CNXSoft – Embedded Software Development

If you have a Raspberry Pi, most likely it will have a green PCB since that’s the way they are manufactured it. The good news is that the Raspberry Pi is be available in its natural color Red very soon, however it will only be officially sold in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

The reason for the geographical limitation is because Farnell and RS components have a worldwide co-exclusive license to sell the Raspberry Pi, and the selected Chinese manufacturer, Egoman Technology Corp , won’t be allowed to sell out of China. However, it will be hard to prevent third parties in China from buying the product, and selling it via Ebay or Aliexpress. The other reason for the differentiation is that the Red Raspberry Pi won’t be CE/FCC certified, even though, at the beginning, at least it will basically have the same components of the Green Raspberry Pi sold by RS and Farnell. In theory, it makes it illegal to sell it in Europe, North America, and probably some other countries.

Egoman Technology sells the Red Raspberry Pi Model B for 278 RMB (44.61 USD) on Taobao, but it will ship after Chinese new year.  This is quite close to the Cubieboard price (328 RMB) on the same site, so it’s not really that good of a deal. Having said that, the Raspberry Pi foundation is confident the retail price will eventually come down, as Egoman Technology is free to change components as needed to make it more cost effective, although features will remain the same.

After news of an AllWinner A31 Tablet earlier today, here’s an other quad core Cortex A7 processor announcement, as Qualcomm has recently added of 2 new chipsets to its Snapdragon S4 family of mobile processors: the MSM8226 and MSM8626 featuring 4 ARM Cortex A7 core and Adreno 305 GPU. The processors support 1080p video playback and up to 13MP cameras. Both processors are built using 28nm technology node, and will be ready for customer sampling by Q2 2013 for UMTS, CDMA and TD-SCDMA.

These 2 chipsets will incorporate WTR2605, a new multi-mode radio transceiver, specifically designed and optimized to address China requirements such as support for TD-SCDMA, CDMA 1xAdv and HSPA+. The WTR2605 transceiver comes with an integrated, high-performance GPS core with GLONASS and Beidou support, and is said to offer 40 percent power savings and 60 percent smaller footprint compared to previous generations.

The company will also provide Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) for both MSM8226 and MSM8626 processors in order to help their customers bring smartphones based on those solutions faster to market. The QRD8226 and QRD8626 will also be available for sampling by the Q2 2013.

As usual, Qualcomm announcements are rather laconic and lack in details, so there’s not really much public technical details at this time.

Via: Anandtech

Black Friday is the day following Thanks giving in the USA, and is considered the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Although Black Friday is very much US centric, online shopping may also to access those deals anywhere in the world.

20% discount will be available on ISEE IGEPv2 NO WIFI board, as well as IGEP COMs & EXPANSIONS boards. This is the only development board I’ve found to have a deal for black Friday.

Focalprice has a page dedicated to Black Friday with discounts between 11 to 21% for smartphones, tablets, and all sorts of accessories, including the AMPE 10 tablet that will sell for $180.90. There’s also a 6% discount coupon (12TKS6OFF) valid between the 22nd and 25th.

Pandawill has sales with up 10% discount between the 22nd and 25th of November.

Dealextreme does not have deals, but instead a Black Friday lottery. If you order for over $22.50, you get a change to win one of over 20,000 gift cards with values ranging from $3 to $50, or if you’re really lucky a “Super Gift Card” worth $1000 (1 winner).

Liliputing put a list of deals for Black Friday 2012 for tablets, notebooks, smart phones, media player and e-boot readers and more. But most of them are most probably only available in the US.

If you think there are some other interesting international deals for black Friday, feel free to post them in the comments section (max 2 links per poster).

ZiiLABS, a subsidiary of Creative Technology,  has announced the HanZpad platform, a tablet reference design based on ZiiLABS ZMS-40 StemCell Media Processor (4 ARM Cortex A9 cores and 96  GPU cores) optimized for Android 4.x (ICS) and a Chinese operating system.

