couple of people are actively trying to bisect an older issue, so holding up the release just didn’t make sense. Especially since that would just have then held things up entirely over the holiday break. So the merge window for 3.19 is open, and DaveJ will hopefully get his bisection done (or at least narrow things down sufficiently that we have that “Ahaa” moment) over the next week. But in solidarity with Dave (and to make my life easier too 😉 let’s try to avoid introducing any _new_ […]

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Arduino UNO R3 Clones Now Cost Less than $5

An original Arduino UNO R3 costs about nearly $25, and I remember clones would cost about $10 on Aliexpress, but today I’ve been informed about VISduino, an Arduino UNO R3 clone, with some cost optimizations such as cheaper components and connectors, which sells for just 15.50 CNY (~$2.50 US) on Taobao, and $4.90 on Electrodragon. But double checking on Aliexpress, I could find another popular Arduino UNO R3 clone for $4.58 including shipping, but no USB cable. Both boards cut costs by replacing ATmega16U2 by CH340 USB to serial chip, and replacing the ATMEGA328P-PU MCU (DIP) by an SMT version of the Atmel MCU such as ATMEGA328P-AU (QFP). Other changes on VISduino include: Replaced USB B-type connector by a micro USB port Added extra through holes side-by-side with the Arduino headers for easier debugging. Extra 2×4 pin holes with TX, RX, VCC, GND, and I2C pins You may have to install […]

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