Orange Pi AIPro SBC features a 20 TOPS Huawei Ascend AI SoC

Orange Pi Huawei Ascent SBC

Orange Pi AIPro is a new single board computer for AI applications that features a new (and unnamed) Huawei Ascend AI quad-core 64-bit processor delivering up to 20 TOPS (INT8) or 8 TOPS (FP16) of AI inference performance. The SBC comes with up to 16GB LPDDR4X and a 512Mbit SPI flash but also supports other storage options such as a microSD card, an eMMC flash module, and/or an M.2 NVMe or SATA SSD. The board also features two HDMI 2.0 ports, one MIPI DSI connector, and an AV port for video output, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 5 connectivity, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. Orange Pi AIPro specifications: SoC – Huawei Ascend quad-core 64-bit (I’d assume RISC-V) processor delivering up to 20 TOPS (INT8) or 8TOPS (FP16) AI performance and equipped with an unnamed 3D GPU System Memory – 8GB […]

Scrcpy 2.0 Android screen mirroring and control utility for PCs released with audio forwarding support

Srcpy 2.0

Scrcpy 2.0 Android screen mirroring and control utility for Windows, Linux, and macOS has just been released with support for audio forwarding that enables audio to be played back into the computer/laptop, instead of the smartphone, at least for mobile devices running Android 11 or greater. We first reported about Scrcpy open-source utility in 2018, and at the time, it worked relatively well in Ubuntu 16.04 but required quite a few steps for the installation, and it would lag from time to time. I could still use the mouse and keyboard to control my phone, send SMS, chat, browse the web, play games, switch between landscape and portrait modes, and so on. Five years later, Scrcpy 2.0 has been released, the installation is much easier, and new features have been implemented. Scrcpy 2.0 highlights: Quality – 1920×1080 or above Performance – 30~120fps, depending on the device Latency – 35~70ms Startup […]

HarmonyOS development board shows up for $11

HarmonyOS development board

Last year, we noted the Hisilicon Hi3861 based HiSpark WiFi IoT development board with supports LiteOS and HarmonyOS that was available in China for just under $10, or as part of a devkit with baseboard and modules for around $60. Although not very practical, buying from Taobao was possible, but there’s now what appears to be a new revision of the Hi3861V100 based HarmonyOS development board in a wider form factor on Banggood for $10.99. Hi3861 development board specifications: MCU – Hisilicon Hi3861V100 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller @ up to 160 MHz with 352 KB SRAM and 288 KB ROM, 2 MB flash memory, and WiFI 4 connectivity; QFN-32 5x5mm package WiFi 802.11b/g/n standard up to 72.2 Mbps @ HT20 2.4 GHz frequency band (ch1-ch14). Station (STA) and access point (AP) modes with up to 6 clients for the latter WiFi mesh with up to 256 nodes Security – WPA, WPA2 […]

Customize GStreamer build with only the features needed for your application

Gstreamer customize

Thanks to a partnership between Collabora and Huawei is now possible to build Gstreamer with just the features required for a specific application, reducing the binary size for space-constrained embedded systems. Gstreamer is a very popular open-source multimedia framework used in a wide variety of projects and products, and with an impressive number of features spread over 30 libraries and more than 1600 elements in 230 plugins. This is not a problem on desktop PC and most smartphones, but the size of the binary may be too large for some systems, and until recently it was no easy way to customize GStreamer build for a specific application. But Collabora changed the code to allow gst-build to generate a minimal GStreamer build. The company built upon a new feature from GStreamer 1.18, released in September 2020, that makes it possible to build all of GStreamer into a single shared library named […]

XUAN-Bike self-balancing, self-riding bicycle relies on flywheel, 22 TOPS Huawei Ascend A310 AI processor

