Allwinner H6 TV box SoC was announced last year with some interesting specifications with a quad core Cortex A53 processor clocked at up to 1.8 GHz, 4K & 6K HDR video playback Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, PCIe, etc… and was launched exclusively on Zidoo H6 Pro TV box, which delivered good performance and video playback capabilities, but at $99 was quite more expensive that RK3328 or Amlogic S905 based TV boxes. Lateron we started to find the processor in low cost development board such as Pine64 Pine H64 and Orange Pi One Plus, but I don’t think those become popular, and Allwinner H6 PCIe appears to have been botched. Nevetheless, Allwinner H6 is still a good platform for what i was designed for: TV boxes, and thanks to GearBest, it’s currently possible to purchase EACHLINK H6 Mini for just $39.99 including shipping. EACHLINK H6 Mini specifications: SoC – AllWinner H6 quad-core […]
Linux 4.19 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures
With Linus Torvalds taking a leave from the Linux kernel project, Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to release Linux 4.19 last Sunday: Hi everyone! It’s been a long strange journey for this kernel release… While it was not the largest kernel release every by number of commits, it was larger than the last 3 releases, which is a non-trivial thing to do. After the original -rc1 bumps, things settled down on the code side and it looks like stuff came nicely together to make a solid kernel for everyone to use for a while. And given that this is going to be one of the “Long Term” kernels I end up maintaining for a few years, that’s good news for everyone. A small trickle of good bugfixes came in this week, showing that waiting an extra week was a wise choice. However odds are that linux-next is just bursting so […]
Tiny NanoPi Duo2 Board Comes with WiFi, a Camera Interface, an Optional 2G-IoT Dock
NanoPi Duo was launched last year as an ultra-cheap ($8+) Arm Linux board that fits into a breadboard. The board was powered by Allwinner H2+ processor coupled with 256 or 512MB RAM, and the infamous XR819 802.11b/g/n WiFi chip. FriendlyElec has now launched NanoPi Duo2, that’s still breadboard compatible, but with a slightly longer form factor, Allwinner H3 processor, 512 MB RAM, better WiFi thanks to an AP6212 module, and an extra camera interface. As we’ll see further below the company also developed a carrier board for 2G cellular IoT applications. NanoPi Duo2 specifications with highlights in bold showing differences again NanoPi Duo: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 SDRAM Storage – micro SD card slot, footprint for SPI flash Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0 LE (Ampak AP6212 module) with chip antenna, […]
Xiaomi Mi A1’s eMMC Flash Storage Failing after One Year?
Xiaomi Mi A1 Android One smartphone has been my main and only phone since last October, and I’ve been pretty satisfied with it with monthly firmware updates, and the smartphone performing as I would expect, except I found the camera to be lacking in some conditions, but nothing critical. However on the 7th of this month, the phone felt really sluggish, especially when loading app, as one an app was loaded it would run fairly smoothly most of the time. I’m talking about messaging apps taking 20 to 30 seconds to load, YouTube maybe one minute, and CSR2 Racing game about 5 minutes to load… My first guess was some background app taking lots of resources, or accessing storage very frequently hence slowing down other apps, but Android Battery settings did not report any such apps, and battery life was normal. I still tried to remove some apps, but no […]
Geniatech XPI-S905X Board Leverages Raspberry Pi 3 Form Factor
Geniatech is well known in the media player industry for their Amlogic based TV boxes, but in recent years, they’ve also launched some development board from other silicon vendors such as Qualcomm with Developer Board IV and Developer Board 8 powered by respectively Snapdragon 410E and 820E. The company has now launched the XPI family of single board computers that will allow closely follow Raspberry Pi 3 form factor while offering better performance and features. Geniatech will start with XPI-S905X board powered by an Amlogic S905X quad core Cortex A53 processor @ 1.5 GHz with 4K HDR video playback and output capability. Geniatech XPI-S905X board preliminary specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz (but they claim 1.6 to 2.0 GHz max…) with penta core ARM Mali-450MP GPU, and Amlogic Video Engine 10 System Memory – 1GB or 2GB (default) DDR3 RAM Storage […]
ODROID-H2 Intel Celeron J4105 Single Board Computer to Launch in November
There were talks about Hardkernel working on an ODROID x86 board since last year, as the CEO expected to launch such board later in 2017 in an interview published in ODROID magazine. Finally, it took them several iterations and processors considerations before being ready for launch, and ODROID-H2 should become available next month as the first ODROID x86 board. ODROID-H2 will feature an Intel Celeron J4105 Gemini Lake processor, two SO-DIMM slots for memory, two SATA ports and M.2 NVMe slot for storage, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a mix of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and more. ODROID-H2 board specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4105 quad core processor @ up to 2.3 GHz (real frequency) with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 System Memory – Dual-channel Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) supporting up to 32GiB RAM in total Storage – M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for one NVMe storage, 2x SATA 3.0 ports, […]
$50 Kendryte KD233 Board Features K210 Dual Core RISC-V SoC
RISC-V is talked about a lot, and we’re started to see a few development boards coming to market, or at least being announced with some based on SiFive processors such as HiFive Unleashed or Arduino Cinque, as well as other like GAPUINO GAP8 for low power A.I. applications. The Arduino board is not for sale yet, and HiFive Unleashed and GAPUINO GAP8 are fairly expensive at $999 and $229. Kendryte KD233 board is another RISC-V development board, based on Kendryte K210 dual core 64-bit RISC-V processor designed for machine vision and “machine hearing”. The board goes for $49.99 on AnalogLamb. Kendryte KD233 board specifications: SoC – Kendryte K210 dual core 64-bit RISC-V processor, KPU Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) hardware accelerator, APU audio hardware accelerator, 6MiB of on-chip general-purpose SRAM memory and 2MiB of on-chip AI SRAM memory, AXI ROM to load user program from SPI flash Storage – 128 Mbit […]
Beelink GT1 MINI S905X2 TV Box Ships with a Voice Air Mouse
We’ve previously seen new TV boxes based on Amlogic S905X2 and S905Y2 processors, which mostly brings a more recent, but not necessarily more powerful, Mali-G31 GPU with OpenGL 3.2 support, and a USB 3.0 port not available in Amlogic S905/905X based TV boxes. S905X2 and S905Y2 are pretty much similar, and the main difference is that S905Y2 does not support Ethernet, so it’s only designed for WiFi/Bluetooth TV boxes and dongles. So far only generic OEM models were announced, but Beelink has now introduced their own S905X2 TV box with Beelink GT1 MINI featuring 2 to 4GB RAM, 16 to 64GB flash, and a voice enabled remote control / air mouse that works with Google Assistant. Beelink GT1 Mini specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X2 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor with quad-core Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB or 4GB DDR4 RAM Storage – 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB eMMC flash, Micro […]