$70 MicroNFCBoard Brings NFC Connectivity to Any Board or Device (Crowdfunding)

AppNearMe MicroNFCBoard is a development platform for Near Field Communication (NFC) comprised of an NFC transceiver, an NXP MCU, and all software stack and tools you need for development. This board also exposes various I/Os that allows you to connect to external hardware or devices, and it can be used with an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, mbed or PC/Mac. Let’s go through the board specifications first: MCU – NXP LPC11U34FHN33/421 Cortex M0 MCU @ 48MHz, with 10KB RAM, 48KB FLASH, 4KB EEPROM NFC Transceiver – NXP PN512. Reader/Writer and card operation modes supporting ISO14443A/Mifare and FeliCa schemes.  NFCIP-1 mode Splittable antenna USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming I/O – 20x through holes with access to serial (UART), I2C, SPI, 4x ADC inputs, IRQ, Boot and Reset, and power pins. (2x pin header that you can solder are provided) Misc – Reset and bootloader enable push-buttons, 2x LEDs. […]

Texas Instruments Announces Sitara AM437x Cortex A9 SoCs and Evaluation Modules

The first time I heard about Texas Instruments Sitara AM437x was via a TechNexion EDM-CT-AM437x system-on-module back in 2012, but Texas Instruments Sitara Cortex A9 processors development seems to have dragged a little longer than expected. Nevertheless, the company has now formally announced their Sitara AM437x ARM Cortex A9 SoC targeting automation, IoT gateways, and other industrial applications, and featuring four PRUs (Programmable Real-time Units), and support for dual camera for terminals with bar code scanning. At launch there will be four AM437xprocessors: AM4376, AM4377, AM4378, and AM4379. The processors will all be based on a single Cortex A9 core  @ 800 to 1000 MHz with 64KB SRAM shared with 32KB data cache and 32KB programmable cache, 256 KB L2 and L3 caches, a 32-bit memory interface supporting LPDDR2, DDR3, and DDR3L, a 2-port Gigabit Ethernet switch , two USB 2.0 OTG + PHY and the following other interfaces: Serial Ports […]

How to Try Android L Developer Preview in Ubuntu 14.04

As mentioned yesterday, Android L Developer Preview was about to be released, and this is now done with images for Nexus 5 “Hammerhead” and Nexus 7 “razor” available right now. However, if you don’t have either of these devices, or you’d rather not install a beta version on the phone you use everyday, you can still give a try in the SDK emulator. I’ve tried Android L myself in Ubuntu 14.04. Here’s what you have to do: Install Android Studio IDE in Ubuntu, and Create a new Project  or open an existing project (Android Studio Version is now 0.61) Click on Tools->Android->SDK Manager in the top menu, and select the Android L (API 20, L Preview) packages as shown below, and click on “Install xx Packages” button. Accept the license as required, and click Install. This step can take countless hours… Now we’ll need to create a Virtual Device for […]

Google Formally Launches Android TV. Android TV Set-Top Boxes and TVs to be Available in H2 2014

After Android L for mobile devices, and Android Wear for wearables, Google also announced Android for your television at Google I/O 2014, and after definitely killing “Google TV”, renaming it to “Google Services for Smart TV”, the company went for the obvious and called it “Android TV”, which will get messy with all the Chinese “Android TV” boxes that do not run “Android TV” but simply “Android”… Google apparently used an Android TV reference platform (ADT-1) based on Nvidia Tegra 4 K1 at I/O to showcase their latest implementation of Android the the living room. I’ve embedded the video of the demo below, but the key part of the demo can be summarized as follows: Android TV’s “TV Input Framework” can overlay notifications and other data on top of various video sources such as HDMI, TV tuners, and IP TV receivers Voice control demo (with smartphone) with requests such as: […]

Google Releases Android Wear SDK, LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live Smartwatches Are Now Available

I’ve just covered what’s new in Android L?, and I’m going to focus on Google I/O 2014’s announcements related by Android wear starting with hardware with LG G Watch ,and Samsung Gear smartwatches, followed by some details about the first official release of Android Wear SDK. LG G Watch Specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 @ 1.2 GHz System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 4GB eMMC Display – 1.65” IPS display (280 x 280) Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0 LE Sensors – 9-Axis (Gyro / Accelerometer / Compass) IP Rating – IP67 dust and water resistant Battery – Li-ion 400mAh Dimensions – 37.9 x 46.5 x 9.95 mm Weight – 62.5 grams LG G watch will run Android Wear (as it’s the subject of this post), and it currently available on Google Play for $229 (US only?) with shipping scheduled for early July. Samsung Gear Live Specifications: Processor – Unnamed […]

Google Releases Android L (Lollipop?) Developer Preview

Google I/O is taking place right now in San Francisco, and the company made several announcements. Although they have not announced the full codename of Android 5.0, referring to the next version as “Android L” (Lollipop would be nice though), but they’ve already documented the key changes made to Android L, and a developer preview will be released later today (26 June), together with binary images for Google Nexus 5 and Nexus 7. Beside the smartphone and tablet developer preview, there will be 3 other SDKs for Android L: Android Wear SDK – Android for wearables with sync notifications, wearable apps, data transfer APIs, and voice actions, e.g. “Ok Google, call mum”. Android TV Preview SDK – Android for TVs with pre-built fragments for browsing and interacting with media catalogs, in-app search, and recommendations. Android Auto SDK – Android for the car with apps featuring consistent user experience between vehicles, […]

Amazon Fire Phone Features a Camera Array for Dynamic Perspectives, and Firefly Real-Life Object & Audio Recognition

Amazon first phone has been rumored for a few months, and yesterday Jeff Bezos finally unveiled the Fire Phone powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor @ 2.2 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM, a 4.7″  720p display. It also supports 3G and LTE cellular connectivity, and beside a 13MP rear camera, and 2MP front camera, it also features a specialized camera array with four sensors to offer “Dynamic Perspective” and show different information depending on the position of the phone. Beside the hardware, the most notable feature is Firefly an augmented reality application that can recognize objects you may want to buy, and automatically link them to the Amazon store. Let’s go through the hardware specifications first: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU @ 2.2 GHz with Adreno 330 GPU System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 32 GB or 64 GB Display – 4.7″ HD LCD display, […]

Qiyang Technology ARM Development Boards Based on Atmel SAMA5D3, TI Sitara AM335x and Freescale i.MX6 SoCs

Hangzhou Qiyang Technology (杭州启扬智能科技有限公司) is a company based in Hangzhou, China, that provides embedded hardware solutions such as low power development boards and computer-on-modules. I’ve recently come across the company, and they have boards for various ARM based SoCs, but I’ve received details about three of their latest industrial development boards powered by Atmel SAMA5D3 Cortex A5 processor, Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x Cortex A8 SoC, and Freescale i.MX6 single and multi-core ARM Cortex A9 SoCs. Let’s have a look. Qiyang QY-A5D3XEK – Atmel SAMA5D3 Development Board The development kit is comprised of a base board (IAC-A5D3X-MB) and a computer-on-module (ICA-A5D3X_CM) with the following hardware specifications: Processor – Atmel SAMA5D3 ARM Cortex A5 @ 536 MHz (Either SAMA5D31, SAMA5D33, SAMA5D34 or SAMA5D35) System Memory – 256 MB DDR2 @ 333 MHz Storage – 256MB NAND flash + 2MB dataflash on CoM, 2x SD card slot on baseboard Video Output – VGA, […]

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