Cheap Accessories for Raspberry Pi – Camera, microSD adapter, Debug Board, Heatsink and Enclosure

The Raspberry Pi just a great low cost ARM Linux board that costs $25 (Model A) to $35 (Model B), but once you start to add accessories the total cost of ownership may creep up quickly, and in some cases accessories may be more expensive than the board itself. I’ll list some alternative accessories that can be purchased online for a fraction of the cost of the more famous one. $18 Raspberry Pi Camera The official Raspberry Pi camera costs $25 + shipping and tax, but you can get a similar 5MP CSI camera for just $18.13 including shipping on Banggood.com. This camera clone should be software compatible with the original one according to the listed features: Plugs directly into the CSI connector on the Raspberry Pi 5MP resolution image (2592 x 1944), or 1080p HD video recording at 30fps 5MP (2592 x 1944 pixels) Omnivision 5647 sensor in a […]

AXONIM Devices Announces AXSY-SoM-SAMA5D3 System-on-Module Powered by Atmel SAMA5D3x Cortex-A5 Processor

AXONIM Devices, a company based in the republic of Belarus, announced AXSY-SoM-SAMA5D3 System on Module (SOM) powered by Atmel SAMA5D3x Cortex-A5 processor. This SoM targets industrial applications and supports low power application such as POS-terminals, handheld devices, medical devices and more. Here are AXSY-SoM-SAMA5D3x SOM specifications: SoC – Atmel ATSAMA5D3x ARM Cortex-A5 processors @ 536 MHz (SAMA5D31, SAMA5D33, SAMA5D34, SAMA5D35, or SAMA5D36) System memory – 128/256/512 MB DDR2 Storage – 256MB/512MB/1GB NAND, 1 to 8MB SPI Flash Interfaces: 6x UARTs, 3x I2C, 2x SSC (for I2S Audio CODECs), 2x SPI, 2x CAN 2.0B 1x USB OTG 2.0 High Speed, 3x USB 2.0 High Speed Host 1x 10/100/1G Ethernet (Gigabit PHY on board), 1x 10/100 Ethernet (with IEEE1588v2 support) 1x Memory BUS (EBI) LCD 24 bpp TTL 3x MMC/SD 4x PWM 1x RTC 1x SMD (SmartHSFe Modem Device) – Conexant CX20548 with SmartDAA technology support Power supply – 3.3V / 5V […]

The Open Source Robots Invasion Has Begun: BeagleMiP, uARM, and PiddyBot

In the last few days, I’ve come across three affordable open source robots either based on BeagleBone Black, or Arduino compatible boards, and I’m sure there are many other projects out there for people interested in getting started with robotics without breaking the bank. BeagleMiP Self-balancing Robot I’ve found out the first robots from a long armdevices.net video showing two Mobile Inverted Pendulum (MiP) robots, able to stand on two wheels, designed by the Coordinated Robotics Lab of The University of California, San Diego: BeagleMiP educational robotics development kit from Strawson Design. The kit features the BeagleBone Black board with Texas Instruments Sitara ARM Cortex A8 processor and Novus Robotics Cape, an add-on board that provides 9-axis IMU (Accelerometer, Gyro, Magnetometer), 6 PWM connectors to power servos or brushless ESCs, 2 user-accessible buttons and 2 LEDs, a cell balancer & overvoltage protector, H-bridges to drive 6 DC Motors, and connectors […]

Intel “Bay Trail” NUC (Next Unit of Computing) mini PC is Now Available for $140

Next Unit of Computing (NUC) is a small form factor PC designed by Intel featuring “low power” Intel CPUs. It has gone through different iteration starting with Sandy Bridge Celeron CPU, then Ivy Bridge Core i3 and Core i5 processors in the second generation, with the third generation using the Haswell architecture. Intel latest model called Intel DN2820FYK NUC is based on “Bay Trail” Celeron N2820 dual-core processor @ 2.4 GHz with 7.5W TDP, and is now available for $140 on Amazon. Intel DN2820FYK NUC specifications: Processor – Intel Celeron N2820 dual core processor @ up to 2.4GHz dual-core with 1MB cache, 7.5W TDP Memory – 1x DDR3L SODIMM 1.35V, 1333/1600 MHz (down clocked to 1066 MHz), 8GB maximum Storage – Internal support for 2.5¨ HDD or SSD Graphics – Intel HD Graphics @ up to 756MHz Video Output – 1x HDMI 1.4a Audio I/O – Up to 7.1 surround audio […]

