Khadas Captain / Edge SBC Review – Part 2: Ubuntu 18.04

Khadas Edge Ubuntu 18.04

I received Khadas Edge Developer Package with Khadas Edge RK3399 module, Khadas Captain carrier board, and several accessories a few weeks ago, and after checking the hardware in the first part of the review, I’ve now taken the time to review software support, specially Ubuntu 18.04 on the board. Khadas Edge / Captain Firmware There are currently four main choices of firmware for Khadas Edge / Khadas Captain: Ubuntu 18.04 OS with LXDE desktop environment @ https://dl.khadas.com/Firmware/Edge/Ubuntu/ Android ROM @ https://dl.khadas.com/Firmware/Edge/Android/ with Android Nougat being a proper release, Android Oreo (available now) a temporary version that will not be supported, and Android P that will be released and supported by Rockchip later on in 2019 Armbian RK3399 for Khadas Edge looks to be work-in-progress right now LibreELEC for playing videos on the platform I decided to focus on Ubuntu 18.04 for this review, and Karl who has his own sample […]

$6 C-SKY Linux Board Reviewed, Benchmarked

C-SKY Board

The price of single board computers and development boards has really gone down in recent years, and it’s easy to find a low cost Arm based board for most project. But C-SKY Linux development board is quite different since it’s based on the little known C-SKY architecture, and the price in China ($6) is really competitive for a media capable board. If you live outside of China, the board is now sold for about $18 including shipping, and MickMake decided to buy one to have a closer look and review the board. As we covered during the announced the board is powered by NationalChip GX66058 C-SKY 32-bit processor clocked at up to 574 MHz and integrating  64MB DDR2 on-chip. Getting the board on-hand allowed Mick to get more details about the other chips included in the board namely: STMicro STM32F103 to handle all the JTAG control through a micro USB […]

ATOMIC Pi Intel Atom x5 Board Goes for $34 and Up (Crowdfunding)

Following Raspberry Pi form factor, AAEON Up Board powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor launched in 2015 for 89 Euros and up via a crowdfunding campaign. Since then, the company switched to Atom x5-Z8350, and now offers for the board for $99 US and up, with for example the 2GB RAM / 16GB flash version going for $109 excluding taxes and shipping. I’m mentioning this board, as there’s now a crowdfunding campaign for a larger board with similar specifications (x5-Z8350, 2GB RAM, 16GB flash) called ATOMIC Pi, and being offered for just $34 plus shipping by “Team IoT”. This looks too good to be true, but that’s intriguing so let’s have  closer look. ATOMIC Pi specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad core processor @ up to 1.92GHz with Intel HD graphics System Memory – 2GB DDR3L-1600 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, slot for SD expansion up to 256GB […]

Bluespec Flute is a 5-Stage Open Source RISC-V Processor

Bluespec Flute

Bluespec is a US company that provides RISC-V processors and development tools that “speed integration, debugging and verification of embedded systems”. Their first RISC-V release was the Piccolo 3-stage in-order processor targeting low end embedded systems and IoT applications. The company has now announced Bluespec Flute a 5-stage in-order open source RISC-V processor with the release of a synthesizable Verilog for a bare metal RV32IMA core and a supervisor level RV64IMA core. Bluespec Flute key features: RV32IMU with ‘M’ extension (integer multiply/divide) RV64IMASU with ‘A’ extension (atomic memory ops) and ‘M’ extension (integer multiply/divide) AXI4-Lite interface 5-stage pipeline 100 MHz (Xilinx UltraScale) < 5000 LUTs (Xilinx UltraScale) 4KB Instruction & Data caches Hardware multiply-divide RISC-V Debug Module You’ll find the source code in BSV (Bluespec SystemVerilog) and instructions to get started in Github. Bluespec Flute core has been tested in Xilinx UltraScale/UltraScale+ boards so far. In the future, the company […]

Intrinsyc Qualcomm Flight Pro Development Kit Targets High-end Drones and Robotics

Qualcomm Flight Pro Development Kit

Intrinsyc is known for manufacturing and selling mobile  development platforms (MDP) & hardware development kits (HDK) for Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, but this time the company is taking pre-orders for a slightly different Qualcomm development platform: Qualcomm Flight Pro development kit / reference design that targets the development of high-end drones and robotics projects.   Qualcomm Flight Pro board specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (APQ8096) with quad core Kryo processor @ up to 2.15GHz, Adreno 530 GPU, and Hexagon 680 DSP System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage – 32GB UFS Flash storage, microSD card slot Wireless Connectivity – WiFi 5 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2.4/5.0 GHz 2×2 MU-MIMO + Bluetooth 4.2 via pre-certified QCA6174A module  + 2x Wi-Fi/BT antennas Location Technology Integrated GNSS solution based on WGR7640 (not recommended for flight applications) Support for U-blox MAX-M8Q-0-00 external GNSS module with high performance antenna and shielding Sensors – Dual IMU (2x Invensense MPU9250): […]

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 – […]

Amazon Echo Look Camera Goes for $50 with Intel Atom x5, RealSense Camera SR300

Echo Look

Amazon Echo Look is a smart camera with Alexa Assistant that was launched about 2 years ago for $200, and designed to help you decide if your outfit is a good match, beside taking photo and video selfies with voice commands. Sales may not have matched Amazon expectations (unsurprisingly), and the product is now offered for just $49.99. What may be interesting for CNX Software readers is that Echo Look appears to be a consumer version of AWS DeepLens deep learning video camera for developers ($249), plus some cost savings as well, so there may be some hacking potential here. A teardown video – embedded below – reveals some interesting specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad core Cherry Trail processor @ up to 1.44 GHz System Memory – 1 GB LPDDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, 16 Mbit SPI flash Camera – Intel RealSense SR300 depth sensing camera + […]

Purism Librem 5 Linux phone development kits are now shipping

Purism Librem5 development kit

Purism Librem 5 is a privacy-focused open source Linux smartphone powered by NXP i.MX 8M processor that was launched via a crowdfunding campaign in August 2017 that ends up being extremely popular with over 1.5 million dollars raised. At the time, the phone was scheduled to ship on January 2019, but a $299 development kit with board, display and accessories was slated to ship in June 2018. There have been some delays, but the good news is that Librem 5 development kits are now shipping so third party software development for the phone will now really get started. Librem 5 development kit preliminary specifications: System-on-Module – Emcraft SOM-IMX8M module with NXP i.MX 8M Quad core Cortex A53 processor, at least 2GB LPDDR4 RAM and 16GB eMMC flash (I could not find exact RAM and storage capacities for the module used in the board) Display – 5.7″ LCD touchscreen with a […]