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

December 22, 2013April 6, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

SliceCase is a Modular & Customizable Case for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Soon More (Crowdfunding)

When you design hardware around Arduino or Raspberry Pi boards, most likely that not, the enclosures available on the market won’t be usable with your project, and you’ll have to design your own which may end up not quite looking as nice as you expected. Two Hornets, a startup based in the Netherlands, is trying to provide a solution with SliceCase, a modular and customizable casing system, that at first looks similar to some other enclosures like Pimoroni PiBow case. But there’s more than meets the eye, as SliceCase is composed of standard components, that allow you to build the casing around your hardware, and even order custom top covers and sides online. At first, they’ll focus on the most popular boards such as Arduino Standard and Mega boards, and the Raspberry Pi, but if this concept takes off more boards will be added. The enclosure system is composed of […]

December 21, 2013December 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

OLIMEXINO-85S Arduino Compatible Board is About the Size of a micro SD Card

Several Arduino boards have been designed to be as small as possible this year, including Microduino (25.40 x 27.94mm) and OLIMEXINO-NANO (30 x 30 mm). But Olimex has gone a step further, or should I say smaller, with OLIMEXINO-85S that just a little bit bigger than a micro SD card at 16.9 x 12.7 mm, and may currently claim the title of the smallest Arduino compatible board ever. A board that tiny comes with pretty short specifications: MCU – Atmel ATTiny85 @ 20MHz with 8 KB Flash, and 512B RAM. Misc – two LEDs one for power supply and one user programmable I/O – All 6 I/O pins (I2C, SPI, up to 4 ADC), as well as power pins, available via through holes Power – Via USB micro connector or by LiPo battery The board will be programmable by the Arduino IDE made by Digispark. OLIMEXINO-85S will be available at […]

December 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

X100 Raspberry Pi Expansion Board Adds VGA Output, RTC and More

Suptronics X100 is an expansion board that connects on top of the Raspberry Pi in order to add VGA output, RTC, four USB ports, a micro SD card slot, an RS232 DB9 connector, and an 8-channel servo port. Key features of X100 expansion board: Input Voltage – 6V to 23V converted to 5V, 3A via step-down DC/DC converter to power the Raspberry Pi. VGA – HDMI to VGA converter supporting up to UXGA (1600×1200) and 1080p with 10-bit DAC USB – self-powered USB hub with 4 ports Storage – micro SD card reader RTC – NXP PCF2127AT / PCF2129AT with included CR2032 battery Debugging – RS232 DB9 connector (via MAX3232) to be used with a null-modem cable. I/Os – Reset switch for RPi reset, headers to access S1 & S5 on top of the Raspberry Pi Servo support – 8-channel Darlington driver chip (ULN2803) allowing to control electronic circuits […]

December 21, 2013December 22, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

$15 and Up NavSpark is a tiny GPS / GNSS Arduino Software Compatible Board (Crowdfunding)

[Update: I’ve been told the project is actually launched by SkyTraq. But later, after Indiegogo perks are shipped, they expect to have our customer NAVIN handle later orders and manufacturing, the non-engineering development side of things. Updated post accordingly] Navin, a Taiwanese start-up specialized in location products, SkyTraq, a fabless semiconductor company, which develops GPS chipset for consumer navigation and tracking applications, has recently launched an Indiegogo campaign for NavSpark, their low cost GPS / GNSS board with a 32-bit LEON3 SPARC V8 MCU that can be programmed with the Arduino IDE. Two other models are available: NavSpark-BD for GPS/Beidou, and NavSpark-GL for GPS/GLONASS. NavSpark NavSpark specifications: GSP Receiver – SkyTraq Venus 822 LEON3 Sparc-V8 MCU @ 100MHz with IEEE-754 Compliant FPU, 1024KB Flash Memory, 212KB RAM. GPS – quad-GNSS engine capable of handling 34 GPS / GLONASS/ Beidou / Galileo signals in parallel I/Os – 1x full duplex asynchronous […]

December 20, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Linaro 13.12 Release with Linux Kernel 3.13, Android 4.4, and Ubuntu Saucy Salamander

Due to the end of year celebration, Linaro release is a little earlier at this time, and Linaro 13.12 has already been released with Linux Kernel 3.13-rc3 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.24 (LSK), Android 4.4, and Ubuntu Linaro 13.12, which for the first time is based on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander. Other interesting development include an initial arm64 Ubuntu saucy rootfs (that one?), work to support octa-core 4x Cortex A53, 4x Cortex A57 SoCs, an Android 4.4 KitKat LEB for the Galaxy Nexus, and ARMv8 LSK and Nexus7_2013-AOSP builds have been setup and Android can be now built using llvm-clang toolchain with the related patches submitted to upstream. On a related note, there are also some Midway and Highbank engineering build images for Calxeda server processors, which may not be that useful going forward, as unfortunately the company has just closed door after running out of cash. Here are the highlights of this […]

December 20, 2013July 2, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Jynxbox M6 Android TV Box Review

I’ve shown some unboxing pictures and video of Jynxbox Android M6 earlier this week, and today I’ll write a review of this AMLogic AML8726-M6 dual core Android media player. I’ll start with my first impressions, go through the different settings, test video playback, wi-fi performance, and reports about different miscalleous tests: Bluetooth, USB mass storage, USB webcam, etc… First Boot, Settings and First Impressions First, you’ll need to insert the provided AAA batteries in to the remote control. Opening the remote is a bit tricker than I would like as the cover does not come off that easily. Before powering up the device, I’ve connected the provided HDMI cable between the device and my HDTV, and an Ethernet cable to my hub. The first Ethernet cable would not click with in the device RJ45 connector, although it works with my laptop and other devices, but using another one worked just fine. Connecting […]

December 20, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

XBMC ARM News – AllWinner A20 / A31 Apk Released – $10 Discount on OUYA Console

I’ve just been informed that VidOn.me has released XBMC for Android apks for their AV100 (based on AllWinner A20) and AV200 (powered by AllWinner A31) media players with accelerated hardware video decoding. It’s not clear yet whether these will run on any AllWinner A20 / A31 devices, or have been locked to VidOn players, but you can give it a try and download them for your platform(s): android42-Vidon.me-release-a20-AV100-free.apk – For AllWinner A20 android42-Vidon.me-release-a31-AV200-pro.apk – For AllWinner A31 VidOn does have a github repo for XBMC, but it hasn’t been updated for nearly a year, so the recent releases are not there (yet). I had never personally heard about this company, but an article on Wikipedia gives the following description with regards to XBMC: VidOn.me (or VidOnMe) is a company that maintain a commercial fork and derivative of XBMC media center software, and other than offering non-XBMC based media player software […]

December 19, 2013December 19, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Mentor Embedded ARM Hypervisor Automotive Demo on Freescale i.MX6 Board

Virtual machines are usually run on server or desktop PC to run several operating systems simultaneous. About 2 years ago, I wrote about an embedded hypervisor running Linux and Android on the Pandaboard develompent board, with the goal of separating home and enterprise operating systems in mobile devices so that enterprise data is safe. Since then, virtualization extensions are now part of ARM Cortex A15 / A7, and as well as the new Cortex A53 / A57 ARMv8 64-bit cores, but in my mind at least, those where mostly designed to address the server market. It turns out hypervisors are also useful in the automotive field, where for example, the dashboard and In-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems runs in two separate virtual machines controlling two different displays from one processor. Mentor Embedded showcased such automotive system at ARM Techcon 2013, where they showed a Freescale i.MX6 quad core board, which looks […]