ARM Mali GPU Demos at CES 2014 – 4K 3D UI and Games, ASTC Texture Compression, XBMC + Gesture Recognition, and HEVC Video Decoding

Phill Smith, Demo Manager at ARM, has filmed and uploaded four very interesting demos of what new features will be possible thanks to new generation ARM Mali-450 and Mali-T6xx GPUs including 4K 3D user interfaces and games, ASTC texture compression, and OpenCL accelerated gesture recognition and HEVC / H.265 video decoding. 4K Resolution 3D User Interface and Game Demo The first demo showcases a Geniatech box (ATV1800?) powered by AMLogic AML8726-M8 featuring an ARM Mali-450MP6 GPU running Android with a user 4K 3D interface designed by Autodesk using Scaleform UI. The rest of the video shows Timbuku 3D gaming demo running at 3840×2160 (4K2K) @ 24 fps. The frame rate appears to be low, but that’s because the box is using HDMI 1.4, which limits UHD output to 24fps. 2160p60 is only available via HDMI 2.0. ASTC Compression Demo on Samsung Galaxy Note 3 3D Textures are getting bigger and […]

Cisco Edge 340 Digital Media Player Targets Digital Signage & Business Applications

Most of the time I feature low cost (Chinese) media players in this blog, but today I’ve had a look at a media player at the other side of the market that targets business users with applications such as webcasting and video sharing, digital signage, and business IPTV. Cisco Edge 340 digital media player (DMP) comes in two flavors “Wireless” and “non-wireless”, and boast features such as PoE or RS-232 which are not often found in consumer devices. Cisco Edge 340 Specifications: SoC – Dual 1.60 GHz processor with integrated GPU @ 400MHz, most probably Intel Atom Z2560. It turns out it could be Intel Atom CE5335 instead. System Memory – 2GB DDR3 @ 800 MHz Storage – 32GB SSD (70MB/s write speed) and SD card slot Connectivity – 1x Ethernet 10/100/1000-Gbps port with PoE and PoE+ support. Wireless version only: Dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 Video […]

Linux Kernel 3.13 Release

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.13 yesterday: The release got delayed by a week due to travels, but I suspect that’s just as well. We had a few fixes come in, and while it wasn’t a lot, I think we’re better off for it. At least I hope so – I’ll be very disappointed if any of them cause more problems than they fix.. Anyway, the patch from rc8 is fairly small, with mainly some small arch updates (arm, mips, powerpc, s390, sparc, x86 all had some minor changes, some of them due to a networking fix for the bpf jit). And drivers (mainly gpu and networking). And some generic networking fixes. The appended shortlog gives more details. Anyway, with this, the merge window for 3.14 is obviously open. Kernel 3.12 brought new features to BTRFS and XFS file systems, PC’s GPU drivers improvements, better memory handling, […]

Telechips TCC893x Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 + Cortex M3 SoCs: TCC8930, TCC8933, TCC8935

Sometimes last year, Telechips discreetly released a triple core SoC comprised of 2 ARM Cortex A9 cores and one Cortex M3 core for tablet, set-top boxes, media player and car AVN (Audio, Video & Navigation). A dual core release in 2013 may not be that interested, but the addition of a Cortex M3, and high performance interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 may make it interesting. Let’s have a look. There’s very little information on Telechips TCC893x page, apart from the block diagram above and the following description: The TCC893x is a system-on-chip with powerful multimedia solution and high performance such as dual decoding. It is ideal for high-end multimedia devices such as Set top box, Media Box, Car AVN, and Tablet. TCC893x multimedia application processor based on Cortex-A9 Dual & M3 has multi-format hardware video accelerator optimized to reduce power consumption, high-performance 2D/3D graphic engine for rich […]

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