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

February 11, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Keepod Unite Aims to Bring Computer Access to Africa with $7 USB Sticks and Refurbished Laptops (Crowdfunding)

The Raspberry Pi foundation has done a great job to bring to market $25 and $35 computers for kids to learn programming, but they have many other uses including hardware “hacking” and bringing low cost computers to developing countries. Keepod and NGO LiveInSlums have thought of an apparently more cost effective way to bring computing access to people living in slums in Nairobi, Kenya, by providing USB sticks (about $7) to boot refurbished laptops. This is absolutely NOT a $7 PC as a few other websites have mentioned. The goal is to facilitate NGO communication, the spread of knowledge and economic development in a way that’s personal and secure. The USB flash drives will belong to one person, and contains a Linux based operating systems with all files saved in the stick, and no modifications on the host computer which does not even need an hard drive to work, and […]

February 10, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments

$50 Hotach HTV003 Android Media Player is Powered by Telechips TCC8935 SoC

The last few months have been pretty quiet in terms of new Android mini PCs and media players, at least when it comes to new platforms. But finally there’s something new, as Telechips TCC893x based devices are starting to show up on the marketplace. The devices won’t beat performance records as the new Telechips SoC features a dual core Cortex A9 processor with a Mali-400MP2 GPU, but they’ll be very affordable. Hotach HTV003 is one of the first media player powered by Telechips TCC8935, and sells for $50 on Aliexpress. Hotach HTV003 specifications: SoC – Telechips TCC8935 with two ARM Cortex A9 cores up to 1GHz, one Cortex M3 core, and an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB NAND Flash + micro SD card slot up to 32 GB Connectivity – Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi Video Output – HDMI Audio Ouput – HDMI USB – 2x […]

February 10, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

DragonBox Pyra Open Source Handheld Game Console To Feature TI OMAP5432 SoC.. or AllWinner A80, or Intel Bay Trail, or Qualcomm Snapdragon…

Pandora is an open source handheld console which development started as far back as 2007. The project has had ups and downs, and some people have yet to receive the device they pre-ordered. As many components are now more difficult to source, Pandora has reach end-of-life, as Pandora 2 is now being developed with a subset of the original team, but has been renamed to DragonBox Pyra to start afresh. The new version aims to take to the good aspects of the original Pandora, and improve on the bad ones, so that DragonBox will have a faster hardware with a better looking case and better control. Here are the specifications listed on the project website: SoC – Texas Instruments OMAP 5432 SoC with 2x ARM Cortex-A15 @ 1.7Ghz with NEON SIMD, 2x ARM Cortex-M4, Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544-MP2 GPU for 3D graphic, and Vivante GC320 GPU for 2D graphics System […]

February 9, 2014February 9, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

How to Upload YouTube Videos with the Command Line in Linux

Like many people, I access Internet via an ADSL connection at home. ADSL stands for “Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line”, with Asymmetric being the key word here, as it just mean your download speed will be (much) higher than your upload speed. My ISP promises a theoretical 10 Mbps download speed, and 512 Kbps upload speed, and this is pretty close in reality: Data Rate: 10240 (downstream), 509 (upstream) kbps. Assuming a 265MB video, in the very best case (63 KB/s), it would take 1 hour and 12 minutes to upload a video to YouTube, but in practice it’s often closer to 2 or 3 hours. If it’s a video you’ve shot yourself, and copied inside your computer, there’s very little you can do, except processing the video with tools such as HandBrake to make it smaller before upload. But if the video files are located somewhere in the Internet, and […]

February 9, 2014February 9, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Building eLinks Text-based Web Browser with (Some Sort of) JavaScript Support

