Your VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

Repair VGA monitor LG Flatron W1934S

When a VGA monitor does not start at all, a common reason is that one or two capacitors are damaged. All you need to do to repair it is to replace them, and you’re good to go. It’s quite easier than you think, and I’ll show you how. I was tasked with repairing a VGA monitor, namely an LG Flatron W1934S, that would not turn on anymore. All I could see what the blue power LED blinking regularly, about every two seconds. Since so far, I had a 100% success rate in failing to repair TVs, I was not confident, and I thought maybe the monitor is some special state making it not turn on, as it happened to me with another monitor a few years ago. But a web search revealed the problem was probably a power supply board issue with one of the capacitors damaged and, in theory, […]

LG launches LG8111 AI SoC and development board for Edge AI processing

LG8111 AI Soc Development Board Eris

LG Electronics has designed LG8111 AI SoC for on-device AI inference and introduced the Eris Reference Board based on the processor. The chip supports hardware processing in artificial intelligence functions such as video, voice, and control intelligence. LG8111 AI development board is capable of implementing neural networks for deep learning specific algorithms due to its integrated “LG-Specific AI Processor.” Also, the low power and the low latency feature of the chip enhances its self-learning capacity. This enables the products with LG8111 AI chip to implement “On-Device AI.” Components and Features of the LG8111 AI SoC LG Neural engine, the AI accelerator has an extensive architecture for “On-Device” Inference/Leaning with its support on TensorFlow, TensorFlow Lite, and Caffe.  The CPU of the board comes with four Arm Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.0 GHz, with an L1 cache size of 32KB and an L2 cache size of 1MB. The CPU also […]

Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 5G Processor Brings 5G, Cortex-A77 to Mid-Range Smartphones

Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 5G Processor

Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 855, the company’s first 5G mobile processor, in December 2018, before following up the next year with Snapdragon 865, 765, and 765G 5G mobile platforms still targetted to higher-end and premium smartphones. Qualcomm has now introduced its first 5G mobile SoC part of the mid-range Snapdragon 600-series with Snapdragon 690 5G octa-core processor featuring Cortex-A77 and Cortex-A53 cores, and a Snapdragon X51 5G modem delivering up to 2.5 Gbps download speed. Qualcomm Snapdragon 690 5G (SM6350) specifications: CPU – Octa-core Qualcomm Kryo 560 CPU @ up to 2.0 GHz, specifically 2x Cortex 77 cores @ 2.0 GHz and 6x Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.7 GHz GPU – Qualcomm Adreno 619L GPU with support for OpenCL 2.0 FP, OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1, and DX12 APIs DSP – 2x Qualcomm Hexagon 692 with Qualcomm Hexagon Vector eXtensions (HVX), Hexagon Tensor Accelerator, Qualcomm Hexagon Scalar Accelerator Qualcomm Sensing Hub – Ultra-low-power […]

webOS OSE 2.0 Adds Support for Rapsberry Pi 4, Dual Displays, FOTA and More

webOS OSE 2.0 for Raspberry Pi 4

Back in March 2018, LG unveiled webOS Open Source Edition optimized for Raspberry Pi 3 board. Last month, the company released a major version with webOS OSE 2.0 adding support for Raspberry Pi 4, dual displays, FOTA support and more. We missed the release at the time but caught up as LG just released a minor update with webOS OSE 2.1 a few days ago that adds a Japanese keyboard, uses journald, and provides various fixes and improvements. Some of the new features of webOS OSE 2.x include: Dual-display support which will eventually enable multi-display support for rear-seat entertainment (RSE) systems Firmware-Over-the Air (FOTA) Smack integration for enhanced security New passenger-friendly and touch input optimized Home Launcher as shown above WiFi tethering support via SoftAP Added support Raspberry Pi 4 (new reference hardware) Upgrade to Qt 5.12 and Chromium 72 webOS is generally known as an operating system for televisions, […]

LG 24UD58-B 24″ 4K UHD IPS Monitor Sells for $219

LG 24UD58-B

When I bought my first 4K UHD TV in January 2015, I had to pay around $600 for LG 42UB820T 42″ model. It was good for about a year, after which it started to fail, and was somewhat outdated due to the lack of HDR support. Over four years later, prices for 4K hardware as dropped significantly, as as pointed out by Michael Larabel of Phoronix, it’s now possible to buy a 24″ 4K UHD display for just $219. LG 24UD58-B 24″ 4K UHD IPS monitor also have the advantage of supporting FreeSync helping avoid stuttering and tearing in games. LG 24UD58-B specifications: Screen Size – 23.8″ up to 3840×2160 resolution (16:9 aspect radio) Panel Type – IPS Color Gamut (CIE 1931) – NTSC 72% Color Depth (Number of Colors) – 10bit(8bit + A-FRC) Response Time – 5ms GTG Refresh Rate – 60Hz Brightness – 250 cd/m2 Contrast Ratio – […]

LG Unveils 8K, HDMI 2.1 Capable TVs Powered by Alpha 9 Gen 2 Processor

LG 8K TV HDMI 2.1

Last year Samsung unveiled their first 8K TV right before CES 2018 with a 85″ QLED model that can now be yours for a cool $15,000, and capable of upscaling SD / HD content to 8K using artificial intelligence since 8K content was not – and still is not – broadly available. One year has passed, and now LG has announced two new 8K TVs with HDMI 2.1 inputs just before CES 2019. Both 88″ Z9 OLED TV and 75″ SM99 8K LCD TV are powered by the company’s α9 (Alpha 9) Gen 2 processor running  deep learning algorithms to deliver enhanced picture and sound. The press release gives an overview of how AI works on both video and audio as follows: In addition to content source detection, the new processor finely adjusts the tone mapping curve in accordance with ambient conditions to offer optimized screen brightness, leveraging its ability […]

AsteroidOS 1.0 Released – An Open Source Linux OS for Wear OS Smartwatches

We first discovered AsteroidOS, a Linux based open source operating system working on some Android Wear (now Wear OS by Google) smartwatches, in early 2016 while looking at FOSDEM 2016 schedule. The project and community have since grown to support more watches,  and a company even tried to launch an AsteroidOS smartwatch (sadly unsuccessfully), but development kept going, and now the very first stable release is out with AsteroidOS 1.0. Some of the highlights of the release: AsteroidOS 1.0 features and apps: phone notifications, an agenda, an alarm clock, a calculator, a music remote control, settings customizations, a stopwatch, a timer, and a weather forecast app. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) sync with Android phones using AsteroidOSSync app. Supported hardware LG G Watch, LG G Watch Urbane, LG G Watch R Asus Zenwatch 1, Asus Zenwatch 2, Asus Zenwatch 3 Sony Smartwatch 3 Software emulator for testing and development. Community supported […]

LG Releases webOS Open Source Edition Optimized for Raspberry Pi 3

webOS-Open-Source-Edition

webOS, originally developed by Palm, is a Linux based multitasking operating systems with support for HTML5 and CSS3. It is now found in most (all?) new LG smart TVs, and the TV manufacturer has decided to expand the adoption of webOS by collaborating with the South Korean government and local startups,  and released an open source version , webOS Open Source Edition, available publicly at http://webosose.org. webOS Open Source Edition 1.0 is said to be optimized for the Raspberry Pi 3, and the company provides build instructions on the “setting up” page of the website to build the firmware image, which you can then flash to a micro SD card. The idea is to for a community around the open source version webOS, and let different categories of developers or users contribute to the project: System UI Developers – The System UI is based on Blink and Qt, and developers […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC