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The Beaglebord Community Launches The Beaglebone Cape Design Contest

The Beagleboard community has just announced the BeagleBone Cape Plug-in Board Design Contest. All you need to do (more easily said than done) is to design a Capefor the Beaglebone and submit the relevant materials during the contest period (November 1 – December 31, 2012) and if you’re one of the winner, you’ll receive cash prizes, a free devkit and you’ll become a Beagleboard community “God” as your Cape will be manufactured and sold through CircuitCo Electronics. To enter the competition, you’ll need to do the following by the 31st of December 2012: Come up with an original cape design and upload the Schematic layout and Bill of Materials (>$60) to an online sharing site (ex: Google Drive, Github) set for public view. Record a video describing your cape idea and upload it to YouTube. Click on the Submit Design Here button in http://beagleboard.org/CapeContest/ to submit your entry. On January 7, 2013,  the list […]

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VIA ARTiGO A1250 Slim System Powered by Quad Core E-Series Processor

VIA Technologies announced the VIA ARTiGO A1250 slim system featuring a 1.0 GHz VIA QuadCore E-Series processor and VIA VX11H media system processor (MSP). The VIA ARTiGO A1250  is a low profile system targeted at home or office applications such as home server, home automation, hotel management, media streaming, digital signage, surveillance as well as medical and healthcare applications. Here are the key features of ARTIGO A1250: VIA QuadCore E-Series processor (U4650E) @ 1.0 GHz Up to 8GB of DDR3 1333 SDRAM SODIMM Supports one 2.5″ SATA HDD or Flash SSD installation Quiet, ultra slim profile design (3cm high) VIA VX11H media system processor with DirectX11 support 3D and HD video up to 1080p HDMI & VGA display ports with dual independent display support I/O: HDMI, VGA, 2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, GigaLAN, Audio-in/out/mic-in Average power consumption of 27W TDP Dimensions: 17.7cm x 12.5cm x 3.0cm I understand that inside […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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Crowdfunding Initiative to Open AMLogic AML8726-M3 STB Source Code

J1nx (Peter Steenbergen) has spend a lot of time together with XBMC developers to try to bring XBMC (Linux) to ARM based set-top boxes, and initially AllWinner A10 processor seemed like a good candidate, unfortunately due to the lack of proper video engine libraries for Linux, progress on this SoC has been extremely slow. Then when Pivos and XBMC announced Pivos Xios DS set-top box based on AMLogic aml8726-M(1) would support XBMC natively, and the kernel and bootlooader (u-boot) source code was made available both on Pivos github account and AMLogic open source website, AML8726 series of processors appeared to be an ideal solution for this purpose. Instead of AML8726-M (aka AML8726-M1) which is limited to 512 MB, it was decided instead to use a faster processor AML8726-M3 that supports 1 GB RAM. The STB of choice is based on “MBX – f16ref” which should be some kind of development […]

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New Features in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

As Google unveiled Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet, they also announced Android 4.2, the latest version of Google operating system, that brings the following new features. Photo Sphere Camera Going beyond panoramic photo shots, photo sphere allows you to generate a 360 degrees panorama by taking pictures in all direction, up, down, right and left. Head over Google maps to see a few examples. Keyboard with Gesture Typing You can now just glides over the letters you want to type, and the new improved keyboard will find the word you want to type. The keyboard is also said to be able to anticipate the next word allowing to type a full sentence by just selecting suggested words.  Google also claims text-to-speech capabilities and voice typing have been improved, and you don’t need an internet connection to type with your voice anymore. Multiple User Profiles This is the most […]

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Google Unveils LG Nexus 4 Smartphone and Samsung Nexus 10 Tablet Running Android 4.2

Event though it had to cancel the media event due to bad weather, Google made several important announcements yesterday with the LG Nexus 4 Smartphone based on Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 and Samsung Nexus 10 tablet powered by the latest ARM Cortex A15 Exynos 5250 processor. The company also announced Android 4.2 (still called Jelly Bean) which will run on both devices. I’ll provide more details on the new features of the latest version of Android in a separate post. Let’s see what kind of hardware the Nexus 4 has to offer: CPU – Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro @ 1.5 GHz (Quad Core) System Memory  – 2 GB RAM Storage – 8 or 16 GB internal storage Display – 4.7″ IPS display (1280×768) Camera – 8MP rear and 1.3 MP front cameras. Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC (Android Beam) and Bluetooth Mobile Network – Unlocked GSM/UMTS/HSPA+, GSM/EDGE/GPRS (850, 900, 1800, […]

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Linaro 12.10 Release with Linux kernel 3.6 and Android 4.1.2

Linaro release 12.10 has recently been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.6.1 and Android 4.1.2. This release provides further improvement to big.LITTLE architecture and Linux can boot on TC2 (A Test Chip with 2 Cortex A15 and 3 Cortex a7 cores) and an ARMv8 (Aarch64) OpenEmbedded community build is now available for download.  Work has also be done on preparing demos for Linaro Connect (29 Oct – 02 Nov) in Copenhagen including a single ARM kernel booting on different boards. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro Android 12.10 has been upgraded to 4.1.1_r6 and then to 4.1.2. Linaro Android builds are now shipped with improved instructions. AOSP Galaxy Nexus builds are available from http://android-build.linaro.org and include DS-5 support. Linaro Android toolchain has been updated to Linaro GCC 2012.10. Dalvik benchmarked against Hard-Float Open JDK and Java SE. Power meter improvements for LAVA automation. Prepared Connect demonstrations benchmarking […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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$132 Kingdel NC270 Thin Client Powered by Intel Atom N270

Reader onebir tipped me about a low cost Intel Atom based PC on Aliexpress with some decent specs. Kingdel NC270 PC is based on Intel Atom N270 processor @ 1.6 Ghz with 2 GB RAM and 8 GB SSD. It is capable of decoding 720p HD video and features lots of ports which could make it a good entry-level digital signage player among other things. Here are the specs of this nettop. Processor – Intel Atom n270 System Memory – 2 GB (in most places, but it’s also written 1GB in one place in the description) Storage – 8GB SSD (16GB and 320GB version is also available) Connectivity: 10/100 Ethernet WiFi (optional?) Serial Ports – female DB-25, compatible SPP, ECP and EPP | male DB-9, compatible FIFO prefix = st1 16C550 2 PS/2 port (mouse, keyboard) USB – 6 USB host 2.0 ports 1x PCI slot Video Output – VGA […]

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$89 Hiapad Hi802 Android mini PC Based on Freescale i.MX6 Quad Processor

The first (single core) mini PCs showed up in May, the dual core mini PCs in August, and the first quad core mini PCs should be available in November starting with Hiapad Hi-802 HDMI TV Stick powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad Cortex A9 processor with 1GB RAM. The specs of the device are not available publicly, but based on diverse sources (including charbax video below), it should be as follows: SoC – Freescale i.MX6Q Quad Core Cortex A9 Processor with Vivante GC2000 GPU System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 16? GB NAND Flash Memory + microSD card slot Video Output – HDMI Connectivity – Built-in Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth USB – USB Host + USB OTG A picture of the PCB (one side only) has been uploaded by Hiapad. There are 6 through holes at the top left of the PCB which might be some debug ports (TBC  […]

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