Rocketbook Takes Your Written Notes to the Cloud, Erases in Your Microwave Oven (Crowdfunding)

Maybe I’m old style, but I still prefer taking notes with pen and paper rather than typing on a computer. That means I need to buy some notebooks (the ones made of paper) from time to time, and once they are full I store them away. But now you can combine the good old written notes with the cloud thanks to RocketBook, a standard looking notebook combined with a mobile app that will scan your notes and send them to various cloud services, and more amazingly it’s re-usable since you can erase by putting in 30 seconds your microwave. I was perplexed at first, as it looked like a scam to me. But finally, I’m pretty sure it’s not since it’s using existing technology, namely Pilot Frixion pens. They looks like standard ball-point pens, but they use a “thermo-sensitive gel ink formula” that can be erased with friction, and they […]

Huawei Watch May Be the Best Looking Android Wear Smartwatch So Far

If you think Motorola Moto 360 looks good, but find the black zone at the bottom of the display ruins it all, Huawei Watch may be what you’ve been looking for, with a similar rounded shape design, Android Wear, and when it is in watch mode it really looks like a standard watch without obstructions.   Let’s go through the specifications first: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 (APQ8026) quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2GHz with Adreno 305 GPU System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 4GB ROM Display – 1.4″ full circle AMOLED display; 400×400, 286ppi; Sapphire crystal Audio – Built-in MIC Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0/4.1 Sensors – Gyroscope + Accelerometer, PPG (photoplethysmogram – for heart rate), Barometer, Vibration Motor Misc – Watch button at 2 o’clock Battery – 300mAh Material – Watch: 316L Stainless Steel; Watchband: stainless steel or leather Dimension – 42mm diameter by 11.3mm thickness Weight – […]

Freescale Announces i.MX 6SoloX ARM Cortex A9 & Cortex M4 Processor

Freescale i.MX6 SoloX processor started to show up in the ARM Linux Kernel mailing list last year, and Cortex A9 + Cortex M4 processor showed up in some marketing documents, but so far all documentation was tied to a non-diclosure agreement. However, all resources are now publicly available, as the company officially launched i.MX 6SoloX processor at Embedded World 2015. Freescale i.MX 6SoloX specifications: CPU – ARM Cortex-A9 up to 1 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache, 32 KB instruction and data caches and NEON SIMD media accelerator MCU – ARM Cortex-M4 up to 200 MHz with 16 KB instruction and data caches, 64 KB TCM, MPU and FPU Memory Interface 16/32-bit DDR3-800 and DDR3L-800, 16/32-bit LPDDR2-800 SLC/MLC NAND, 62-bit ECC, ONFI2.2 2x DDR Quad SPI NOR flash, 16/32-bit NOR Flash Display and Camera Interfaces Parallel RGB LVDS 20-bit parallel CMOS sensor interface NTSC/PAL analog video input interface Multimedia GPU […]

Pebble Time is the Color Version of the Pebble SmartWatch (Crowdfunding)

The original Pebble Watch launched on Kickstarter about 3 years ago, and after selling over 1 million watches, the company is back on Kickstarter with Pebble Time, a thinner version of the watch with an always-on color e-Paper display, a new “timeline” user interface, a microphone for voice recognition,  and 7 days of battery life. The complete Pebble Time specifications are not available, but the company still listed some key features: MCU – Cortex M4 Always-on, daylight readable 64 colors e-Paper display with backlight (no touchscreen) Six-axis gyrosope Microphone for dictation 3x tactile buttons Bluetooth for connectivity with mobile devices Up to 7 day battery life Compatible with any standard 22mm watch band Water resistant and durable Silent vibrating alarms Language and international character support (Chinese coming soon) The new Timeline interface focuses on past, present and future events such as basketball score, current steps, and weather forecast, and the […]

Voltera V-One is a Low Cost PCB Printer and Solder Paste Dispenser (Crowdfunding)

The traditional hardware development cycle involve sending PCB Gerber files to a manufacturer, wait a few days (or weeks), get the boards back, find and fix bugs, send a new revision of the gerber files to the manufacturer and so on. This wastes a lot of time, so PCB printers capable of handline single and dual layer PCBs have started to see the light of the day, for example with BotFactory Squink. The latter can also do pick and place, but costs over $3,500. Luckily if you’d like something cheaper, Voltera V-One will do many of the same tasks, for but for only $1,500. Voltera V-One specifications: Minimum Trace Width – 8mil (~0.2mm) Minimum Passive Size – 0603 (0402 for solder paste) Minimum Pin-to-Pin Pitch – 0.8mm (0.5mm for solder paste) Resistance – >12 mOhm/sq @ 70um height Max Heated Bed Temperature – 250C Heated Bed Ramp Rate – ~2C/s […]

HD18T Android DVB-T2 Receiver Mini Review

I’ve had HD18T Android TV box with a DVB-T2 tuner for several months, but I’ve only installed a roof antenna recently, so I’ve decided to give it another try since my indoor antenna did not pick-up any signal with that box. The set-top box is also known as EM6-T2 or HD18T2, and features Amlogic AML8726-MX dual Cortex A9 processor which has been used in numerous boxes in the past, so I will only focus on my experience with the DVB app in this mini review. If you want to use DVB-T2 go straight to the right and click on DVB app. Where you’ll then be greeted with a pop-up windowsasking if if you want to scan channels. You can do autoscan, manual scan (for one frequency), select the area (France/Taiwan/UK/Italy/Australia only), and enable/disable LCN (Logical Channel Numbering). At first I selected “Australia”, and the system did not find any channels, […]

HiSilicon D02 Server Board Supports up to 64 ARM Cortex A57 Cores

HiSilicon has showcased their latest server SoC and board at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2015, with up to two processors with 32 Cortex A57 cores @ 2.1GHz, 8 DIMM DDR3 slots (up to 128 GB RAM), 12 SATA ports, 4 PCIe slots, 10GbE / GbE ports. D02 board specifications: SoC – Hisilicon PhosphorV660 Hip05 with 16 to 32 ARM Cortex-A57 cores @ up to 2.1GHz and 1MB L2 cache/cluster, 32MB L3 cache System Memory – 2x Memory channel 4x DDR3 DIMM(4x DIMM per processor) Storage 12x SAS 3.0 ports @ 12 Gbps (8 for the first processor, 4 for the second).  SAS port are compatible with SATA drives. You may want to read SAS vs SATA post for more details about SAS. 2x SPI Flash 158Mb BIOS/UEFI 1Gb NorFlash Connectivity – 2×10/100/1000Mbit/s Gigabit Ethernet ports, 2x xGE SFP+ ports (10Gb/s) Expansion – 2x 8x PCI express interfaces per processor (4 […]

Review of Zidoo X9 Android Media Player and Video Recorder

Zidoo X9 is quite a unique product on the market, as it’s the only low cost Android platform that I know of that features an HDMI input port with recording capabilities. The hardware is actually based on Kaiboer F5, with some modifications, but the latter focuses on the Chinese market, while Zidoo X9 targets oversea markets with an English firmware by default. I took pictures of Zidoo X9 and its board about a month ago, but a busy schedule and some initial issues with Google Play Store delayed the review. Finally, I’ve completed testing of the device, and ready to share my findings about performance, stability, and features in this review. OTA Firmware Update I’ve had to go through two firmware updates before carrying on with the review, and this part is working great, and they even include a detailed changelog with each release, which they also publish on their […]