Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Intrinsyc Introduces Snapdragon 810 Powered Mobile and Tablet MDPs, DragonBoard Development Kit

Intrinsyc has recently announced availability for three development platforms based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 ARM Cortex A53/A57 processor, namely a smartphone Mobile Development Platform (MDP), a tablet MDP, and a DragonBoard development kit integration Open-Q 8094 system-on-module, making these one of the first ARM64 development platforms available to individual developers, or at least small software development companies (approved by Qualcomm). All three platforms will run Android 5.0 Lollipop. Intrinsyc Snapdragon 810 MDP Smartphone Intrinsyc MDP/S specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (8994) 64-bit octa-core processor with 4x Cortex A57 cores, 4x Cortex A53 cores, Adreno 430 GPU, and Hexagon V56 DSP System Memory – 3 GB LP-DDR4 Storage – 32 GB eMMC 5.0 micro SD slot (under battery door) Display – 6.17” QHD (2560×1600) 490ppi, 10-finger multi-touch capacitive touchscreen Video Output – micro HDMI type D Audio Headset jack with ANC support 8 microphones (2 analog/ 6 digital) with support […]

November 28, 2014November 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linaro 14.11 Release with Kernel 3.18, Android 5.0, & Ubuntu Utopic. Debian 8.0 Gets ARM64 Port

Linaro 14.11 has been released with Linux kernel 3.18-rc5 (baseline), Linux 3.10.61 & 3.14.25 (LSK, same versions as last month), and Android 4.4.2, 4.4.4, and for the first time Android 5.0 Lollipop. There’s also been some news with regards to Linux desktop distributions, as Ubuntu baseline has been upgraded to Utopic (14.10), and Debian 8.0 (Jessie) will officially support ARM64 with 93% of packages built as of November 5th. Android Lollipop images are said to be built for TC2, Juno, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and FVP models, but I could not find the images. Finally, it’s the first time I’ve noticed Hisilicon X5HD2 development board with a dual core Cortex A9 processor, but apparently it’s the same as Hi3716cv200. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.18-rc5-2014.11 updated GATOR to version 5.20 updated topic from Qualcomm LT (include IFC6410 board support) updated integration-linaro-vexpress64 topic by ARM LT (FVP […]

November 27, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Rikomagic MK80, MK12, MK05, V5 Android TV Boxes and Sticks Are Now Available for Purchase

Rikomagic unveiled their MK80, MK12 and MK05 Android media players a few week ago, and somehow I missed (or ignored) their Rikomagic V5 TV stick, which looks very similar to Jesurun T034 / MK802 V powered with Rockchip RK3288 processor, and features an Ethernet port, but differs as full-sized USB ports are used instead of mix of micro and full-sized USB ports. All four devices, even five with MK80 Plus, are now available on Rikomagic’s Aliexpress store. MK80 and MK80 Plus are Android mini PCs powered by Allwinner A80 SoC, and are probably using the same Sunchip board as Tronsmart Draco AW80 Meta and Telos, The standard version comes with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and the “Plus” version with 4GB RAM, and 32GB eMMC, and can be purchased respectively for $155.90 and $199.99 including shipping. MK12 is based on the new Amlogic S812 processor which adds HEVC/H.265 hardware video decoding […]

November 27, 2014November 27, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Firefly-RK3288 Development Board in Mass Production, Selling for $140

Firefly-RK3288 development board has been an interesting, yet confusing story, at least to me. We’ve first heard about the Firefly board on July, but I was privately told in September that the board would only be sold in China by a T-Chip sales person, only to see it become available for $189 on Ebay, as well as on Taobao a few days later. But those first boards may have only been engineering sample, or more likely from a limited trial runs, as the company has now announced mass production had started. Let’s refresh our memory with the specifications: SoC – Rockchip 3288 quad core ARM Cortex A12 / A17 up to 1.8 GHz with Mali-T764 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 /3.0, and OpenCL 1.1 System Memory – 2G DDR3 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot Video Output HDMI 2.0 up to 3840×2160@60p VGA out (D-SUB connector) Dual MIPI, Dual LVDS and and […]

