$69 miniSpartan6+ Board with Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA Features an HDMI Port (Crowdfunding)

I’ve already featured sub-$100 Xilinx Spartan 6 boards in this blog such as The Mojo and Arduissimo. There’s now another with Scarab Hardware‘s miniSpartan6+ which also includes an HDMI port, and is currently available for $69 on Kickstarter. This board could be used as a logic analyzer, a multimedia player, a game console emulator, an Arduino emulator, a stereo vision camera, and more. miniSpartan6+ specifications: FPGA- Xilinx Spartan6 LX9 System Memory – 32 MB SDRAM Storage – 64Mbit SPI Flash + micro SD card Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – Stereo audio output jack using 1-bit sigma-delta DAC USB – Micro USB OTG port Debugging – On-board USB JTAG programmer I/Os via breadboard friendly through holes 8-channel ADC running at 1 MSPS with 8 bit resolution. 24 Digital I/O pins. Misc – 8 LEDs. Dimensions – 4.57 x 7.62 cm Programming can be done with the company’s Scarab IDE, […]

Blend Micro Arduino Board Integrates Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Connectivity for 25 Euros

RedBearLab’s Blend Micro is an Arduino compatible board with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Enery (aka Bluetooth Smart) connectivity, that’s part of Arduino-at-heart, a partner program initiated by the developers of Arduino boards. It has been made to help design low power Internet-Of-Things (IoT) projects quickly and easily. Blend Micro technical specifications: MCU – Atmel ATmega32u4 @ 8 MHz with 32KB flash (4KB used by bootloader), 2.5 KB SRAM, and 1KB EEPROM. Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy via Nordic nRF8001 chip USB – 1x micro USB port I/Os: Serial (Tx/Rx) I2C, SPI PWM U to 16 Digital I/Os Up to 6 Analog inputs Operating Voltage – 3.3V Input Voltage – 5V (USB), and 3.3-12V (VIN) Power Consumption – 2mA (average – using Interrupt mode) Dimensions – 43.6 x 18.4 x 4.3mm Weight – 4g The specs are very similar to BLEDuino, except it’s slightly smaller. Blend Micro can communicate with BLE […]

Linaro 14.05 Released with Linux Kernel 3.15, Android 4.4.2, and Ubuntu Trusty

Linaro 14.05 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.15-rc5 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.40 (LSK), Android 4.4.2, and Ubuntu has been switched from Saucy to Trusty. More work has been done on big.LITTLE processing and ARMv8 support with notably completing bootstrapping with Debian 64-bit. New hardware platform have started to pop-up such as TI J6-Vayu which must be an evaluation board for Texas Instruments Jacinto 6 dual core Cortex A15 SoC for automotive application, as well as IFC6410, a Snapdragon 600 development board which got a Ubuntu LEB image. This month also marks the first release of Linaro GCC 4.9 toolchain. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.15-rc5-2014.05 new Android topic (linaro-android-3.15-experimental) uses the resent AOSP code base GATOR version 5.18 (same version as in 2014.04) uprobes topic removed as all patches have been accepted into mainline updated big-LITTLE-pmu topic from ARM LT updated basic Capri board support […]

Ubuntu 14.04 and Slitaz on Radxa Rock

Various Android and Linux images are available on Radxa Rock download page, but if you’d like to get newer images or other options, two developers have provided binaries and posted instructions to get Ubuntu 14.04 and Slitaz operating systems, the later currently booting with Linux kernel 3.10. Naoki FUKAUMI has published a miniroot how-to install a Ubuntu 14.04 Core (minimal headless installation) on Radxa Rock and Radxa Rock Lite. Installation should be relatively easy as he provide the update.img for both board so your can use the usual method in Windows (RkBatchTool) or upgrade_tool in Linux. If you don’t have serial console, you’ll have need to flash the parameter file requiring RkAndroidTool in Windows, and the same upgrade_tool in Linux. If once the installation and configuration is complete, you want a desktop environment,you can always run “apt-get install lubuntu-desktop” to install LXDE. SliTaz is a lightweight Linux distribution. I previously […]

