Hardware Category - Page 1177 of 1201 - CNX Software

May 19, 2012May 28, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

25 USD Hacker Friendly Electric Imp “WiFi-ises” Your Coffee Machine

Electric Imp is a device in an SD card form factor that aims at providing Wi-Fi connectivity to household appliances at low cost and bringing the Internet of Things (IoT) closer to reality. The Imp will also connect to a Cloud service handled by the company (which is also called Electric Imp). The device Wi-Fi connection can easily be configured using an iOS or Android smartphone thanks to BlinkUp, a patent-pending scheme supporting WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption schemes as well as WPS setup. Electric Imp developers expect this device to save resources (e.g. electricity) by taking into account environmental conditions (e.g. occupancy, temperature..), improve security & safety and overall provide better monitoring and control of devices. For example, this could enable support services to remotely diagnose a device, and provide timely customer support. Here are the Electric Imp hardware specifications: ST Micro STM32 Cortex M3 MCU 802.11b/g/n WiFi 6 […]

May 19, 2012May 19, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Raspberry Pi Camera Module Up and Running. Retail Version Coming Soon

The Raspberry Pi foundation is working on a camera module for the Raspberry Pi board and today they showed the very first picture taken with the “PiCam” module. The picture below has been taken with a camera module connected via the MIPI CSI-2 interface of the Raspberry Pi. On another subject, if you look closely at the top left of the picture, you can see the Raspberry Pi foundation (and probably Broadcom) uses Synopsys MetaWare Debugger (and Compiler?) to work on the software and fix bugs. Maybe more on that later… The camera module used supports up to 14 Mpixel resolution, but the final module will most probably have a 5MP resolution in order to make it cheaper. The mechanical design is not complete and the foundation does not have a price for the camera module yet. You can see what the 14MP camera module looks like (it’s basically a […]

May 17, 2012May 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

VIA Technologies Announces VIA AMOS-3002 System For Embedded Applications

VIA Technologies has just unveiled the VIA AMOS-3002, a fanless system based on VIA EPIA-P900 Pico-ITX board, targeting embedded applications such as telematics, in-vehicle control, machine to machine controller (M2M), digital signage and kiosks. The VIA EPIA-P900 Pico-ITX board is powered by VIA Eden X2 dual core processor (1GHz) together with VIA VX900H media system processor (MSP) and VIA Chrome 9 video processor which render VIA AMOS-3002 systems capable of handling hardware video decoding for MPEG-2, WMV9 and H.264 codecs at 1080p resolution. Two models are available: AMOS-3002-2D10A1 and AMOS-3002-2D10A1. The latter features a 2.5” SATA hard disk drive bay which is not available in AMOS-3002-2D101A1. Here are the specifications for both VIA AMOS-3002 Models: CPU – VIA Eden X2 @ 1.0GHz Chipset – VIA VX900H Media System Processor Memory – 1x DDR3 1066 204-pin SODIMM socket (Up to 4GB) Storage: 1x CFast Flash disk socket 1 x 2.5” SATA hard […]

May 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Phytec phyCORE-AM335x System on Module (SOM) Based on TI Sitara AM335x

PHYTEC announced the phyCORE-AM335x System on Module (SOM) powered by Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x Cortex-A8 processor clocked at 720Mhz and PowerVR SGX530 GPU. This SoM targets industrial applications and supports standards such as EtherCAT, Ethernet/IP, PROFINET, PROFIBUS, POWERLINK, SERCOS-III and CANopen. Here are phyCORE-AM335x SOM specifications: TI’s Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processors @ 720 MHz (AM3352, AM3354, AM3356, AM3357, AM3358 and AM3359) PowerVR SGX530 Graphics (AM3359, AM3358, AM3354 only) 512 MB DDR3, 512MB/1GB NAND, 8 MB SPI Flash, 32 KB EEPROM 6x UARTs, 3x I2C, 2x McASP, 2x SPI, 2x CAN 2x USB OTG 2x 10/100/1G Ethernet (Gigabit PHY on carrier board) 24 bpp TTL or LVDS 44 x 50 mm form factor -40 degrees to +85 degrees C temperature range Linux, Compact 7, Android The phyCORE-AM335x SOM will be available in a PHYTEC Rapid Development Kit (RDK) including: phyCore-AM335x SOM A carrier board Board support packages (BSP) Demo images […]

