Sometimes last month, Espressif Systems contacted me to send a mysterious new development kit together with a 10-year anniversary T-shirt, an offer I found hard to decline 🙂 So I got a new year present this morning delivered by DHL… The letter lists the main specifications of ESP-EYE development board: WiSoC- ESP32 dual core Tensilica LX6 processor with WiFi and Bluetooth Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 4MB flash Camera – 2MP OV2640 camera Audio – Microphone USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming Misc – Reset, boot and function buttons, 2x LEDs Dimensions – 41 x 21 mm It reminds me of ESP32-CAM camera board, except it adds a microphone, it’s even smaller, and as an official Espressif board, software support might be better. AI features such as face recognition or detection, and voice wake-up are supported out of the box. The board ships with a […]
FOSDEM 2019 Open Source Developers Meeting Schedule
FOSDEM – which stands for Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting – is a free-to-participate event where developers meet on the first week-end of February to discuss open source software & hardware projects. FOSDEM 2019 will take place on February 2 & 3, and the schedule has already been published with 671 speakers scheduled to speak in 711 events themselves sorted in 62 tracks. Like every year, I’ll create a virtual schedule based on some of the sessions most relevant to this blog in tracks such as open hardware, open media, RISC-V, and hardware enablement tracks. February 2 10:30 – 10:55 – VkRunner: a Vulkan shader test tool by Neil Roberts A presentation of VkRunner which is a tool to help test the compiler in your Vulkan driver using simple high-level scripts. Perhaps the largest part of developing a modern graphics driver revolves around getting the compiler to […]
Year 2018 in Review, Top 10 Posts, and Some Stats
That’s it, we’ve already reached the last day of 2018, and it’s time to have a look back at what happened during the past year. On the mini PC front, Gemini Lake based mini PCs took over from Apollo Lake with some performance improvements, but I expected the price point to be a bit lower than it is today. Apart from further developments with regards to mobile processors, it feels 2018 was an off-year for processors, such as the ones found in TV boxes and development boards, with mostly more of the same. Allwinner and Rockchip did not release any really interesting processor, and Amlogic only launched S905X2 and S905Y2 which are mostly evolutions of their previous generation with an OpenGL 3.x capable GPU and USB 3.0. Rockchip RK3399 stood out this year, as despite being launched in 2016, it suddenly became popular again with many RK3399 SBCs coming to […]
Khadas Edge Review – Part 3: Android 7.0 Preview
Hey Karl here with a look at a preview of Android on the Khadas edge. Jean-luc has done 2 parts already. The first one looking at the hardware side, and a second looking at Ubuntu. A third img is available that for LibreELEC. The initial release was very barebones, and the 2nd version is much more polished with the Play Store installed now and overall feels snappier. Khadas is supposed to be sending an Edge over to Super Celeron, and I hope they follow through. DHL DHL really messed up my board. Here are some pics. I will only be testing with Ethernet because the WiFi antenna got damaged badly and even bent the heatsink. I think the board is slightly damaged as well. I can only flash using the buttons on the board and not the carrier board. Everything else seems OK. Due to the damage, I am using […]
ClockworkPi GameShell Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Assembly Guide
ClockworkPi Gameshell is a portable retro gaming console kit designed to be hackable being powered by Allwinner R16 processor to run Linux, as well as an Arduino compatible Atmel AVR MCU. It’s partially open source hardware with PDF schematics, and firmware source code available on Github. The device launched last year on Kickstarter, raised close to $300,000, and started shipping to backers last summer. The company has now sent me a sample for review, so let’s have a look. The first part of the review will be more than just an unboxing, since the game console is meant to be assembled by the end user, and I’ll report my experience doing so. ClockworkPi Gameshell Unboxing The kit comes in a fairly large package that reads “GameShell – Redefine Portable Game Console” and lists the main specifications with quad core Cortex A7 processor, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, 1GB RAM, 16GB micro […]
ZOTAC PI225-GK Ultrathin Mini PC Gets a Gemini Lake Upgrade for $230
Zotac PI225 mini PC was launched last year with an Intel Celeron N3350 dual core “Apollo Lake” processors, and its main feature was its form factor, as the computer is about the size and thickness of a standard 2.5″ SSD. Linuxium reviewed Zotac ultrathin mini PC with both Windows 10 and Ubuntu, and found out Turbo mode was disabled by default in BIOS in order to keep temperature in check. So the form factor did cost some performance to the system compared to similar specced but thicker computers. The company showcased the similar Pi226 mini PC at CES 2018 last January with a faster Celeron N4000 dual core Gemini Lake processor, and finally it’s now available as Pico Pi225-GK (ZBOX-PI225-GK-W2B) on Tiger Direct and some other resellers for about $230 plus shipping. Pico Pi225-GK specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N4000 dual core “Gemini Lake” processor @ 1.1 / 2.6 GHz […]
SDTxArm Pelion Kit is a Modular IoT Devkit Designed for Arm Mbed Cloud Platform
South Korea based Sigma Delta Technologies’ SDTxArm Pelion Kit is a modular development kit comprised of a baseboard, as well as CPU and interface modules that is specifically designed to work with Arm Pelion cloud based device management service and Mbed OS for wearables and IoT applications. DAP (Debug Access Port) Station Ver.2 baseboard key features and specifications: USB – 1x micro USB 2.0 port Expansion I/Os via rows of through-holes 3x UART Interfaces 4x SPI Interfaces 3x I²C Interfaces 7x GPIO 4x analog inputs Debugging / Programming 1x TC2050 tag connection designed to allow programming without purchasing additional Interface if the user already has an appropriate Interface Module from other companies. I assume this is related to Tag Connect TC2050-IDC. 1x SD-TAG with JTAG/SWD signals Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port The DAP station takes an SDT Board (i.e. CPU board), as well as an interface board […]
NXP i.MX 6ULZ Cost Efficient Processor Drops Ethernet, Display, & Camera Interfaces
Freescale i.MX 6 processor was first announced in January 2011, and in the first few years I covered many products and development boards based on the single to quad core Cortex A9 processor. Further down the road, the company became part of NXP, and launched Cortex A7 variant such as i.MX 6ULL providing both lower costs and power consumption. But now, I usually skip new products based on i.MX6 because they are often just more of the same, and not really new worthy. But yesterday while writing about Linux 4.20 release, I realized I missed the announcement of i.MX 6ULZ processor similar to i.MX 6UL (UltraLight), but cost optimized for applications that do not require Ethernet, display, nor camera interfaces. NXP i.MX 6ULZ key features and specifications with differences with i.MX 6UL highlighted in bold or stricken-through: CPU – ARM Cortex A7 core @ up to 900 MHz with 128KB […]