Arduino Unveils Arduino Zero Board Featuring Atmel SAMD21 Cortex M0+ MCU

Arduino and Atmel have jointly announced the latest addition to the Arduino family with Arduino Zero, a development board based on Atmel SAMD21 ARM Cortex M0+ MCU with the same form factor and headers as Arduino UNO / Leonardo. Arduino Zero specifications: Microcontroller – Atmel ATSAMD21G18 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32 KB SRAM, 256 KB flash, up to 16KB EEPROM (By emulation). 48-pin LQFP package. Digital I/O Pins – 14, with 12 PWM and UART Analog Input Pins – 6, including 5 12bits ADC channels and one 10 bits DAC DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA USB – 2x micro USB ports Debugging – USB via Atmel’s Embedded Debugger (EDBG) on-board debugger, and JTAG Misc – reset button, 5 LEDs (Tx, Rx, L, On, Debug) Operating Voltage – 3.3V That’s about all we know for now, as tools support (Arduino IDE?), availability and […]

Arduino TRE Powered by TI Sitara AM335x Enters Beta with 50 Developer Boards Available for Purchase

Most official Arduino boards are based on Atmel AVR MCUs that allow hobbyists to control GPIOs, or low level interfaces, which is fine for applications that do not require much processing power. In the last couple of years however, the Arduino team has gone up the processor scale, first with Arduino Due with an ARM Cortex M3, then Arduino Yun with a MIPS processor running OpenWRT, and there latest board Arduino TRE features a Texas Instruments Sitara AM3359 AM3358 processor capable of running any Linux distributions supporting ARM. The board was announced last year, and Arduino has now launched a beta program where developers can purchase one of the 50 “Arduino TRE Developer Edition” boards for 149 Euros + VAT. Arduino TRE specifications (Parts related to TI Sitara highlighted in green): SoC – Texas Instrument Sitara AM3359AZCZ100 AM3358 (See comments) ARM Cortex A8 processor @ 1 GHz with PowerVR SGX530 […]

Hummingbird A31 Is a $70 Feature-packed Development Board Powered by AllWinner A31

Merrii Technologies introduced the Hummingbird development kit powered by AllWinner A20 last year. Since then they’ve sold 10,000 pieces, and have been working on another development board based on AllWinner A31 with lots of different ports and options, including an optional 7″ capacitive touch screen. “Quad Core” Hummingbird specifications: SoC – AllWinner A31 quad core ARM Cortex-A7 with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU compliant with OpenGL ES2.0, OpenCL 1.x, DX 9_3 System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB Flash + micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI, VGA, LVDS Video Input – 3.5mm jack for CVBS (or YPbPr?) In (TV IN) Audio I/O – HDMI, 3.5mm jack for stereo audio, 3.5mm jack for Line IN (Same as TV IN). 2x 15w amplifier on-board. Camera – MIPI interface Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (AP6210 module) Cellular Connectivity – SIM card slot + mini PCIe connector for 3G […]

Snapdragon 600 based IFC6410 Development Board is Available for $75 For a Limited Time

Despite their popularity with tablets and smartphones, I don’t see much developer community around Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and only a few low cost development boards. One of them is Inforce Computing IF6410 pico-ITX board powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064) quad core processor with 2GB RAM, 4GB eMMC flash, Gb Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SATA,  micro HDMI and LVDS video outputs, etc.., that normally sells for just $149. But the company is having a promotion for $75 with the coupon code “makerfaire” until May 18, or until the 500 units they’ve reserved are sold out. Shipping is not included in the price, and you’ll have to add about $50 for Fedex delivery (It may be cheaper in the US) for a total of about $125, which still probably makes it the cheapest “Cortex A15 class” board that you can get. The board appears to only officially support Android, and if you […]

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