Month: February 2012

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Texas Instruments Announces Ultra-Low Power MSP430 “Wolverine” MCU Series

Texas Instruments Announces Ultra-Low Power MSP430 “Wolverine” MCU Series

Texas Instruments announced a new series of its MSP430 MCUs codenamed “Wolverine” for its aggressive power-saving technology. The company claims this ultra-low-power MSP430 microcontroller platform offers at least 50 percent less power consumption than any other micro-controller in the industry with 360 nA RTC mode and less than 100 µA/MHz active power consumption. Since typical battery powered applications spend as much as 99.9 percent of their time in standby mode, Wolverine MCUs power consumption of 360 nA in standby mode would more than double the battery life. Here are the key power savings techniques and technology using the the Wolverine MCU (MSP430FR58xx): Ultra low leakage (ULL) process technology. TI developed ULL technology that offers a 10x improvement in leakage and optimized mixed signal capabilities. Power reduction are also achieved thanks to an improved 130 nm process technology and more than 30 power-optimized analog and digital components. Unified FRAM (Ferroelectric Random […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Boundary Devices Unveils Nitrogen6X Freescale i.MX6 Development Kit (aka i.MX6q Sabre Lite)

Boundary Devices Unveils Nitrogen6X Freescale i.MX6 Development Kit (aka i.MX6q Sabre Lite)

Arrow Electronics and Boundary Devices have launched the Nitrogen6X, a low cost development kit based on Freescale i.MX6 quad-core cortex A9 processor. Here are the technical specifications of the Nitrogen6X board: Quad-Core ARM Cortex A9 processor at 1GHz (i.mx6Quad) 1 GB of 64-bit wide DDR3 @ 532MHz Board Dimensions: 4.5″ x 3″ 2MB Serial Flash Three display ports (PRGB, LVDS, HDMI) Parallel camera port with OV5642 Interface Multi-stream-capable HD video engine delivering 1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode and 3-D video playback in HD Superior 3-D graphics performance with quad shaders for up to 200 Mt/s Separate 2-D and/or Vertex acceleration engines for an optimal user interface experience Serial ATA (SATA) Dual SDHC card slots PCI express port Analog (headphone/mic) Audio 10/100/1G Ethernet with Power over Ethernet support 2 RS-232 Serial ports 10-pin JTAG interface I2C/GPIO/SPI 3 High speed USB ports (2xHost, 1xOTG) CAN port TiWi 802.11 b/g/n WiFi+BT optional Supports Android […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Qualcomm Releases Augmented Reality Vuforia SDK 1.5 for Android and iOS

Qualcomm Releases Augmented Reality Vuforia SDK 1.5 for Android and iOS

Announced in January, Vuforia is the new name of Qualcomm’s Augmented Reality platform. Qualcomm has just announced the commercial release of Vuforia SDK 1.5 for Android and iOS. Applications built using this SDK can now be distributed and promoted on the Android Market and Apple App Store. Developers can also build 3D AR application using Qualcomm’s extension for the Unity 3 cross-platform game engine. The Vuforia SDK 1.5 supports Android devices running on Android 2.2 and above, as well as the iPad 2, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPod touch (4th Generation) running iOS 4 and above. Vuforia SDK 1.5 brings the following features and improvements: Ability to swap datasets at runtime: You no longer have to upgrade your app to change the target dataset, and you can now build AR experiences that work on a large number of images. If your app needs to augment more than 60 images, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Embedded Artists and NXP Release The First ARM Cortex-M Android Open Accessory Development Kit

Embedded Artists and NXP Release The First ARM Cortex-M Android Open Accessory Development Kit

