Posted on

Hacking MK908 mini PC for Serial Console Access

Thanks to Omegamoon (and this brother) we already have instructions to connect the UART pins on MK808 in order to access the serial console. He’s done it again with MK908 mini PC featuring Rockchip RK3188. Tx and Rx pads are located on the RAM chips side, and he has connected the green wire to Tx (Going to Rx on TTL debug board), and a yellow wire to Rx (Tx on debug TTL board). A ground pad is available on the other side of the board. Since I got a sample for review from Geekbuying, I decided to give a try myself. The pad are quite small, so this may require patience, but it’s perfectly feasible. I wanted to keep the device closed, so I passed the wires through the ventilation holes (enlarging them a bit with a precision screwdriver), put back the main heatsink on RK3188, and reassembled the enclosure. […]

Posted on

Zyxel NSA310 / NSA320 Hackable Network Access Storages Run Debian Linux

Yesterday, we saw how to make a NAS enclosure for the Cubieboard, but DesertF0x commented “Better take a NSA-310 or NSA-320. It is easy to install Debian and it has Gigabit!”, and I decided to have a look. The 2 devices appear to have been released at the end of 2011, and are powered by a Marvell ARMv5 compatible processor. Many NAS are expensive kits, but NSA310 (1 bay) is currently available for $88.50 and NSA320 (2 bays) for $95.34 on Amazon, which is just a little cheaper than the DIY Cubieboard NAS solution (~100 USD). Price looks attractive, now let’s have a look at some technical details, and instructions to install Debian. Both NAS more or less share the same hardware specifications except for a few details: Processor – Marvell Kirkwood 88f6281 ARMV5-TE compliant processor @ 1.2 GHz (Hardware datasheet) System Memory – 256 MB (NAS310) or 512 MB […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
Posted on

MINIX NEO X7 Quad Core Set-top Box Redesigned, Available Soon

When MINIX unveiled their RK3188 based MINIX NEO X7 at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair in April, they showcased a new enclosure design. Many people seemed to dislike the new “Lamborghini” casing, but the company listened to complains, and redesigned it to a more traditional casing, very similar to the one used for NEO X5. The company also disclosed the official specifications. SoC- Quad core Cortex A9 processor with quad core Mali-400 GPU (Rockchip RK3188) System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB NAND Flash + SD/MMC card reader (SD 3.0, MMC V4.41) Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n Dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4 / 5GHz) with external antenna 3G support via external USB dongle (not provided) 10/100M Ethernet (Supports hotspot sharing via Wi-Fi) Bluetooth V4.0 Video Output – HDMI 1.4a, full HD 1080p, 3D movie file format supported Audio Output/Input – HDMI 1.4a two channels, optical S/PDIF AC3 multi-channel, headphone and microphone jacks USB – […]

Posted on

Cloud Media FreeOTT Player Review

Syabas was a company designing set-top boxes such as Popcorn Hour Media Tank that were relatively popular before the Android media player invasion. The company is now called Cloud Media, and they offer a tiny media player called FreeOTT that connects to their Apps Market and bring online video, Internet radio, social media and other streaming media to your television. The device is free (as in free beer), as it’s not actually available for sale to the general public, and the only ways to get it is to have your ISP or telecom provider set it to you, or win one from the regular giveaways organized by the company. I won one via a giveaway announced on their Facebook page, and I had just to pay $5 (via Paypal) for shipping. The company does not provide detailed specifications for their device but we do know it’s a Linux based media […]

Posted on

12MB Minimal Image for Raspberry Pi using the Yocto Project

Last year, I wrote instructions and provided a download link about a minimal image for Raspberry Pi based on Raspbian. The compressed image is 84MB, and the good thing about it is that you can just use apt-get to install packages. The problem is that it’s not actually that small as once it is uncompressed the rootfs is still a massive 414 MB. So today, I’ll explain how to create a smaller (and custom) image using the Yocto Project, a platform that let you build an embedded Linux distribution matching exactly your project’s requirements. Other advantages are that the build is configurable with config files, so it’s easily reproducible with a few command lines, and it might turn out to be useful to learn more about the Yocto Project as many boards and SoC are now making use of the framework, including Freescale i.MX6 (Wandboard, Olinuxino-imx233, Sabrelite, etc…), the Beagleboard, […]

Posted on

Alpha Data ADM-XRC-7Z1 XMC Mezzanine Card Powered by Xilinx Zynq SoC

Alpha Data, a company providing solutions for compute intensive applications, has announced the ADM-XRC-7Z1, an XMC board powered by Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC targeting application such as software-defined radio, radar and sonar processing, image processing and machine vision. If you are like me, and have never heard about XMC mezzanine cards before, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: XMC, or Switched Mezzanine Card, is a PCI Mezzazine Card (PMC) with high-speed serial fabric interconnect defined by the VITA 42 standard. XMC specifies a 5th connector (“P15”) that supports PCI Express (VITA 42.3) or other high speed serial formats such as Serial RapidIO (VITA 42.2) and Parallel RapidIO (VITA 42.1). VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) is an organization developing and promoting open technology standards that you can download for a fee. Here are the specifications of the board: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7045 or Zynq-7100 dual […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Posted on

FossilShale FS-DM385-SOM Features TI DaVinci SoC for HD Media applications

FossilShale, an embedded company based in Bangalore, has announced a system-on-module based on Texas Instruments Davinci TMS320DM385 SoC that targets applications high-definition decoding and encoding (up to 1080p60) such as IP Cameras, HD video conferencing endpoints, digital signage, portable medical imaging and diagnostics, or camcorders. It can be used standalone for evaluation, or with a carrier board. FS-DM385-SOM Specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments TMS320DM385F ARM Cortex A8 core @ 1GHz with HDVICP v2 video core  handling H.264 BP/MP/HP, MPEG2, VC1, MPEG4 SP/ASP, JPEG/MJPEG encoding and decoding. Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 512MB NAND flash +1x Micro SD/MMC connector (up to 32GB) Audio / Video: 1x HDMI Out (Micro) 1x LCD TFT Interface (24 Bit RGB) 1x Camera Interface (MIPI) 1x Integrated Composite Video In & Audio Line In(Stereo Jack) 1x Integrated Composite Video Out & Audio Line Out(Stereo Jack) Other Interfaces: 1x USB OTG 1x IrDA Accelerometer 1x I2C, 1x SPI […]

Posted on

Linaro 13.06 Release With Linux Kernel 3.10 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.06 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.10-rc6 and Android 4.2.2. Linux Linaro Stable (LSK) preview is based on kernel 3.9.6. There seems to have been a lot of activity for the LAVA and Builds and Integration teams, with LAVA support for new SoC such as Huawei K3V2 and Broadcom Capri from 2 companies which have recently joined Linaro as members, and well as continuous build for Linaro Stable Kernel. On the kernel side, more work has been done for multi-platform support (unified kernel), uprobes, eMMC power mamangement, and more. Here are the highlights of this release: LAVA LAVA Core As part of the effort to improve the developer experience with LAVA, the different client tools were consolidated into a single package, which simplifies the process of updating the tools and makes it easier for the team to provide new features for LAVA users. LAVA now supports KVM devices, […]

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