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

October 5, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

V-Bridge Muses Digital TV Modulator Boards Let You Broadcast Your Own TV Channel for $199 and Up (Crowdfunding)

I wrote about VATek VMB8202D Enmoder SoC handling both DVB, ATSC, DTMB and ISDB modulation and H.264 hardware encoding earlier this summer, and at the time, the company also planned to launch a crowdfunding campaign for two open source hardware DTV modulation boards in a couple of weeks. Weeks turned into months, but finally V-Bridge Muses boards and video input & RF daughterboards have now launched on Kickstarter where you can get your own live video broadcasting board for $199 and up. MUSES-α board MUSES-α board is the cheapest of the two boards, and features a header for the RF daughter board, and a USB port to connect to a computer. MUSES-α board specifications: SoC – VATek A1 32-bit RISC modulator chip Storage – SPI flash (unclear whether it can be accessed/modified by user) Modulation – DVB-T/C, ATSC/QAM, DTMB; RF header Video Encoding – N/A (handled by PC via USB […]

October 5, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Two More Google Products: Google WiFi Mesh Router, and Google Home, an Amazon Echo Competitor

Google made a bunch a new product announcements with their Pixel phones, Daydream View VR headset, and Chromecast Ultra 4K dongle, but in this post I’ll write about two other new products: Google Home an Amazon Echo competitor powered by Google Assistant and supporting multi-room, as well as Google WiFi (Mesh) router aiming at providing WiFi all over the house by combining multiple WiFi routers. Google WiFi Router Most households now use a single router to provide WiFi to the home, but inevitably this introduce some dead or “slow WiFi” zones within the house. One way to work around this is to use WiFi repeaters, but it’s not always easy to setup and may lead to lower bandwidth. Google WiFi router uses a technology called mesh WiFi, where each router work together to determine the best path for your data using Network Assist technology to automatically choose and update the […]

October 5, 2016October 5, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Google Announces Pixel and Pixel XL Smartphones for $649 and Up

Google used to collaborate with smartphone manufacturers for their Nexus devices, but the company is now promoting their own Pixel brand, and has just launched Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, and running Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. Both smartphones share most of the same specifications, but XL has a larger screen, a bigger battery, and a higher price tag: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 (MSM8996 pro AB) Quad core Kryo processor with two cores at up to 2.15GHz, two cores at up to 1.6GHz, Adreno 530 GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32 or 128 GB storage Display Pixel – 5.0″ FHD (1920×1080) AMOLED display; 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4 Pixel XL – 5.5″ QHD (2560×1440) AMOLED display; 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4 Camera 12.3 MP rear camera (IMX378 sensor) with laser and phase detection auto focus (LDAF + PDAF), f/2.0 aperture […]

October 5, 2016October 5, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Upcoming 4K HDMI Streaming Sticks – Chromecast Ultra and EZCast 4K

Google has been introducing several “MadebyGoogle” device including the latest Chromecast Ultra support 4K and HDR, but it’s not the only 4K HDMI dongle to stream videos from your phone that’s about to be release as EZCast sticks are also getting an upgrade with EZCast 4K dongle supporting 4K Miracast, DLNA, and EZCast own protocol. Chromecast Ultra Chromecast Ultra specifications: Connectivity – 802.11ac (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) WiFi, Ethernet port (on power adapter) Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K resolution, HDR support USB – 1x micro USB port for power and data Dimensions – 58.20 ⌀ x 13.7 mm Weight – 47 grams (device); 101 grams (power adapter) Chromecast Ultra ships with a power cable (2m) and a power adapter with an Ethernet port. The device can be used with devices and/or computers running Android 4.1 and higher, iOS 8.0 and higher, Mac OS X 10.9 and higher, Windows […]

October 4, 2016October 4, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Axiomtek Introduces IP67 Rated Waterproof Embedded Computer for Outdoor Applications

Axiomtek has just launched eBOX800-841-FL rugged IP67-rated fanless embedded system for “outdoor critical applications” such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) gateways. The waterproof mini PC is powered by a quad core Intel Atom E3845 Bay Trail-I processor, and supports temperatures between -30°C to 60°C. Axiomtek eBOX800-841-FL embedded computer specifications: SoC – Intel Atom E3845 quad core processor @ up to 1.91 GHz with Intel HD graphics (10W TDP) System Memory – 204-pin SO-DIMM DDR3L-1066/1333 slot up to 8 GB RAM Storage – 1 x mSATA, 1x 2.5″ SATA HDD, 1x CFAST slot Video Output – VGA (M12 screw type) Connectivity 2x 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet (M12 type) WiFI & LTE via mini PCIe slots 1x SIM socket 4x N-jack waterproof antenna connectors USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports (M12 type) Serial ports – 2 x RS-232/422/485 ports (M12 type) Expansion 1x full-size PCI Express Mini Card slot (USB + PCI […]

