FOSDEM 2019 Open Source Developers Meeting Schedule

FOSDEM 2019

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

cnx software year 2018 review

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 […]

SDTxArm Pelion Kit is a Modular IoT Devkit Designed for Arm Mbed Cloud Platform

SDTxArm Pelion Kit

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 […]

Onion Omega2 Pro OpenWrt Linux IoT Board Comes with 8GB Storage (Crowdfunding)

Omega2 Pro

Onion Omega2 and Omega2 Plus are MediaTek MT7688 MIPS based WiFi boards for IoT applications that were launched in 2016 for as low as $5. Both boards run OpenWrt (LEDE at the time), and Omega2 Plus included more memory and storage with respectively 128MB RAM, 32MB flash and a micro SD card. But Onion team found out that many users needed more storage space, and they’ve now come up with Omega2 Pro model with the same processor, 128MB RAM, and large 8GB flash considering we’re talking about a board running OpenWrt 18.06 here. Onion Omega2 Pro specifications: Wireless Module – Onion Omega2S+ with SoC – MediaTek MT7688 MIPS processor @ 580 MHz System Memory – 128MB DDR2 RAM Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 Antenna – 2 dBi directional chip antenna (on mainboard) & u.FL connector for external antenna (on-module) Storage – 8 GB eMMC flash USB – […]

Qualcomm 9205 NB-IoT & Cat M1 LTE Modem Lowers Costs, Power Consumption

Qualcomm 9205

Qualcomm has introduced a new LTE IoT chipset with Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem that supports Cat M1 (eMTC), NB2 (NB-IoT), 2G/E-GPRS fallback, as well as GNSS. Qualcomm 9205  comes at a lower price, smaller footprint, and up to 70% lower power consumption in standby mode compared to its predecessor (MDM9206). Qualcomm 9205 LTE modem key features and specifications: Processor / OS – Arm Cortex A7 up to 800MHz with support for ThreadX and AliOS Things real-time operating systems Connectivity Standards 3GPP release 14 Category M1 and NB2; 2G/E-GPRS fallback where Cat M1 / NB2 is not available. Category M1 mode supports voice for applications such as monitored security panels, and mobility for applications such as asset trackers. RF transceiver Bandwidth support from 450 MHz to 2100 MHz Built-in RF front-end, a first in the cellular IoT space Geolocation Integrated GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems)  support for GPS, Beidou, Glonass, and […]

Kontron pITX-iMX8M Industrial Pico-ITX Motherboard is Powered by NXP i.MX8M Processor

pITX-imx8m

We’ve had a fair amount of boards and modules based on NXP i.MX 8M dual or quad core Cortex A53 processor this year, including one pico-ITX motherboard with F&S Elektronik ArmStone MXM8 supporting up to 8GB RAM. Another i.MX 8M pico-ITX board will soon be launch courtesy of Kontron. pITX-iMX8M will also features the dual or quad core version of the processor, but will differ thanks to the presence of dual Gigabit Ethernet, mini DP and HDMI video outputs, an M.2 PCIe/USB 3.0 socket, and built-in TPM 2.0 security. Kontron pITX-iMX8M preliminary specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Dual or QuadLite Arm Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz, Arm Cortex-M4 real-time core, and Vivante GC7000Lite GPU with support for OpenGL/Es 3.1, OpenGL 3.0, Vulkan System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 64GB eMMC 5.1 flash, micro SD card / SIM slot combo Video Output – mini DisplayPort, HDMI […]

Orange Pi 3G-IoT Board Finally Gets a Linux Image

Orange Pi 3G-IoT Linux

Shenzhen Xunlong has launched several cellular IoT boards over the last few years with Orange Pi 2G-IoT, Orange Pi 3G-IoT and Orange Pi 4G-IoT, but each time, they are launched with Android support only. Linux support on the 2G board has never been great, while the Android 8.1 SDK for Orange Pi 4G-IoT was released earlier this year, but no Linux image are available. This leaves us with Orange Pi 3G-IoT board that just got its first Linux based firmware images released today on both Baidu and Google Drive cloud storage storage services. Four images are available for Orange Pi 3G-IoT-A (256MB DDR2) and Orange Pi 3G-IoT-B (512MB DDR2) boards with images booting from eMMC flash or micro SD card. A shell script (tar_image.sh) is provided to flash the image to the micro SD card since the latter for follow a specific partition layout. Sadly, there’s no mention of the […]

Particle Mesh Networking Review – Part 2: Getting Started Guide with Argon & Xenon

Particle Mesh Network Argon Xenon Success

I’ve recently received a Particle Mesh IoT Development Kit with one Argon WiFi + Mesh (802.15.4) board acting as gateway, three Xenon Mesh boards, and various sensors and accessories.  I’ve already showcased the hardware in the first part in the review, so in this post I’ll post my experience getting started with Particle Mesh networking using the kit. Beside the kit, you’ll need a few micro USB cables, a mobile phone running Android or iOS, a reliable Internet connection (more on that later), and a host PC for programming and debugging potential issues. Setting Up Particle Argon & Xenon boards First we’ll need to configure / setup the boards. Go to https://setup.particle.io to login or create an account if you don’t already have one, and you should be brought the following page. Select Mesh, and you’ll be asked to setup a gateway first. Any of the boards from Particle Mesh […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC