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How to Buy an Arduino Leonardo (Clone) Kit for Less than $20

Borderless Electronics Indiegogo campaign for their $9 electronics kit with an Arduino Leonardo clone went so well that the owner of the campaign decided to limit the total number of boards to 15,000, and basically stop the campaign early to avoid production delays. For $12 ($9 + shipping), you could get a full kit with: Arduino Leonardo clone A mini breadboard with 10 Jumper wires A plug for a 9V battery A few components: 6 LEDs, 10x 330 Ohm resistors, 10x 1 KOhm resistors, 3x push buttons, 2 NPN transistors, 5 diodes, a light sensor, and a sound buzzer A micro USB to USB cable Although they may start a new one campaign in a few months, the campaign is over, and you can’t get this cheap Arduino kit anymore. But one of my reader (onebir) let me know that for less than $20, you can  get an Arduino Leonardo […]

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Lantronix Unveils xPico Wi-Fi Module For the Internet of Things

With Texas Instruments SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3000 and Qualcomm Atheros AR4100P embedded Wi-Fi processors that fully handle Wi-Fi internally, and transfer data to an MCU with an SPI interface, and solutions such as Electric Imp, there are already ways to add Wi-Fi at relatively low cost to appliances. There’s now another solution available on the market with Lantronix xPico Wi-Fi Module. Listed features and specification of xPico Wi-Fi: SoC – ARM Cortex M3 class processor with 1MB on-chip Flash and 128 KB SRAM Storage – SPI Flash storage Wireless LAN Interface IEEE 802.11 b/g and IEEE 802.11n (single stream) WLAN interface (2.4 GHz only) IEEE 802.11 d/h/i/j/k/w/r WPS 2.0 support u.FL connector for external antenna Serial Interface Two Serial CMOS Ports (3.3V, 5V tolerant) 300 to 921.6 Kbps Flow control XON/XOFF, RTS/CTS (SPort 1 only) Lantronix tunneling application (SPort 1 only) Host Interface –  Dual Serial Port, SPI, USB 2.0 (device), […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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CheapCast Chromecast Emulator for Android (Beta) is Available for Download

Yesterday, I wrote developers were working on making any media App and any Android device compatible with Chromecast. Sebastian Mauer has taken care of the latter, by publishing CheapCast (Beta) in Google Play. Several people have been trying it successfully, including in iMito MX1 mini PC. I’ve been less lucky. I’ve tried it by running YouTube App in Zopo ZP900S smartphone (Android 4.0.4) with 4 devices: Tronsmart T428 – “Works” but the video won’t start playing. (Bug reported in Github’s issue tracker) [Update: It now works with the latest version in Google Play]. MK908 – Refused to install anything in Google Play today… (Older Android 4.1 firmware) Wandboard Quad – “Works” but the video won’t start playing. CX-01 – CheapCast will crash when playing video I can’t really play YouTube videos over 360p without buffering here, so the reason the video won’t start in T428 or Wandboard Quad might be […]

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$275 HackRF Open Source Software Defined Radio (SDR) Platform

HackRF is an open source hardware project to build a Software Defined Radio (SDR) supporting a frequency range between 30 MHz and 6GHz in both directions (Tx and Rx, half-duplex) with a maximum bandwidth of 20MHz. Jawbreaker (shown below) is a beta hardware that has been tested by several developers and beta testers, and applications such as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), Bluetooth monitoring, spectrum sensing, wireless microphones, AIS, FM radio, etc.. have already been ported to the platform. In order to lower the cost of the hardware, Michael Ossmann has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund mass production. There seems to be many SDR enthusiasts as the campaign has already reached its funding target ($80,000) and received for over $300,000 in ledges. What is Software Defined Radio (SDR) and What Can it Be Used for? Before providing details about the hardware and software, it may be useful to provide some […]

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Emcraft Systems Announces Freescale Vybrid VF6 SoM With Cortex A5 CPU and Cortex M4 MCU