October 4, 2016May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Linux 4.8 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has officially released Linux 4.8 last Sunday: So the last week was really quiet, which maybe means that I could probably just have skipped rc8 after all. Oh well, no real harm done. This obviously means that the merge window for 4.9 is open, and I appreciate the people who already sent in some pull requests early due to upcoming travel or other reasons. I’ll start pulling things tomorrow, and have even the most eager developers and testers hopefully test the final 4.8 release before the next development kernels start coming 😉 Anyway, there’s a few stragging fixes since rc8 listed below: it’s a mixture of arch fixes (arm, mips, sparc, x86), drivers (networking, nvdimm, gpu) and generic code (some core networking, with a few filesystem, cgroup and and vm things). All of it pretty small, and there really aren’t that many of them. Go forth and test, […]

October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

How to check HTTP Header and Connection Stats from the Command Line

A few days ago, I discussed with somebody whether a file was cached by Cloudflare or not, and this involved getting the HTTP header, and checking for CF-RAY field to see if data is going through one of Cloudflare data centers. This can be done with curl:

curl -svo /dev/null http://www.cnx-software.com
* Rebuilt URL to: http://www.cnx-software.com/
*   Trying 104.28.19.95...
* Connected to www.cnx-software.com (104.28.19.95) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: www.cnx-software.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.47.0
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:57:17 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
< Connection: keep-alive
< Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d90ff49c11865e8fda1331c2977559f521475488637; expires=Tue, 03-Oct-17 09:57:17 GMT; path=/; domain=.cnx-software.com; HttpOnly
< X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.19
< Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
< Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
< Pragma: no-cache
< X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
< Link: <http://www.cnx-software.com/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"
< Server: cloudflare-nginx
< CF-RAY: 2ebf876da273114d-SIN
< 
{ [2307 bytes data]
* Connection #0 to host www.cnx-software.com left intact

curl -svo /dev/null http://www.cnx-software.com

* Rebuilt URL to: http://www.cnx-software.com/

* Trying 104.28.19.95...

* Connected to www.cnx-software.com (104.28.19.95) port 80 (#0)

> GET / HTTP/1.1

> Host: www.cnx-software.com

> User-Agent: curl/7.47.0

> Accept: */*

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

< Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:57:17 GMT

< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

< Transfer-Encoding: chunked

< Connection: keep-alive

< Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d90ff49c11865e8fda1331c2977559f521475488637; expires=Tue, 03-Oct-17 09:57:17 GMT; path=/; domain=.cnx-software.com; HttpOnly

< X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.19

< Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT

< Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0

< Pragma: no-cache

< X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge

< Link: <http://www.cnx-software.com/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"

< Server: cloudflare-nginx

< CF-RAY: 2ebf876da273114d-SIN

{ [2307 bytes data]

* Connection #0 to host www.cnx-software.com left intact

In the command above, -s stands for silent so that curl does not show the progress meter, -v stands for verbose to show the header, and -o /dev/null is used to discard the packet load. You can also use -I option (fetch the HTTP-header only) with curl, which – if all you need is the HTTP header – provides a cleaner output:

curl -I http://www.cnx-software.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2016 10:06:51 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d4dda8a9ec8370cf0950d26e5faf37cc21475489211; expires=Tue, 03-Oct-17 10:06:51 GMT; path=/; domain=.cnx-software.com; HttpOnly
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.19
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Set-Cookie: bb2_screener_=1475489211+1.1.174.2+1.1.174.2; path=/
X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
Link: &lt;http://www.cnx-software.com/wp-json/&gt;; rel="https://api.w.org/"
Server: cloudflare-nginx
CF-RAY: 2ebf9574c129081d-SIN

curl -I http://www.cnx-software.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2016 10:06:51 GMT

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Connection: keep-alive

Set-Cookie: __cfduid=d4dda8a9ec8370cf0950d26e5faf37cc21475489211; expires=Tue, 03-Oct-17 10:06:51 GMT; path=/; domain=.cnx-software.com; HttpOnly

X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.19

Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT

Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0

Pragma: no-cache

Set-Cookie: bb2_screener_=1475489211+1.1.174.2+1.1.174.2; path=/

X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge

Link: <http://www.cnx-software.com/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"

Server: cloudflare-nginx

CF-RAY: 2ebf9574c129081d-SIN

I also came across httpstat Python script recently via n0where, doing much of the same thing, except it also adds transfer statistics. It can be installed by downloading httpstat.py, or better using pip:

sudo pip install httpstat

1	sudo pip install httpstat

Let’s try it with this very […]

October 3, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Gumstix Nodana 96BCE 96Boards Compatible Baseboard Takes Intel Joule Module

96Boards is an initiative from Linaro, an engineering organization focusing on ARM development, to define some hardware and software specifications for development boards. But since 96Boards specifications are open, Gumstix decided to create the first x86 board compliant with 96Boards CE hardware specifications with Nodana 96BCE baseboard powered by Intel Joule Module. For obvious reasons, this will never be an officially supported 96Boards.org platform. Nodana 96BCE board specifications: SoM – Intel Joule Module based on Intel Atom T5700 or T5500 processor with up to 16GB storage, 4GB RAM. External Storage – 1x micro SD card Video Output – 1x HDMI port USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 3.0 type C port Expansion Headers 96Boards Low Speed connector with I2C, SPI and UART 96Board High Speed connector with MIPI DSI and USB 2.0 Power Supply – 8 to 18 V (if it follows 96Boards CE specs) Dimensions – 85 […]