The “Plug” is a device with an Ethernet connection, and a USB port that allows you to connect up to 8 USB drives, and access those in a unified fashion from all your devices. It’s a bit like dropbox, except you are in charge, and the price per GB is much cheaper than cloud services. The Cloud Guys have launched a kickstarter campaign that has already received over $220,000 in pledges after just over two days. The Plug technical specifications are as follows: OpenWRT based Embedded Linux x86 compatible processor Port for your hard drive – USB 2.0 Port for Internet – Ethernet port 10/100 Mbps Average transfer speed: 30 Mbps Supported file systems: NTFS, HFS+, Ext3/Ext4, FAT32 Number of drives supported (using an external USB hub): 8 LED Display: Power/ Action Dimensions – 270mm (W) x 110mm (D) x 20mm (H) (This must be wrong as it seems way […]
Systena Tizen Tablet Hands-on Video
Systena, a Japanese company, is currently developing a Tizen tablet with a quad core Cortex A9 processor at 1.4Ghz, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. The tablet features a 10.1″display (1920×1080), supports 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and comes with a microSD card slot, as well as a 2MP rear camera and 0.3Mp front camera. Tizen Indonesia got a prototype of the tablet, and give it a try in the video below (no audio). We can see the boot, lock screen and gallery application. The system does not seem very fluid at this stage of development, but hopefully Tizen will be optimized for better performance before the final release. The system currently runs Tizen 2.0, but the company plans to upgrade to Tizen 2.1 for the developer version of the device, before selling the device to the general public. Via Liliputing and Tizen Experts Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 […]
Control your DSLR Camera via Wi-Fi using an Android mini PC and a Tablet
DSLR Controller is a paid Android app (beta) that uses your Canon EOS DSLR camera USB port in order to control it and access the camera live view with a tablet or smartphone. That may be useful, but it’s much better if you can roam a bit, and are not limited by the USB cable length. That’s why the application has been improved some time ago in order to use 2 Android devices, usually smartphones or tablets. One device is connected via USB to the DSLR camera, and act as a Wi-Fi access point, and the other device connects via Wi-Fi to allow full control of the camera. However, you don’t really need a screen on a Wi-Fi access point, so instead of using mobile devices, the developers decided to use an Android mini PC, specifically CX-919, which is just one of the many RK3188 mini PC available today, coupled […]
Play HEVC/H.265 Videos and Embed HEVC Streams into MP4 and TS Files with openHEVC and GPAC
I wrote an introduction to H.265 (aka HEVC) at the end of last year, including instructions showing how to encode videos to HEVC using the reference implementation. It worked but since it was not optimized for speed, it was extremely slow. Today I’ve stumbled across openHEVC, a open source compliant HEVC video decoder written in C, created as a fork of Libav. This is supposed to work pretty well as the implementation was used at Roland Garros Tennis tournament to playback an 720p50 HEVC stream transmitted over DVB-T2, IPTV, and MPEG DASH. Today I’ll mainly tried out the instructions provided on openHEVC github repo including: Build the source and playing a raw HEVC stream with hevc utility Build GPAC (open source multimedia framework), to get MP4Box, mp42ts, and MP4Client utilities. Import a raw HEVC stream into MP4 and TS containers, and play it back with GPAC tools. I’ve performed the […]
Cloud Media FreeOTT Player Review
Syabas was a company designing set-top boxes such as Popcorn Hour Media Tank that were relatively popular before the Android media player invasion. The company is now called Cloud Media, and they offer a tiny media player called FreeOTT that connects to their Apps Market and bring online video, Internet radio, social media and other streaming media to your television. The device is free (as in free beer), as it’s not actually available for sale to the general public, and the only ways to get it is to have your ISP or telecom provider set it to you, or win one from the regular giveaways organized by the company. I won one via a giveaway announced on their Facebook page, and I had just to pay $5 (via Paypal) for shipping. The company does not provide detailed specifications for their device but we do know it’s a Linux based media […]
DIY Modular Stripboard / Perfboard Casing for Raspberry Pi (Part 1)
I plan to play around with Bluetooth 4.0 LE in Linux using the Raspberry Pi as an hardware platform together with a small LCD display and possibly a relay board. Instead of having boards spread around, I thought it might be a good idea if I could design a case for my setup. I wanted to be able to connect small external boards and things like LEDs, it had to be easily assembled and disassembled, modular so that I could add or remove circuits easily, and about as cheap as existing “dumb” cases. So I though why not use stripboards (perfboards) for that? I searched the web to find out if other people had the same idea, and could only find one other person, but he does not appear to have completed assembly, nor actually used the stripboards to add hardware features. I decided to give it a try anyway, […]
Lollybot is a $10 Robot Made with a USB Gamepad and Chupa Chups
I attended Barcamp Chiang Mai 6 yesterday, and sessions dealt with a wide range of subjects ranging from SEO and web development to things like nuclear energy, VMAT2 God gene, or Edward Snowden. There were just four talks somewhat related to the subjects I usually write about in this blog: Project Manhattan – An interactive TV infrastructure project for TV operators based on open source libraries (but not open source itself). They provide both back-end software and a mobile app (Android or iOS) for smartphones and set-top boxes. They had an Android set-top box, but unfortunately there was no time for demo. There’s no project website, but the solution is said to be used by horizon-tv.tv (in Russian). A Raspberry Pi session which I could not attend Firefox OS – Keng is the owner of a mobile and web development company called opendream, but he’s also one of the 4 […]
FossilShale FS-DM385-SOM Features TI DaVinci SoC for HD Media applications
FossilShale, an embedded company based in Bangalore, has announced a system-on-module based on Texas Instruments Davinci TMS320DM385 SoC that targets applications high-definition decoding and encoding (up to 1080p60) such as IP Cameras, HD video conferencing endpoints, digital signage, portable medical imaging and diagnostics, or camcorders. It can be used standalone for evaluation, or with a carrier board. FS-DM385-SOM Specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments TMS320DM385F ARM Cortex A8 core @ 1GHz with HDVICP v2 video core handling H.264 BP/MP/HP, MPEG2, VC1, MPEG4 SP/ASP, JPEG/MJPEG encoding and decoding. Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 512MB NAND flash +1x Micro SD/MMC connector (up to 32GB) Audio / Video: 1x HDMI Out (Micro) 1x LCD TFT Interface (24 Bit RGB) 1x Camera Interface (MIPI) 1x Integrated Composite Video In & Audio Line In(Stereo Jack) 1x Integrated Composite Video Out & Audio Line Out(Stereo Jack) Other Interfaces: 1x USB OTG 1x IrDA Accelerometer 1x I2C, 1x SPI […]