Embedded Artists and NXP introduced the TN-20764, a board that can be used with Android Open Accessory Application (AOAA) development kit that features 2 NXP Cortex-M MCUs, at Embedded World 2012. The board includes Ethernet, CAN and IEEE 802.15.4 interfaces as well as a remote CAN node, enabling designers to develop accessories for consumer applications,  as well as home, building and industrial automation applications requiring different types of connectivity. There are already Arduino and PIC-based Android Open Accessories, but this board is the first AOAA kit based on ARM Cortex-M micro-controllers. As mentioned above, the board features 2 Cortex M micro-controllers: The NXP LPC1769, a 120-MHz Cortex-M3 based MCU, provides the interface to the Android mobile device via its full-speed USB transceiver . The LPC1769 also includes 512 KB flash and 64 KB on-chip SRAM, an Ethernet MAC, a CAN 2.0B controller, an 8-channel, a 12-bit ADC, a 10-bit DAC, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Play Angry Birds For Real with Mbed NXP Cortex-M0 Slingshot

Play Angry Birds For Real with Mbed NXP Cortex-M0 Slingshot

If you’re just bored to play Angry Birds with the touchscreen of your smartphone or with your mouse in Angry Birds for Chrome, you can now bring the fun back to the game by playing with a real slingshot ! mbed designed a USB slingshot with an mbed NXP LPC11U24 (Cortex-M0 MCU) board that emulates a USB mouse. mbed measures the angle and strength applied with: An accelerometer that measure the tilt by tracking the gravity vector A rubber stretch sensor used as the sling, and measure how much it is stretched. They built the slingshot with the following hardware components: mbed NXP LPC11U24 board – 59 USD 3-axis Accelerometer – ADXL345 Accelerometer connect via SPI  – 14.95 USD Stretch Sensor connected to pin 15 (analog input) – 9.95 USD USB B connector Handcrafted Slingshot Here’s how mbed describes their NXP board: The mbed NXP LPC11U24 MCU module is a […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Tizen Releases Beta Source Code and SDK

Tizen Releases Beta Source Code and SDK

Back in January, Tizen preview SDK and source code was made available. Today, Tizen has released the beta source code and SDK. Here are the main changes compared with the code preview: SDK support for Windows, in addition to Ubuntu SDK source code is now available Tizen Web UI framework extends jQuery Mobile to make developing web applications easier with optimized widgets. Tizen Web API provides more features, such as setting an alarm, accessing media contents, retrieving system information, and more. Tizen uses a bootloader based on U-Boot. The Tizen team emphasizes that this version is Beta and that it is not yet designed for use to create production applications. Since Windows is now supported, the development machine requirements have slightly changed as follows: Ubuntu 10.04/10.10/11.04/11.10 32-bit, Windows XP SP3/7 32-bit (Mac version will be available soon) At least dual-core 2 GHz CPU (recommend VTx supported by CPU) At least […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Texas Instruments OMAP5 Demo at MWC 2012

Texas Instruments OMAP5 Demo at MWC 2012

Charbax of armdevices.net has uploaded a very interesting video with an OMAP5430 demo and an interview at Texas Instruments booth at MWC 2012. Using the OMAP5 development kit, they demo several 3D applications, the web browser and the picture gallery and it looks extremely smooth. They discussed about the OMAP5 vs Tegra 3 benchmark, and it appears mobile web browsers are not yet optimized for more than 2 cores which could explain the performance difference somewhat. The OMAP5 currently runs at 800 MHz, but there will eventually be 2 versions: 1.7 and 2.0 GHz when the OMAP 5 AP is released. This should show a performance improvement of over 4x against the Tegra 3, although I’m sure in the meantime, Nvidia will have announced the Tegra 4 (Wayne). The OMAP 5 also offers impressive improvement in power consumption, as the SGX544 GPU cores are augmented by a dedicated 2D hardware-accelerated […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Linux on eMMC: Optimizing for Performance – ELC 2012

Linux on eMMC: Optimizing for Performance – ELC 2012

Ken Tough, principal engineer at Intrinsyc Software, discusses Linux on eMMC at Embedded Linux Conference 2012. Abstract: Embedded devices are increasingly choosing eMMC instead of raw NAND flash as their main storage, for increased independence from component vendors and changing storage densities. This presentation examines Linux configuration for eMMC, how to effectively measure your eMMC performance, and tips to improve it. Topics covered include: filesystem bearing on MMC/SD performance, IO scheduler configuration, and optimal partition layout. Target audience is embedded systems developers or users interested in getting the most out of their eMMC/SD card. You can also download the presentation slides on elinux.org. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com