ArduCAM has designed a Tiny Coin-Sized Raspberry Pi Compatible Module

Now you can design your own custom hardware and leverage Raspberry Pi software, by integrating Raspberry Pi Compute module (and soon Raspberry Pi 3 Compute module) into your custom designed baseboard. But if you’d like something more compact, and even more compact than a Raspberry Pi Zero or RPi Compute module, ArduCAM has been developing a 24x24mm Raspberry Pi compatible system-on-module powered by Broadcom BCM2835 processor. ArduCAM has also designed a small adapter board “UC-343 Rev. A” for the module with the following specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 Processor @ 700 MHz (or 1GHz?) with Videocore IV GPU System Memory – 256MB/512MB LPDDR2 Storage – micro SD card slot USB – 2x micro USB ports including one for power only Camera – 1x MIPI CSI connector supporting 5MP or 8MP Pi cameras (dual camera support) Expansion – AV output header 16-pin and 8-pin headers (unpopulated) with GPIOs, 2x I2C, […]

LibreELEC 7.0 Ported to Amlogic S905 TV Boxes & ODROID-C2 Board

Most TV boxes are now sold pre-loaded with Android, but there’s still a fair amount of people who only want to play videos in their box, or only run Kodi, so they may prefer a Linux experience. Some companies provide ready-to-use solution such as ARNU Box Mach 10 64-bit Pure Linux, but in some cases it’s also possible to side-load OpenELEC or LibreELEC, with the main advantage being that it is usually quite cheaper at the cost of being a bit more complicated. Thanks to a comment by Sabai, I discovered LibreELEC 7.0.0 had been (unofficially) ported to Amlogic S905 TV boxes, and tested one devices such as NEXBOX A95X (S905), WeTek Hub, Beelink S905 Mini MXIII, MXQ Pro 4K, and others. If you own an ODROID-C2 board, you can load another LibreELEC 7.0.0 image. If you are unsure whether your Android TV box is supported, you should first try […]

Wanscam HW0029-4 is a Solar Powered All Weather IP Security Camera with WiFi, 3G/4G Connectivity

I’ve just watched a video on ARMDevices.net about Enlaps Tikee solar powered device designed to take timelapses over several days and transfer the pictures / video over WiFi, 3G, or 4G. The project has been fully funded on Indiegogo at the beginning of the year, and shipping is scheduled for Q4 2016. It looks like an interesting device for a niche market, but since I’ve noticed some products launched on Kickstarter already exists in one form or another in China, I’ve decided to have a look on Aliexpress, and I found Wanscan HW00269-4 solar powered camera with 3G/4G connectivity, and while it addresses a completely different need, as a 720p IP security camera, I still decided to have a closer look. Wanscam HW0029-4 specifications: SoC – Hisilicon Hi3518E ARM9 processor @ 440 MHz Storage – Built-in 16GB, expandable to 128GB Camera / video recording 1/2 1MP Star light CMOS sensor 8mm […]

Intel Atom C3000 “Denverton” Processor Targets Low Power Servers

[Update: Some pictures have been removed due to some NDA issues] Intel Atom “Avoton” server processors are the equivalent of Bay Trail processor for mini PCs, laptops and tablets, and with the upcoming release of Apollo Lake processors, Intel has a matching family codenamed “Denverton” that will be used in servers and NAS. Information about the new processors is scarce, but Anandtech spotted an early motherboard prototype last month at Computex. MA10-ST0 motherboard main specifications: SoC – Intel Atom C3000 “Denverton” processor with 4 to 16 cores @ 1.8 GHz; QKP2 code; 14nm process System Memory – 4x RDIMM/UDIMM slots for DDR4 @ 2400 MHz Storage – 4x SATA 3.0 breakout ports supporting up to 16 drives (8x shared with PCIe slot); 32GB eMMC flash Video Output – VGA Connectivity – 2x 10GbE SFP+ ports; 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports (via Intel I210); 1x extra RJ45 port (for management?) USB […]

Orange Pi PC Board is now selling for $8.57 Shipped (Promo)

[update: the flash sale is over] Orange Pi PC is an ARM Linux development board based on Allwinner H3 processor, that is relatively popular thanks to its low price/features ratio, and decent Linux support mostly thanks to the combined work of linux-sunxi and armbian communities. The board normally sells for $15 + shipping on Aliexpress, but GearBest appears to have a promotion for $8.57 shipped. Before you go ahead with any purchase. You’ll notice the board is shown for $9.23 in China and US-LA warehouses, but $24.35 in their European warehouse. The price (china warehouse) goes down to $8.57 once you had it to the cart. It could be a genuine promotion, but it could also be a mistake. If the latter, you’ll get a refund or possibly a voucher of the same value for future purchases.  I’ve asked my contact at GearBest, but no answer yet. GearBest confirmed it […]

Lepton Image Compression Achieves 22% Lossless Compression of JPEG Images (on Average)

Dropbox stores billions of images on their servers, most of them JPEGs, so if they can reduce the size of pictures it can have a big impact on their storage requirements, so the company developed Lepton image compression, which – on average – achieved 22% lossless compression on the images stored in their cloud. Compression and decompression speed is also important, since the files are compressed when uploaded and uncompressed on the fly when downloaded so that the complete process is transparent to the end users, who only see JPEG photos, and the company claims 5MB/s compression, and 15MB/s compression, again on average. The good news is that the company released Lepton implementation on Github, so in theory it could also be used to increase the capacity of NAS which may contain lots of pictures. So I’ve given it a try in a terminal window in Ubuntu 14.04, but it […]

sModule SBC-x6818 Development Kit based on Samsung S5P6818 Processor Includes a 7″ Touchscreen

For some reasons, Samsung S5P4418 and S5P6818 quad and eight Cortex A53 core processors – likely made by Nexell – have been quite popular with embedded systems companies based in China. So after Graperain, Boardcon, and FriendlyARM, there’s at least one another company offering solutions with either processor, as sModule, a subsidiary of CoreWind, has now launched systems-on-module, single board computers, and development kits with the 64-bit ARM SoCs. In this post, I’ll cover one of their development kit including their CORE6818 CPU module, a baseboard, and an optional 7″ capacitive touch display.. sModule SBC-x6818 development kit specifications: CORE6818 CPU module SoC – Samsung S5P6818 octa-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ 1.4 to 1.6 GHz with Mali-400MP 3D GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 (2GB optional) Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash (4 & 16GB optional) Ethernet – Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet transceiver 180-pin “interface” to baseboard Power Supply – 3.7 […]

Ugoos UT3+ Android TV Box with HDMI Input, Rockchip RK3288 Processor Launched

Ugoos has finally announced the official release of Ugoos UT3+ TV Box based on Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A19 processor with a much improved HDMI input function thanks to a Toshiba chip, and now supports DVR and PiP (Picture-in-picture) functions. Ugoos UT3+ specifications have not changed, but I’ll still reproduce them since it’s been 9 months since the device was unveiled: SoC – Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A17 @ 1.8 GHz with ARM Mali-T764 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB NAND Flash + micro SD slot up to 32 GB Connectivity – 100/1000M Ethernet, dual band WiFi 802.11 b/g/n (2.4GHz/5GHz) and 802.11ac with external Wi-Fi antenna Video I/F Output – HDMI 1.4 output up to 4k2k @ 30 fps Input – HDMI input up to 1080p60 Audio I/F – HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, and optical S/PDIF USB – 3x USB host ports Power Supply – […]