Operating Systems Category - Page 430 of 1035 - CNX Software

August 26, 2018August 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Arduino Releases Command Line Interface (CLI) Alpha Preview

So far, AFAIK the only official ways to program Arduino boards were through the Arduino IDE program, or the cloud-based Arduino Create which works in your web browser and does not require any installation on your computer. While graphical interfaces are nice and user-friendly, many of us are more productive while working using the command line, especially if commands can be scripted. So Arduino decided to work on a command line interface (CLI) for professional users, and have just announced a preview release. arduino-cli works in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and allows you install libraries, boards, and cores (e.g. esp32 Arduino core), compile the code, and upload the binary to the target board. If you want to get started quickly, you can download the binary “alpha” releases in the announcement board, but instead I opted to build the client myself as explained on Github. Everything below is done in […]

August 24, 2018August 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 43 Comments

NanoPi M4 Raspberry Pi Inspired RK3399 Board Launched for $65 and Up

As expected, FriendlyELEC has now launched NanoPi M4 board, a lower cost version of NanoPC-T4 Rockchip RK3399 SBC, and mostly following Raspberry Pi form factor. How much you may ask? That would be $65 plus shipping for the 2GBRAM version, and $95 for the 4GB RAM version, which means it sells in the same ballpark as RockPro64 board. NanoPi M4 board specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 big.LITTLE hexa-core processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.0GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5GHz, a Mali-T864 GPU with support OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC, and a VPU with 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 6decoding System Memory – Dual-channel 4GB LPDDR3-1866, or dual-channel 2GB DDR3-1866 Storage – eMMC module socket, micro SD card slot Video Output HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDCP 1.4/2.2 support 4-Lane MIPI-DSI connector Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, HDMI digital audio […]

August 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

PiMecha Humanoid Robot Based on Raspberry Pi Sells for about $500

SB Components introduced PiMecha humanoid robot powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero (W)/ A+ / 2 / 3 (B+) board, and offering 17 degrees of freedom (DoF) on Kickstarter a few months ago. But with KS backers expecting their rewards in September, the company is now taking pre-orders on their own website for the robot for 399 GBP, or about $511 at today’s exchange rate. The company has apparently not published any detailed specifications of the robot on their website. But the robot is basically comprised of an outer shell comprised of removable metal pieces, and precise smartbus servo motors. Your chosen Raspberry Pi board would be fitted to the robot’s chest together with PiMecha shield add-on board handling the servo control. PiMecha can be easily customized with a Pi camera, an LCD display, your own sensors an so on. SB Components provide software to program the robot in order […]

August 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 32 Comments

TableX Arm Linux Tablet Runs Armbian Ubuntu, To Launch for 89 Euros

If you want an Arm Linux laptop, you have already some choices with products such as Pine64 Pinebook, or Olimex TERES-I open source hardware laptop, but if instead you’d rather do without keyboard, and get an Arm Linux tablet, choices are much more limited, if any at all. Back in 2012, Allwinner A10 based PengPod 700 & 1000 tablets were available for the company has since folded, and this year, RasPad case launched to allow you to build your own thick tablet with a Raspberry Pi 3 (B+). However, if you want to normal looking tablet, your best option right now is to get an Android tablet and mess around to install Linux on it. That’s not for everyone, and the good news is that what looks like a proper – albeit low-end – Arm Linux tablet is coming to market soon with TableX. TableX preliminary hardware specifications: SoC – […]

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

MuxPi Board Relies on NanoPi NEO to Enable Remote Testing of Development Boards

Product development often occurs in different location over the world, there may be one team in Asia, and another in Europe and the US. At the beginning, the number of working samples for a board may be limited, so the project manager may have to decide who gets the boards since those may not be available to all teams. So it would be great if somehow there was a way to do remote testing of boards, so maybe the team in Asia could setup the testbed, used it during there time, and once they are back home, the US team can take over remotely to carry on their own development work on the hardware. That’s exactly what MuxPi board is all about. The solution provide remote access via the Ethernet port of a NanoPi NEO board, and connects to the DUT (Device under Test) via HDMI, Ethernet, USB and other […]

August 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Kohler Novita “Therapy Bidet” Bluetooth LE Enabled Toilet Seat Works with Android & iOS Smartphones

If you’ve ever been to Japan, and to a lesser extend in Korea, you’ll probably have used one those toilet seat that sprays water, and ends with a gentle drying once you’re done with business. That’s all good, but you’d still need to press the buttons to activate it, and who knows what kind of germs may be on those buttons. But with Nordic Semi nRF52832 powered Kohler Novita “Therapy Bidet” (BD-TE80M) you don’t need to worry about third party germs, since it can be controlled over Bluetooth LE with your very own smartphone contaminated with your very own germs. The toilet seat bidet supports three different spray modes (active, silky, and mist) aka “water experiences”, as well as dual dry air blower combined with far infrared for “better skin care” and improved blood circulation. An auto-customization mode is available for ladies during the thing that normally happens every moon […]

August 22, 2018August 22, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Review of Firefly-RK3399 Board with Android 8.1 Firmware

Last week, I tested Android 7.1 on NanoPC-T4 Rockchip RK3399 SBC, and this week, I’ve given a try at Android 8.1 (Beta) on Firefly-RK3399 Board. Since it’s still a beta version, I’m expecting some issues and we’ll have to see how it performs at this stage of development. Firefly-RK3399 Kit Assembly I had to do some assembly before starting the board. It took me some 30 minutes to complete, so I’ll quickly go through the steps. Beside the default kit, the company also sent me a fansink ($7.9) and an M.2 to SATA board + required cable ($16) which will be part of the assembly instructions. The first step is to peel off the protective films on both sides of the acrylic case. I then fastened my own 2.5″ hard drive with four screws provided in the default kit. I then installed the M.2 to dual SATA adapter board in […]

August 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Embedded Base Boot Requirements (EBBR) Project Aims to Standardize Booting on Embedded Systems

Desktop and server systems relies on standardized interfaces between the bootloader and the OS like UEFI and ACPI, but for embedded systems the way the bootloader, often U-boot, handles the boot flow may vary greatly between targets. Arm and its partners already worked on this in the server space with the Server Base Architecture Specification (SBSA) , and more specifically the Server Base Boot Requirements (SBBR) within the specification that requires the use of both UEFI and ACPI on servers. Arm has now done something similar with the Embedded Base Boot Requirements (EBBR) project that targets specifically embedded systems, is based on a subset of UEFI, and works with either ACPI or device tree. EBBR specification once implemented in bootloaders like U-boot or Tianocore/EDK2 should allow a single version of an OS image to boot on multiple platforms without the per-platform customization required today.. In practical terms it means the […]