kickstarter News - Page 39 of 45 - CNX Software

August 11, 2014October 20, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Vigekwear is a Modularized, Open source, Wearable BLE Development Kit (Crowdfunding)

[Update: Atomwear has been renamed to Vigekwear due to (Intel’s) copyrights infringement]. Giayee is a company mainly manufacturing Android tablets, thin clients, and mini PCs, but their latest product, called Atomwear, is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) development kit based on Nordic nRF51822 chipset that comes with various modules such as battery charger, accelerometer, gyroscope, OLED display, heart rate monitor, etc… which connect together via 24-pin connector on a standard rigid baseboard or a flexible printed circuit (FPC). All modules are connected via the same 24-pin connector with power, I2C, SPI, UART, ADC, and GPIOs signals. The baseboard and FPC both contain 6 such connectors connected in parallel for up to 6 modules, and two baseboard can be connected together via a bridge circuit to accept more modules. The minimum configuration is with a BLE MCU module, and a power module. The different boards and modules are listed as follows: […]

July 24, 2014February 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Immedia Blink Battery Powered HD Security Camera Lasts Over One Year on Batteries (Crowdfunding)

There are plenty of security systems with IP cameras selling on the market, but they can be a pain to install because you need to use long power cables or use power extensions. There are battery-free such as NETGEAR VueZone Home Video Monitoring System that cost $259 with 6-month battery life for normal usage, and $50 yearly subscription fee. Immedia Semi is providing an alternative with Blink, a wire-free (wireless + battery) HD Home Monitoring & Alert System that starts at $69 with one camera, and is said to last over one year powered by two CR123 batteries, without monthly fees, and can stream live views and video recordings to your Android or iOS smartphone or tablet, or any web browser. The one-year battery claim seems preposterous. How is that possible? The first reason it’s possible is because of the way typical usage is defined for home security cameras. They […]

July 11, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$70 MicroNFCBoard Brings NFC Connectivity to Any Board or Device (Crowdfunding)

AppNearMe MicroNFCBoard is a development platform for Near Field Communication (NFC) comprised of an NFC transceiver, an NXP MCU, and all software stack and tools you need for development. This board also exposes various I/Os that allows you to connect to external hardware or devices, and it can be used with an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, mbed or PC/Mac. Let’s go through the board specifications first: MCU – NXP LPC11U34FHN33/421 Cortex M0 MCU @ 48MHz, with 10KB RAM, 48KB FLASH, 4KB EEPROM NFC Transceiver – NXP PN512. Reader/Writer and card operation modes supporting ISO14443A/Mifare and FeliCa schemes. NFCIP-1 mode Splittable antenna USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming I/O – 20x through holes with access to serial (UART), I2C, SPI, 4x ADC inputs, IRQ, Boot and Reset, and power pins. (2x pin header that you can solder are provided) Misc – Reset and bootloader enable push-buttons, 2x LEDs. […]

June 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Amptek iCon is an ARM Cortex M3 Board for IoT Running uCLinux (Crowdfunding)

Up until now, the only company I ever heard running Linux on ARM Cortex M3/M4 was EmCraft Systems with their system-on-modules and development kits based on Freescale Kinetis, STMicro STM32 and Actel Smartfusion micro-controllers. But there’s now another option thanks to Ampek Technologies, a Canadian based company funded in 2002, and their iCon (Internet Connectivity) board featuring NXP LPC1788 Cortex M3 connected to 64MB RAM which is plenty enough to run uCLinux. The board can be used for applications such as industrial control systems, wireless sensors, or smart home appliances. The iCon board specifications are as follows: MCU – NXP LPC1788 ARM Cortex-M3 MCU @ 120MHz with 512 KB flash memory, and 96 KB SRAM System Memory – 64MB SDRAM (external chip) Storage – 32MB flash for firmware Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0. Ethernet is supported via an add-on module USB – USB 2.0 host port, mini-USB debug port […]

June 14, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$88 Papilio DUO Arduino Compatible Board with a Xilinx FPGA Let You to Draw your Own Circuits

In a concept similar to Arduissimo, Papilio DUO is an Arduino compatible board with a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, but it adds a real Atmel AVR MCU, and instead of going the Indiegogo route, the project has launched on Kickstarter, and already reached its $30,000 funding target with 13 days to go. Instead of writing VHDL code, a drag and drop graphical tool called DesignLab will help you build your own circuits more easily. Let’s go through the hardware specifications first: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan 6 LX9 FPGA System Memory – 512KB or 2MB ISSI IS61WV5128 SRAM Storage – 64Mbit Macronix MX25L6445 SPI Flash MCU – Atmel AVR ATmega32U4 (Same as Arduino Leonardo) USB – 1x micro USB port connected to the Atmel MCU, 1x mini USB port connect to the FPGA I/Os 54 I/O pins available via Arduino Mega headers 0-16 Digital Pins connected to FPGA and ATmega32U4 JTAG Power – High […]

June 13, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Console OS Aims to Run Android Alongside Windows on Intel based PCs, Laptops and Tablets (Crowdfunding)

There are already various solutions to run Android on Windows PC powered by Intel processors either going the emulator route, for example with BlueStacks or AndroVM (now Genimotion), or the native route with solutions such as Android-x86. So when I read Console OS, a port of Android capable of running along side of Windows, was looking for funds on Kickstarter to complete the project, I was perplex. But looking into details, it seems Console OS may indeed bring improvements to existing solutions, and Mobile Media Ventures, the company behind the project, released the following table comparing Console OS to other Android ports. If like me you had never heard of Andy Android, here’s the link to the project. Android IA is Intel ports of Android, which currently targets developers. So according to the developers, Console OS makes installing and dual-booting Android on a Windows PC easy, brings full Android Kitkat […]

June 2, 2014April 3, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

$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, […]

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

ANTVR is a Full HD Virtual Reality Kit that Connects to Your PC or Game Console via HDMI or WHDI (Crowdfunding)

I must have heard about virtual reality for many years, even since I was a kid. But during that time, progress was slow, but it seems the time is ripe for virtual reality kits targeting consumers. The cheapest way to get started is with a smartphone adapter such as vrAse or Opendive, but if you want a possibly better experience using the power of your PC or game console you’ll want a more expensive kit such as Oculus Rift, or for developers, Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 that sells for $350. One possible downside of such kit is that it requires USB, HDMI and power cables, so it limits your mobility. ANTVR, a Beijing startup, will soon launch a virtual reality kit of the same name that will be available either with an HDMI cable, either without cable using WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface) with less than 1ms lag. The […]