OKW Body Case is an IP65/IP67 Enclosure for Wearables & IoT Projects

You may have worked on a battery powered wearable or IoT projects, and the hardware and software are mostly ready, but you’ve yet to find a good way to package it to make it easily wearable, and protect it from the elements. OKW body case could be one way, as it can be used around your arm like a wrist watch, as a key ring attachment, clipped to your trousers or T-shirt, carried  around your neck. The case has been moulded in ASA plastic with a high UV protection, includes a TPV sealing ring to ensure IP65/IP67 water & dust proofness, and is assembled with four stainless stell screws using a Torx drive. The company provides two sizes (Large: 55 x 46 x 17 mm, or Medium: 50 x 41 x 16 mm) and claims easy operation with the help of push buttons or touchscreens, although I’d assume water / dust resistance […]

AcSiP S76G/S78G SiPs Integrate LoRa, GPS, and MCU into a Single 1.3×1.1 cm Package

LoRa has been combined with GPS in several products such as Rakwireless RAK811 LoRa tracker board, or Dragino LoRa/GPS HAT board among others, with all designed for far based on a LoRa module, plus a GPS module. LoRa GPS tracker will soon even smaller as AcSiP has developed S76G and S78G systems-in-package (SiP) that combine LoRa, GPS and an MCU into a single 1.1 x 1.3cm package. The two new modules are not listed on the company’s IoT-LoRa products page yet, but they appear to be an evolution of their S76S / S78S LoRa + MCU SiP released in 2016, so the new modules should have the following features: MCU – STMicro STM32L073x Arm Cortex M0+ MCU with up to 192 KB of Flash memory and 20 KB of RAM LoRa AcSiP S76G – Semtech SX1276 supporting global 868 MHz or 915 MHz ISM-Bands. AcSiP S78G – Semtech SX1278 supporting […]

Popcorn Hour Transformer Media Computer / NAS Launched for $95.90 and Up

Last month, we wrote about Cloud Media’s Popcorn Hour Transformer, a platform based on Rockchip RK3328 processor that could be used a 2.5″ drive NAS, and/or a 4K HDR TV box, and looked like an interested alternative  to ODROID HC1 NAS system. The company has now officially launch the device, and is taking orders for $95.90 or $115.90 for respectively the 2GB RAM/16GB flash, or 4GB/32GB versions. Popcorn Hour Transformer specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad core Cortex A53 processor with Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR3 Storage micro SD slot 16 or 32GB eMMC flash (removable and upgradeable) 128 Mbit SPI NOR flash SATA interface via USB 3.0 to SATA bridge chipset for 2.5″ HDD/SSD Network Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K 60Hz with HDR (HDR10/HLG) support Audio Output – Via HDMI, and 3.5mm audio jack (analog stereo or optical […]

$129 Allwinner R18 based 3-Mic Far Field Amazon AVS Development Kit in the Works

Allwinner-SoC-Only-3-Mic-Far-Field-Dev-Kit-for-Amazon-AVS

Several companies are already offering development kits for Amazon AVS (Alexa Voice Service), but as we’ve seen in the past, those are rather expensive with far-field kits such starting at $349 with kits such as Synaptics AudioSmart 4-Mic Development Kit, or Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit, and hands-free kits being barely cheaper at $299 and up. But there will soon be a cheaper solution, as Allwinner and SinoVoIP (aka Banana Pi) are working on “SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit for Amazon AVS” that includes 3 microphones, and works without special DSP, relying instead on Allwinner R18 processor’s audio codec and capabilities. Allwinner SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit for Amazon AVS (aka R18-AVS-EVK) specifications: SoC – Allwinner R18 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.15GHz with Mali400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI Audio – 6x Microphones, 2x AEC, AUX and headphone output; GMEMS voice […]

Laceli AI Compute Stick is a More Powerful & Efficient Alternative to Intel/Movidius Neural Compute Stick

Intel’s Movidius Neural Compute Stick is a low power deep learning inference kit and “self-contained” artificial intelligence (A.I.) accelerator that connects to the USB port of computers or development boards like Raspberry Pi 3, delivering three times more performance than a solution accelerated with VideoCore IV GPU. So far it was the only A.I USB stick solution that I heard of, but Gyrfalcon Technology , a US startup funded at the beginning of last year, has developed its own “artificial intelligence processor” with Lightspeeur 2801S, as well as a neural USB compute stick featuring the solution: Laceli AI Compute Stick. The company claims Laceli AI Compute Stick runs at 2.8 TOPS (Trillion operation per second) performance within 0.3 Watt of power, which is 90 times more efficient than the Movidius USB Stick that can deliver 100 GFLOPS (0.1 TOPS) within 1 Watt of power. Information about the processor and stick […]

Realtek RTD1295 based X2 Android TV Stick Comes with HDMI Output, HDMI Input

Realtek RTD1295 processor is found in mid to high end 4K HDR TV boxes with interfaces like SATA, USB 3.0, as well as HDMI input used for PiP or video recording features. Devices equipped with the processor that come to mind include Zidoo X9S or EWEAT R9 Plus TV Box + NAS, both of which are full featured and fairly large devices, running Android 6.0 and OpenWrt. Shenzhen Tomato has unveiled another type of device based on RTD1295 processor: X2 HDMI TV dongle that features both HDMI output & HDMI input ports, and runs Android 6.0 (but not OpenWrt). X2 TV stick specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1295 quad core Cortex A53 processor @ 1.40 GHz with ARM Mali-T820MP3 GPU System Memory – 1 or 2GB DDR4 Storage – 8 or 16GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot Video & Audio I/O – HDMI 2.0a output, and HDMI 1.4 input Video […]

SRH-X5 is a Palm-sized Android TV Box based on Amlogic S905W Processor

Amlogic S905W processor is a cost down version of S905X processor limited to 1080p60 / 4K30 video output and found in low cost TV boxes such as Tanix TX3 or X96 Mini that sells for just above $20 shipped. SRH-X5 is yet another of those boxes, but the device is more compact than the ones of competitors I’ve seen, as they’ve not included interfaces such as Ethernet or optical S/PDIF, and it could fit into the palm of your hand (although it’s not meant to be). SHR-X5 TV box specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905W quad core Arm Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5 GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 1 GB DDR3 (2GB optional ) Storage – 8GB eMMC flash (Up to 32GB as option) + micro SD card slot up to 32GB Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack with stereo output/microphone, HDMI audio output […]

Intel Hardware Security Bug Fix to Hit Performance on Windows, Linux…

Many security bugs can be fixed without performance penalty , but according to reports Intel processors have a hardware bug – whose details have not been disclosed yet (embargo) – that seems to affect all operating systems including Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc…, and the fix may lead to significant performance hits for some tasks. We know a bit more thanks to the Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) patch for Linux that enables the fix/workaround with X86_BUG_CPU_INSECURE feature. The fix used to be called KAISER, and there’s an explanation on LWN about “hiding the kernel from user space” about the issue: On contemporary 64-bit systems, the shared address space does not constrain the amount of virtual memory that can be addressed as it used to, but there is another problem that is related to security. An important technique for hardening the system is kernel address-space layout randomization (KASLR), which randomizes […]