Allwinner H-Series Category - Page 22 of 34 - CNX Software

March 17, 2017March 18, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

$18.9 Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 Board: Allwinner H3, WiFi + Bluetooth LE, HDMI and 8GB eMMC Flash

When will they ever stop? Shenzhen Xunlong has launched yet another Allwinner H3 board called Orange Pi Zero Plus 2, that has not that much in common with Orange Pi Zero, since it uses a different processor (H3 vs H2+), adds HDMI, and implements WiFi and BLE via an Ampak AP6212 module.Orange Pi Zero Plus 2: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU @ 600 MHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 SDRAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash + micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI port with CEC support Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0 LE (Ampak AP6212) with u.FL antenna connector and external antenna USB – 1x micro USB OTG port Camera – MIPI CSI port Expansion headers – Unpopulated 26-pin “Raspberry Pi B+” header + 13-pin header with headphone, 2x USB 2.0, TV out, microphone and […]

March 17, 2017March 17, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Shenzhen Xunlong Software & Canonical Launch Orange Pi App Store for Ubuntu Snaps

The maker of Orange Pi boards, Shenzhen Xunlong Software, has partnered with Canonical to launch Orange Pi app store, allowing developers to gain a simple mechanism to share their applications, projects and scripts with the Orange Pi community. The store relies on snaps instead of deb packages, with snaps allowing a secure distributions of apps bundled with all their dependencies, which according to Canonical can decreased the time for an half an hour installation process to just a few seconds. The community has already contributed hundreds of snaps in the Ubuntu snap store, including openHAB for home automation, Rocket.chat self-hosted chat platform, NextCloud for cloud storage, and wifi-ap for networking. You can get them from the App store, but installing a snap from the command line is easy, for example:

sudo snap install rocketchat-server

1	sudo snap install rocketchat-server

However, I cannot find any Ubuntu Core image for Orange Pi Boards yet on Ubuntu Core Getting Started page. […]

March 14, 2017March 14, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 49 Comments

NanoPi NEO2 Development Board Powered by Allwinner H5 64-bit ARM Processor Sells for $15

NanoPi NEO is a cool little board, and I’ve been using it with Armbian as a 24/7 MQTT + Domoticz server for several weeks without any issues so far. FriendlyElec has now an update with NanoPi NEO2 featuring Allwinner H5 quad core Cortex A53 processor instead of Allwinner H3 Cortex A7 processor, a faster Gigabit Ethernet connection, and a new audio header. NanoPi NEO2 specifications: SoC – Allwinner H5 quad core Cortex A53 processor with an ARM Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet (via RTL8211E-VB-CG chip) USB – 1x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port, 2x USB via headers Expansion headers 24-pin header with I2C, 2x UART, SPI, PWM, and power signals 12-pin header with 2x USB, IR pin, I2S 5-pin audio header with microphone and LINE out signals Debugging – 4-pin header for serial […]

March 1, 2017April 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

FriendlyELEC NanoPi M1 Plus Allwinner H3 Board Adds Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi & Bluetooth, and an 8GB eMMC Flash

FriendlyELEC has introduced an update to NanoPi M1 board, aptly named NanoPi M1 Plus with a similar form factor and Allwinner H3 processor, but adding Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi & Bluetooth, and an 8GB eMMC flash, at the expense of one USB port that had to go to make place for the new features, and it got a little wider too.NanoPi M1 Plus board specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash + micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI and 3.5mm jack for CVBS (composite + stereo audio) Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 dual mode (classic + low energy) with chip antenna and IPEX/u.FL connector USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x 4-pin USB 2.0 […]

February 20, 2017May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 4.10 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.10: So there it is, the final 4.10 release. It’s been quiet since rc8, but we did end up fixing several small issues, so the extra week was all good. On the whole, 4.10 didn’t end up as small as it initially looked. After the huge release that was 4.9, I expected things to be pretty quiet, but it ended up very much a fairly average release by modern kernel standards. So we have about 13,000 commits (not counting merges – that would be another 1200+ commits if you count those). The work is all over, obviously – the shortlog below is just the changes in the last week, since rc8. Go out and verify that it’s all good, and I’ll obviously start pulling stuff for 4.11 on Monday. Linus Linux 4.9 added Greybus staging support, improved security thanks to virtually mapped kernel stacks, […]

January 21, 2017January 21, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

How to use Sonoff POW with ESPurna Firmware and Domoticz Home Automation System

Sonoff POW is an ESP8266 based wireless switch with a power meter that comes pre-loaded with a closed-source firmware that works with eWelink app for Android or iOS by default. But we’ve also seen Sonoff POW, and other Sonoff wireless switches from the same family, can be flash with open source firmware supporting MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) lightweight messaging protocol such as ESPurna, and I initially sent data from Sonoff POW to ThingSpeak via an MQTT broker (mosquitto) to draw some pretty charts. I did that with the switch connected to a lightbulb, but I’ve since installed Sonoff POW in my office to measure the room’s power consumption minus the ceiling light and aircon as shown below. Sonoff cable mechanism is really a pain for hard copper wires, as they are hard to push inside the mechanism, and something come out. I finally managed by it took longer than […]

January 20, 2017January 20, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$30 BakeBit Starter Kit Adds Sensors & Buttons to Your NanoPi NEO & NEO Air Boards

FriendlyElec (previously FriendlyARM) launched NanoPi NEO and then NanoPi NEO Air board as respectively Ethernet and WiFi/Bluetooth connected boards for IoT applications. But so far, there was no ecosystem around the board, you had to use your own sensor modules, and write your own software to control them. This has now changed with the launch a BakeBit Starter Kit with twelve sensor modules, a NanoHat Hub add-on board designed for NanoPi boards, as well as BakeBit Library to control the hardware. The NanoHat Hub plugs into the two NanoPi NEO headers and provide 12 headers with 3x I2C interfaces, 3x analog interfaces, 2x UART interfaces, and 4x digital interfaces among which D3 and D5 support PWM, compatible with SeeedStudio Grove modules. You then have a choice of 12 modules to connect to the NanoHat Hub: OLED Module Ultrasonic Module Green LED Module Red LED Module LED Bar Module Rotary Angle […]

January 19, 2017January 19, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

How to Install Domoticz Home Automation System in NanoPi NEO and Other ARM Linux Boards

I’ve recently started experimenting with IoT projects, and the first hurdle is to select the hardware and software for your projects are there are simply so many options. For the hardware your first have to choose the communication protocols for your sensors and actuators, and if you are going to go with WiFi, ESP8266 is the obvious solution, used together with your favorite low cost Linux development board such as Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi to run some IoT server software locally or leveraging the cloud. But the most difficult & confusing part for me was to select the server software / cloud services as there are just so many options. I prefer having a local server than something running only in the cloud, as my Internet goes a few hours a month, so I started with a solution combining ThingSpeak with MQTT gathering data from Sonoff power switches running […]