Emcraft Systems has recently announced Vybrid VF6 SoM, a System-on-Module powered by Freescale Vybrid VF6 dual core Cortex A5/Cortex M4 SoC with 128MB DDR3, and 512MB Flash, as well as a starter kit composed of VF6 SoM and a carrier board. Emcraft VF6 System-on-Module specifications: SoC – Freescale Vybrid VF6 dual-core microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A5 (up to 500 MHz) and Cortex-M4 cores (up to 167 MHz). Either MVF61NN151CMK50 (No Security), or MVF61NS151CMK50 (with Security). System Memory – 128 MBytes DDR3 SDRAM; Storage – Up to 512 MBytes NAND Flash, 32 MBytes dual QSPI Flash; Connectivity – Two 10/100 Ethernet interfaces with L2 switch; External interfaces using two 80-pin 0.4 mm-pitch connectors: Two USB 2.0 OTG interfaces Serial console interface at the UART CMOS levels; JTAG interface to the Vybrid VF6 TFT LCD interface Synchronous audio interface (SAI) supporting I2S, AC97 and CODEC/DSP interfaces Multiple serial digital (UART, SPI, I2C, […]

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NI myRIO is an Education Platform Powered by Xilinx Zynq-Z7010

National Instruments has been working on a device called NI myRIO, an hardware & software platform that aims at giving engineering students the ability to design real systems quickly for automation, robotics, data logging or embedded systems. The hardware is based on Xilinx Zynq-7010 with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and an FPGA with 28,000 programmable logic cells, and features 10 analog inputs, 6 analog outputs, audio I/O channels, and up to 40 lines of digital input/output (DIO). NI myRIO Hardware  Specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7010 with a dual core Cortex A9 processor and FPGA with 28,000 cells System Memory – Unknown Storage – Unknown Expansion Ports: myRIO exPansion Ports (MXP) – Two identical ports (MXP A and MXP B) with 4 analog inputs, 6 digital inputs/outputs, 2 analog outputs, 1 quad encoder, 3 PWMs, 1 UART, 1 I2C and 1 SPI by default. Ports configuration is customizable with Labview […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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$480 Hewlett-Packard SlateBook x2 Is an Android Tablet/Notebook Hybrid Powered by Nvidia Tegra 4

Although not really designed for this purpose, Android has been used in devices such as set-top boxes, netbooks and mini PCs for a while, mainly in Chinese products, but recently Hewlett-Packard has announced an All-in-One PC running Android 4.2. The company is persevering its Android push on “legacy” computing devices with a 10.1″ Laptop / Tablet hybrid powered by Nvidia Tegra 4, and running Android 4.2, called SlateBook x2 (Full name: SlateBook x2 10-h010nr). Here are the specifications of this laptop: SoC – Nvidia Tegra 4 (T40S) Quad Core processor @ 1.8 GHz System Memory – 2GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM Storage – 16 GB eMMC + Multi-Format Digital Media Card Reader Display – 10.1″ diagonal WUXGA LED-backlit touchscreen display (1920×1200) Connectivity – 1×1 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth External Ports: 1x USB 2.0 on base 1x HDMI on base 1x Headphone-out/microphone-in combo jack Keyboard – Full-size island-style QWERTY keyboard Battery: 2-cell […]

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ARM TechCon 2013 Schedule – ARM Servers, Internet of Things, Multicore, Hardware and Software Optimization and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2013 will take place on October 29 – 31, 2013, in Santa Clara, and the detailed schedule for the event has just been made available. In the previous years, the conference was divided into  Chip Designs day (1 day), and the other 2 days were reserved for Software & System Design, but this year it does not appear to be the case. Whether you’ll be able to attend the event or not, it’s worth having a look at what will be discussed there in order to have a better understanding of what will be the key ARM developments in the near future in terms of hardware and software. There will be around 90 sessions categorized into 15 tracks: Accelerating Hardware Development – This track explores the resources, tools, and techniques that designers can employ to quickly bring hardware to market. Topics include multicore design, ARM IP, […]

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