May 17, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 70 Comments

74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC

A cheap white brand Android 4.0 USB/HDMI Stick based on AllWinner A10 has started to show up in Chinese websites. Initially, I thought it was like a low cost version of FXI Tech Cotton Candy (which will start shipping this month), but as you can see in the image below, the HDMI port is female so you’d still need a HDMI cable. The hole next to the USB port should be for the power supply, so this device is apparently not powered via USB (TBC). Connect a wireless mouse and keyboard to the device, the power supply, and an HDMI cable to your TV, and you’ve got yourself a cheap PC running Android 4.0. Since this is based on AllWinner A10, you could also insert a microSD card with Ubuntu, Debian or your other favorite Linux distribution and have yourself a Linux PC. Here are the specifications of the device […]

May 14, 2012July 31, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Schematics Capture and PCB Layout in Linux with Kicad

Most schematics capture and PCB layout software run on Windows and are closed source. But if your favorite OS is Linux, there are a few open source software including Kicad and gEDA. There is also Cadsoft Eagle which can be installed in Linux with a free license for hobbyists and educational purposes, but is not open source. Today, I’ll focus on Kicad. I don’t really capture schematics, let alone layout PCBs, but I sometimes need to use this type of software to locate pins/components on the schematics and PCB and check some parts of the schematics that can affect software. So I will mainly give an overview of Kicad and write my experience trying to import another project (Beagleboard XM) to Kicad. If you want to learn how to get started with your own project with Kicad, you might want to have a look at Teho Labs Kicad Tutorial. In […]

May 10, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

VWorks VLAB Powers Freescale Vybrid Virtual Platform

Back in March, Freescale announced their Vybrid solution featuring both a Cortex A5 processor and a Cortex M4 microcontroller, and they had prototypes running an unnamed virtual platform in order to speed up software development and possibly have the software ready at the same time as the silicon is. Always looking to learn more, I studied and wrote about virtual hardware platforms such as Cadence Virtual System Platform, Wind River Simics Virtual Platforms and the open source Imperas OVPsim simulator. It turns out Freescale does not use any of these solutions, but relies on VWorks VLAB instead, which still use the same standard (SystemC/TLM) as the virtual hardware solutions aforementioned. VWorks uploaded a demonstration of VLAB running a virtual platform for the Freescale Vybrid controller and showing how it can handle both ARM Cortex-A5 and Cortex-M4 cores. This demo of VLAB 1.7.0 is pretty interesting and showcases: Dual (virtual) display […]

May 10, 2012May 10, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

199 USD Seeed Studio DSO Quad Open Source Oscilloscope

The DSO (Digital Storage Oscilloscope) Quad is a pocket size 4 channel digital oscilloscope for common electronic engineering tasks based on STM32F103VCT6 ARM cortex M3 MCU with a 3″ display. It can provide 72MS/s sampling rate with integrated FPGA and high speed ADC and an internal 2MB USB disk can be used to store waveform captures, user applications and to upgrade firmware. SeeedStudio DSO Quad is not exactly a new product (June 2011), but I was not aware of this type of low cost oscilloscopes until I come across a review today. Here are the key features of this tiny oscilloscope: Pocket size and light weight Two 72MS/s analog channels, plus two digital channels Signal Generator Auto Measurement Various Triggering Option Easy waveform storage Firmware upgrade User applications Open source and technical specifications: 2x Analog channel: [CH A] [CH B] 2x Digital channel : [CH C] [CH D] Vertical […]