November 27, 2014November 27, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Dual Boot Ubuntu 14.10 / Android 4.4 Image Released for Ugoos UT3

There has been several Ubuntu images released for Rockchip RK3288 based devices, even dual boot Android / Ubuntu images, first thanks to Ian Morrison who published instructions to install Linux on RK3288 devices based on the work done by T-Firefly team, then Nagrace released a preliminary dual boot Android / Ubuntu for HPH NT-V6, Open Hour Chameleon can boot either Android or Lubuntu from an SD card, and more recently Ugoos released a dual boot Ubuntu 14.10 / Android 4.4 image for their Ugoos UT3 mini PC, as well as a demo video. Three images are now available for Ugoos UT3: Dual boot (Android 4.4.2 – Ubuntu 14.10) – ut3_dualboot_0.1t.rar Ubuntu 14.10 only – ut3_ubuntu14.10_v0.1.rar Android 4.4.2 only – ut3_2.0.4.zip As a side note, I love mega.co.nz links as the download speed usually maxes out my Internet connection bandwidth. There are two files and one folder in the dual boot rar file: […]

November 26, 2014November 27, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

International Deals for Black Friday 2014

Every year, right after Thanksgiving comes Black Friday which “officially” opens the shopping season for Christmas, and the next Monday is called Cyber Monday, a much more recent day on the calendar, as it offers Online deals. Both are mostly US centric, but Chinese e-retailers have decided to jump on the Black Friday / Cyber Monday bandwagon, so just like for Black Friday 2013, I’ve decided to list a few offer available online for international buyers. Please make check to check my little shopping guide to avoid pitfalls, such as “fake” discounts, where the original price is inflated to misguide prospective buyers. DealExtreme DealExtreme’s Black Friday promotion campaign has not officially started, but they’ve already announced their program: From November 28th to December 1st, DX Black Friday Shopping Carnival will be grandly open! This year, DX will bring you with the most beloved brands at affordable prices with amazing discounts […]

November 26, 2014November 26, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Zero Devices Z5C Thinko 4K H.265 TV Stick Review

Zero Devices Z5C Think is one of the rare HDMI TV sitck powered by Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A12/A17 processor available on the market. I’ve already take a few pictures of the device and internals, so today I’ll focus on testing the firmware, and performance of this thin and nice looking TV stick. First Boot, Settings and First Impressions There was a time when HDMI stick were powered by much slower, but power efficient processor based on Cortex A5 cores. One of these was CX-01 mini PC, and they could be powered by the USB port of the TV without problems. Now the processor are much more powerful, so normally you can’t power the device directly from the TV, but since I’ve seen people claim it was possible to drive RK3288 stick directly from the USB port of some TVs, I gave it a try, connected the stick to […]

November 26, 2014November 26, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

CuBoxTV is a $100 OpenELEC TV Box Powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad SoC

Last year, Solidrun launched their Cubox-i mini PCs powered by Freescale i.MX6 single, dual or quad core processor, and running Debian, OpenSUSE, Android 4.4, or various XBMC based Linux distributions. The company has now announced a new product called CuboxTV, that on surface looks similar to their Cubox-i4Pro mini PC with a quad core processor, but instead of running Linux desktop distributions, or Android, it’s pre-loaded with OpenELEC Linux distribution running Kodi 14. CuboxTV specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX6 Quad with four Cortex A9 core up to 1GHz, and Vivante GC2000 3D GPU System Memory – 1GB SDRAM @ 1066 MHz Storage – 8GB internal storage + micro SD interface Video Output – HDMI 1.4b, 3D support Video Decoders – MPEG-4 ASP, XVID, H.264 HP, H.263, MPEG-2 MP, MJPEG BP, VP8, Sorenson-H263. Video Encoders – MPEG-4 SP, H.264 BP, H.263, MJPEG BP Image Codecs – JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG. Audio […]