XUAN-bike self-balancing self-riding bicycle

After Huawei engineer Peng Zhihui Jun fell off this bicycle, he decided he should create a self-balancing, self-riding bicycle, and ultimately this gave birth to the XUAN-Bike, with XUAN standing for eXtremely, Unnatural Auto-Navigation, and also happening to be an old Chinese name for cars. The bicycle relies on a flywheel and a control board with ESP32 and MPU6050 IMU for stabilization connected over a CAN bus to the motors, as well as Atlas 200 DK AI Developer Kit equipped with the 22 TOPS Huawei Ascend A310 AI processor consuming under 8W connected to a 3D depth camera and motor for self-riding. It’s not the first time we see this type of bicycle or even motorcycle, but the XUAN-Bike design is also fairly well-documented with the hardware design (electronics + 3D Fusion360 CAD files) and some documentation in Chinese uploaded to Github. The software part has not been released so […]

HarmonyOS launched on Huawei MatePad tablets, Watch 3 smartwatches

Huawei HarmonyOS Tablet - MatePad Pro 10.8

Huawei plans for an Android alternative called HongMeng (鸿蒙) OS were leaked in 2019 following tensions with the US government that prevented them from working with American and other companies around the world. The operating system was later called HarmonyOS for the overseas markets, and Huawei released HarmonyOS 2.0 beta in September of last year, where we learned it was heavily inspired by Android, replacing Google GMS with Huawei’s own HMS, but using the same development tools. We also got a roadmap at the time with the company planning to launch HarmonyOS devices in 2021. Developers first got the HiSpark WiFi IoT RISC-V development board to play with the new OS in October 2020, but now the company has finally announced HarmonyOS consumer devices with three Huawei MatePad tablets, and two Huawei 3 watches. Huawei MatePad HamornyOS tablets Three models have been introduced with a mix of Kirin and Snapdragon […]

Huawei Qingyun L410 Linux laptop is powered by Kirin 990 Arm processor

Huawei Qingyun L410 Arm Linux laptop

While it’s already possible to purchase an Arm Linux laptop like PineBook Pro, the Rockchip RK3399 processor, and 4GB RAM may be limiting to some, especially when wanting to multitask. But most likely out of necessity, Huawei has unveiled a more powerful Arm Linux laptop with Huawei Qingyun L410 powered by a 7nm Kirin 990 octa-core Cortex A76/A55 processor, coupled with 8GB RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and a 14-inch display. Huawei Qingyun L410(L410 KLVU-WDU0) preliminary specifications: SoC – Hisilicon Kirin 990 octa-core processor with 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.86GHz, 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.09GHz, 4x Cortex A55 @ 1.86GHz, Arm Mali-G76MP16 @ 700 MHz, DaVinci NPU System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4-4266 Storage – Up to 512 UFS of storage (SSD or UFS 3.0 TBC) Display – 14-inch 2K display with a 3:2 aspect ratio Camera – “hidden camera” Video – 4K 60fps video support Misc – Fingerprint sensor Dimensions – […]

Hi3861 based HiSpark WiFi IoT development board supports LiteOS and HarmonyOS

HiSpark WiFi IoT Development Board

HiHope HiSpark WiFi IoT development board features Hisilicon Hi3861 microcontroller with 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and supports Huawei LiteOS as well as HarmonyOS. Equipped with 2MB flash and 384KB SRAM, the board targets smart home applications, and ships with a baseboard to help with development. HiSpark board specifications: MCU – Hisilicon Hi3861 32-bit microcontroller @ up to 160 MHz with 352 KB SRAM and 288 KB ROM, 2 MB flash memory, and WiFI 4 connectivity; QFN-32 5x5mm package WiFi 802.11b/g/n standard up to 72 Mbps @ HT20 2.4 GHz frequency band (ch1-ch14). Station (STA) and access point (AP) modes with up to 6 clients for the latter WiFi mesh with up to 256 nodes Security – WPA, WPA2 personal, and WPS 2.0 PCB antenna USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming via CH340 chip Expansion – 2x headers with up to 2x SPI, 2x I2C, 3x […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case