Yesterday, I’ve spend some time trying to find a text-based web browser with support for JavaScript. Although I doubt many people would need that, I’ll post my findings, and show how to build and enable Javascript in eLinks web browser to access the web from a terminal in Linux (Ubuntu/Debian). Bear in mind that the implementation is far from complete, and most pages won’t work, at least for now. Initial research pointed me to three potential candidates: links2, w3m + w3m-js extension, and elinks. Links2 used to have JavaScript, but support was poor, so they decided to remove it. w3m-js is an experimental patch to add JavaScript to w3m, but the link is broken, so we are left with elinks. If you just want a text based web-browser, and do not care about JavaScript, you can just install links2, w3m, or elinks with apt-get. The versions I’ve tried in Ubuntu […]

February 7, 2014February 7, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Congatec Announces conga-QA3 QSeven and conga-TCA3 COM Express CoMs Powered By Intel “Bay Trail” Celeron and Atom SoCs

Congatec has announced several computers-on-module (CoM) powered by Intel “Bay Trail” Celeron and Atom SoCs compliant with either QSeven (conga-QA3 CoM), or COM Express (conga-TCA3 CoM) standards to be used for embedded applications. conga-QA3 and conga-TCA3 specifications: SoC (Processor + Intel HD graphics + Chipset) Intel Atom E3845 (4 x 1.91 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 10 W) Intel Atom E3827 (2 x 1.75 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 8 W) Intel Atom E3826 (2 x 1.46 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 7 W) Intel Atom E3825 (2 x 1.33 GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 6 W) Intel Atom E3815 (1.46 GHz, 512kB L2 cache, 5 W) Intel Celeron N2920 (4 x 1.86 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 7.5 W) Intel Celeron J1900 (4 x 2 GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 10 W) System Memory conga-QA3 – Up to 8 GB onboard DDR3L 1333 MT/s conga-TCA3 – 2x SO-DIMM sockets for DDR3L memory modules up to […]

February 6, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Wibtek TJ1800G & TJ1900G “Thin mini-ITX” Boards with Bay Trail-D Processors for DIY All-in-One Computers and mini PCs

Intel has made great progress in the low cost low power computer space thanks to Bay Trail based mini-ITX motherboards such as MSI J1800i and BIOSTAR J1800NH both with an Intel Celeron J1800 processor (10 W TDP) and selling for around $60, or the latest Intel NUC mini PC selling for $140 with a 7.5W TDP Celeron N2820. One of the requirements of mini-ITX specifications suggest boards to feature 20- or 24-pin “original ATX” power connectors, which requires a an ATX PSU, and adds to costs. One reader pointed out that another type of mini ITX boards dubbed “thin mini-ITX” do not require an ATX power supply, and could be powered by a standard 12V power supply just like Intel NUC. Thin mini-ITX Standard Thin mini-ITX has been defined by Intel a couple of years ago, and target the DIY market for All-in-One PC where you can buy an AIO […]

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

ZYBO Development Board Features Xilinx Zynq-7010 FPGA + ARM SoC, VGA and HDMI Output

Digilent ZYBO (ZYnq BOard) is a low cost development board powered by Xilinq Zynq-7010 SoC featuring a dual core ARM Cortex A9 processor and FPGA fabric. It’s using the same SoC as MicroZed, is in the same price range as it costs $189 ($125 for academic purpose), but adds video interfaces, namely bi-directional HDMI and VGA, that are not available in MicroZed. It does come however with less RAM (512 MB vs 1GB). Digilent ZYBO specifications: SoC – Xilinx ZYNQ XC7Z010-1CLG400C dual core Cortex A9 processor + FPGA with 28K Logic Cells (~430K ASIC gates). System Memory – 512MB x32 DDR3 w/ 1050Mbps bandwidth Storage – 128Mb Serial Flash w/ QSPI interface, MicroSD slot for Linux file system, EEPROM programmed with 48-bit globally unique EUI-48/64™ compatible identifier. Video I/O – Dual-role (Source/Sink) HDMI port, 16-bits per pixel VGA output port Audio I/O – Audio codec with headphone out, microphone and […]