$5 Add-on Board for Raspberry Pi Supports Arduino Shields and Grove Modules (with Caveats)

If you have several Arduino shields, you can use them on your Raspberry Pi B+/ Pi 2 board with Cooking Hacks’ Raspberry Pi to Arduino shields connection bridge supported by arduPi library to control I2C, SPI, GPIO, analog inputs, etc.., and sells for $65 on Amazon. Seeed Studio Grove modules have also become more popular, with several new boards integrating 4-pin Grove connectors such as Beaglebone Green. Raspberry Pi boards also support Grove modules, up to 15 of these!, using Grove Pi+ add-on board which the company sells for around $30. But I’ve just discovered a Raspberry Pi to Arduino Expansion Board V2.0 on DealExtreme, selling for $7.97 that’s allows the latest Raspberry Pi boards with a 40-pin headers to take both Arduino shields and 2 Grove modules. After some investigations, I found out it was made by ITead Studio, where they sell it for $5 + shipping. The Wiki […]

Operys Process Explorer App Shows Android Processes in Your Computer’s Web Browser

Opersys is an Android and Embedded Linux company providing both development and training services, and they regularly attend conferences and release their training materials. The company has also developed a few Android apps to export the file system, the process list and info, and interaction between apps and Android system services exposed via Binder to your computer’s web browser. I found the most interesting app to be Process Explorer, so I gave it a try on Iocean M6752 smartphone. The application requires very little permissions to install, and it’s very simple to use. Simply tap on Start the service, and the app will provide the URL to browse the processes on your computer, in my case http://192.168.0.105:3000. The output is pretty useful, as you get much more information than you could get on your smartphone or tablet screen with CPU and memory usage, running time, logcat, etc… If you click […]

Giveaway Week – Eny M8S Android TV Box

Today, I’m going to give away Eny M8S, an Android media player based on Amlogic S812 processor with 2GB RAM and 8GB NAND flash that runs Android 4.4, and supports H.265 video playback up to 3840×2160 at 30 fps. How does the device perform? Well, I don’t really know because I postponed the review due to many problems including HDMI going on and off, lack of Google Play Store, some power issues, and eventually the box refused to boot. When I finally got a new firmware, I did upgrade it, but so many months had passed, that I postponed the review indefinitely… Having said that, I tested its 4K capabilities later on, and again before this giveaway to reset the box to factory settings, and it booted fine… The box is not abandoned, as the company released a new firmware at the beginning of this month, so the lucky winner […]

Huawei Kirin 950 Octa-core Processor Comes with 4 Cortex A72 Cores, 4 Cortex A53 Cores, and a Sensor Hub

Smartphone based on MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797) processor with 10 cores including two Cortex A72 cores should start shipping next month, but MediaTek will soon be joined by another Asian company with a mobile SoC with Cortex A72 cores with Huawei that has recently demonstrated their Kirin 950 Octa-core processor with four Cortex A72 coers and four Cortex A53 cores, achieving over 82,000 points in Antutu 5.6 (why an older version?) on a reference board. For reference the top 10 Antutu scores so far in 2015, only got as high as ~77,000 points fro Meizu Pro 5.  Since the benchmark was run on a reference, it’s possible the score will drop once it’s in a tighter package. Some key features of Kirin 950 processors: CPU – 4x Cortex A72 cores @ 2.3 GHz, 4x Cortex A53 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – ARM Mali-T880MP4 GPU @ 900 MHz Co-processor – […]

Espressif ESP32 Dual Core SoC Features Faster WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, and More Peripherals

Espressif teased us about a successor to ESP8266 a few months ago that would support both WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy, and John Lee, working for Espressif Systems, has now sent a letter to ESP8266 developers announcing the new wireless SoC with two Tensilica L108 cores and called ESP32. Espressif ESP32 key improvements over ESP8266: Faster WiFi – Wifi has been upgraded to support HT40 speed (144.4 Mbps) and has a new RF architecture to simplify the application schematics Bluetooth Low Energy and Classic Dual core processor – 2x Tensilica L108 processors clocked at up to 160 MHz Low Power Mode Improvements – ADC conversions, level thresholds, etc.. can now be performed in deep sleep Peripherals – Capacitive touch, ADCs, DACs, I2C. UART, SPI, SDIO, I2S, RMII, PMW, etc… but no USB. More RAM – ~400 KB on-chip RAM Security – Hardware accelerated AES and SSL, and more undisclosed improvements. […]

Intel Introduces 3 “New” Atom x5 and x7 Processors, a GPU Naming Scheme

Intel has a published a product change notification regarding an update to Intel Atom x7-Z8700, x5-Z8500, and x5-Z8300 processors with the new Intel Atom x7-Z8750, x5-8550, and x5-Z8350 processors with higher CPU burst frequencies, and some graphics fixes (Alpha Blending and ASTC issues). The company has also come up with a naming scheme for the Gen8 GPUs used in the processors with the 12EU (Execution Units) SKU being called HD Graphics 400, and the 16EU SKU called HD Graphics 405. That means there are now 6 Cherry Trail processors: Atom x5-Z8300 quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz with 1.84 GHz burst frequency and HD Graphics 400 Atom x5-Z8350 quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz with 1.92 GHz burst frequency and HD Graphics 400 Atom x5-Z8500 quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz with 2.24 GHz burst frequency and HD Graphics 400 Atom x5-Z8550 quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz with 2.4 […]

EmbPower Provides Nvidia Tegra K1 RTX Modules, Carrier Boards, and Industrial Computers

EmbPower is a Taiwanese company that first focused on graphic cards, but has since then also developed other solutions requiring high GPU performance for military & aerospace applications as well as medical equipment. One of these products is TK1 Carrier Board with TK1 SoM powered by Nvidia Tegra K1 quad core processor, that can be encapsulated into TK1 PowerUnit industrial computer. There are actually two TK1 carrier boards: the larger V1.2 with more ports and features, and the smaller V2.0 that is used in TK1 PowerUnit Box, but they share most of the same (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Nvidia Tegra K1 quad core ARM Cotax-A15 processor with Nvidia Kepler 192-core GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 @ 933 MHz Storage – 16GB eMMC flash and SPI serial flash. V2.0 only: Adds micro SD slot; V1.2 only: Adds SD slot and SATA Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet; optional 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 […]

Giveaway Week – A80 Optimusboard Development Board

Together with Rockchip RK3288, Allwinner A80 is one of the most powerful Chinese ARM processors for mini PCs or development board, and today I’m starting a giveaway for A80 OptimusBoard development board based on Allwinner octa core big.LITTLE processor. When I got the board last year, it was indeed powerful as shown in benchmarks. But unfortunately after Allwinner provided me with a new firmware supposed to fix some NTFS write performance issues, I quickly discovered it also had some stability issues whose reasons were not clear, and Merrii Technology support is not very good to say the least, at least for hobbyists, and even now there’s no operating system for download on the board page. Luckily PcDuino Arches (previously known as PCDuino8) is basically the same, and you can download some Lubuntu & Android images on Linksprite website instead. The firmware has not been updated since 2014 however. To enter […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case