Ziilabs/Creative HanZPad GS (Gold Standard) Android 4.x Tablet Reference Design

The HanZpad platform is built around Ziilabs ZMS-40 processors with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs and 96-core for the GPU. The ZMS-40 SoC supports H.264 HP decoding of up to 3840×1080 for true 1080p 3D stereo, and 2560×1600 (WQXGA) display resolution support.  The firmware can also be upgraded to support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) aka H.265 which can increase data compression ratio by up to 2 times compared to H.264.

Beyond the ZMS-40 processor, the key features of the tablet are as follows:

• 10.1-inch, 1,280 x 800-pixels IPS panel
• 1GB memory
• micro SDHC slot (up to 64GB)
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
• 22-hour battery life (~1W power consumption)
• 260 x 171.4 x 7.95mm, 480g

Software-wise, the ZMS-40 supports ZiiLABS’ enhanced Android 4.0 implementation that complements the standard Android offering with a suite of software taking advantage of the ZMS processor and includes support for:

• ZiiPhoto for intelligent photo browsing, 3D slide show and special photo effects,
• ZiiCamera for real-time preview and capturing of photos with 3D effects; live ultra high resolution 40 megapixel Panoramic photo capture in one sweep; and high dynamic range images,
• ZiiVideo for advanced video playback including 1080p WebM (VP8) support and trick modes (such as reverse play, frame-by-frame advance and reverse, multi-speed play and more), and skip to any part of a movie by browsing a timeline with thumbnails,
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi’s Crystalizer and CMSS-3D audio effects.
• Bluetooth/WiFi high definition audio output.

ZiiLABS’ enhanced Android provides support for 2 independent displays, the tablet screen and an HDMI TV, so that you can watch movies (playback by the tablet) on the TV while browsing the web on the tablet itself.

Ziilabs also developed the HanZpad Chinese Operating System which support features specific to the Chinese market such as handwritten Chinese character input capability as well a education application suites such as eSchoolBag (电子书包).

This platform targets the Chinese market, especially the education market as the Chinese government pushes for digital technology in the classroom. No availability and pricing information has been provided by the companies.

I’ll show a few digital signage applications based on Sigma Designs EM8620 and SMP8630 series that are currently used in Hong Kong and China.

• Bus Digital Signage

Cross Border Bus Digital Signage

SinoCDN is a Hong Kong company providing broadband media delivery solutions.

SinoCDN  currently provides a digital signage solution for Hong Kong – China cross boarder buses called IPAD. Their solution is based on EM8623L Sigma Designs and allows content update thru Wifi at the border between China / Hong Kong. If you’ve ever been at the Hong Kong / China border (Lok Ma Chau) and seen some Wifi access points whose names starts with sinocdn, they are used for this purpose.

• Digital Signage & POS (Point-of-Sale)

Heng Yu Technologies is another Hong Kong company specialized in the manufacturing of “customized input and display technology for the industrial markets”

They provide point of sales and advertizing platform based on several Sigma Designs platforms, including a point of sale and digital signage platform based on Sigma Designs EM8623L hardware.

Hengyu Digital Signage

There latest solution provide multi zone supports: video zone, picture zone, text zone and scrolling text zones optionally controlled thru their own server software thru serial port or network (Ethernet and Wifi). They support different kind of displays that makes then suitable for both Point of Sales (POS) and Digital Signage applications.

• Digital Signage with large monitors (32″ to 52″)

Winall LCD Display

Guangzhou Winall Electronics Technologies Ltd is a Chinese company specialized in professional LCD manufacturing and provides their digital signage solutions to Chinese customers such as banks, city subway systems, travel agencies…

They provide relatively large displays (32″ to 52″) that embeds a platform based on Sigma Designs SMP8635. Winall digital signage solutions support multiple zones: video, picture and scrolling text, vertical and horizontal orientation, no black transition between videos and picture…

A control software is also available to create the playlists and schedules, and to update the content thru the network or USB mass storage devices on the internal Compact flash card.