Review & Quick Start Guide for Khadas Vim Pro Development Board with Ubuntu 16.04

Khadas Vim is the only Amlogic S905X development board I’m aware of. There are 4 or 5 versions of the board, but currently only two models are sold: Khadas Vim with 8GB flash and single band WiFi + BLE 4.0, and Khadas VIM Pro with 16GB flash, and dual band WiFi + BLE 4.2. SZWesion, the company behind the board, has sent Khadas Vim Pro for evaluation. Today, I’ll take a few pictures of the board and its accessories, and report my experience playing with Ubuntu 16.04.2 on the board. They’ve also released Android, LibreELEC, and dual boot Android/Ubuntu (for Vim Pro only) images, which you can find in the firmware resources page. Khadas Vim Pro Unboxing and Photos My parcel included Khadas package that looks like a book, an HDMI cable, and the same IR remote control sent with GeekBox, the first board made by the company, and powered […]

Baikal T1 BFK 1.6 MIPS Development Board Tested with OpenWrt

Baikal Electronics is a Russian fabless semiconductor company specializing in ARM and MIPS-based SoC, and we’ve already covered their Baikal T1 MIPS SoC announcement, as well as Tavolga Terminal TP-T22BT Debian 8 All-in-One Computer based on the processor. The company also have Baikal T1 BFK 1.6 development board, which does not appear to be publicly available yet, but one member of Habrahabr.ru forums got hold of one sample, and tested the OpenWrt SDK in Debian 8 host computer. First, we’ll have a look at the hardware they received. I don’t have the full specs of the board, but we’ll learn a little more below, in the meantime we can see two USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet ports, a 10GbE SFP cage, an mPCIe slot (I think), and two DB9 connector, as well as a bunch of other headers and connectors with SATA, GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI… I’ve then downloaded Baikal T1 BSP […]

Dride is a Voice Controlled Dashcam Driving Assistant Powered by a Raspberry Pi Board (Crowdfunding)

Next Thing introduced Dashbot Car Dashboard Assistant based on CHIP Pro module late last year, and it will get some competition with Dride, a driving assistant powered by Raspberry Pi, that can also be voice controlled like Dashbot, but includes a Pi camera to record videos, and alert the users of dangers using computer vision, for example when they drive too close to the car in front. The system leverages Raspberry Pi board and Pi Camera, and adds an outer shell, Dride’s Raspberry Pi HAT, and a car charger & cable. Some of the key features listed for the Dride include: Cloud support – Upload and store driving videos to your Dride profile ADAS – Safety alerts in case of lane deviation or frontal collision Voice – Voice commands for navigation & messaging Connectivity – Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS The developers also provide “Dride – Passenger Seat Driver” app for […]

How to Assign Brightness Keys in Ubuntu 16.04 and Greater

Yesterday, I installed Ubuntu 17.04 in CHUWI LapBook 14.1, and was surprised everything appeared to work properly. However, the laptop does not come with brightness up and down keys. So I looked for ways to assign other keys to adjust brightness on the laptop, and eventually found a solution on AskUbuntu, and tried the options for Ubuntu 16.04. First we need to install xdotool, a utility that simulate keyboard input and mouse activity:

Once it’s done, go to the Dash, start Keyboard settings app, select Shortcuts tab, and click on the + icon on the bottom of the window to bring up the “Custom Shortcut” window. Now fill the Name field with “Brightness Up”, and the Command field with:

Repeat the procedure with for the down key filling the Name field with “Brightness Down”, and the Command:

Now we should have our two brightness keys, and we […]

Installing Ubuntu 17.04 on CHUWI LapBook 14.1 Apollo Lake Laptop

[Update: The instructions below do not work with the newly manufactured models because CHUWI completely changed the hardware The company also disabled the Linux option in the BIOS (See comments in this post) So you may need to use rEFInd boot manager or isorepin.sh script to install Linux (and some drivers may still not work out of the box) ] Since I’ve completed the review of CHUWI LapBook 14.1 with Windows 10 last week-end, I’ve decided to give it a try with a Linux distribution, and I chose to go with a daily build of Ubuntu 17.04 since we’ve seen Apollo Lake platforms need a recent Linux kernel. While Ubuntu 17.04 will be officially release in April 2017, likely with Linux 4.10, the current (alpha) build comes with Linux 4.9. I had already quickly booted Ubuntu 17.04 on the Laptop from a USB drive flashed using Rufus right after the […]

Supermicro A2SAV mini-ITX Board Powered by Intel Atom E3940 SoC Features 6 SATA Ports, Dual GbE, and Up to 9 USB Interfaces

Intel introduced three Atom E3900 series Apollo Lake processors last fall that target IoT, industrial and automotive applications, and Supermicro has designed A2SAV mini-ITX board powered by Atom x5-E3940 SoC that comes with lots of interfaces include 6 SATA ports, two Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports, and up to 9 USB interfaces accessible from connectors or headers. Supermicro A2SAV motherboard specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-E3940 quad core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.6 / 1.8 GHz with 2MB L2 cache, 12 EU Intel HD graphics (6.5W TDP) System Memory – 1x 204-pin DDR3 SO-DIMM socket for 2, 4, or 8GB 1866/1600/1333MHz Unbuffered non-ECC 204-pin SO-DIMM DDR3 Storage 6x SATA3 ports include 2x from SoC, and 4x via Marvel 88SE9230 controller 1x SATA DOM (Disk on Module) power connector 64Mb SPI Flash EEPROM with AMI UEFI BIOS supporting Plug and Play (PnP), DMI 2.3, ACPI 5.0, USB Keyboard, SMBIOS 2.7.1, and UEFI mSATA […]

Embedded Linux Conference & OpenIoT Summit 2017 Schedule

The Embedded Linux Conference 2017 and the OpenIoT Summit 2017 will take place earlier than last year, on February  20 – 23, 2017 in Portland, Oregon, USA. This will be the 12th year for ELC, where kernel & system developers, userspace developers, and product vendors meet and collaborate. The schedule has been posted on the Linux Foundation website, and whether you’re going to attend or not, it’s always informative to check out the topics. So as usual, I’ll make a virtual schedule for all 5 days. Monday, February 20 For the first day, the selection is easy, as choices are limited, and the official first day it actually on Tuesday. You can either attend a full-day paid training sessions entitled “Building A Low Powered Smart Appliance Workshop“, and the only session that day: 14:30 – 15:20 – Over-the-air (OTA) Software Updates without Downtime or Service Disruption, by Alfred Bratterud, IncludeOS […]

Kodi 17 “Krypton” Released, Kodi 18 “Leia” Development Started

Although not officially announced yet, Kodi developers have finally released Kodi 17 “Krypton” which you can download for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, and iOS, as well as Raspberry Pi and some other development boards, and several Linux versions specific to TV box such as Nvidia Shield Android TV, Amazon Fire, or WeTek Hub. The most visible changes of the update are the new Estuary and Estouchy default skins, and people who have bought recent Amlogic based Android TV boxes may have already experienced them as several TV boxes shipped with Kodi 17 Beta versions. There’s a long list of changes, but some noticeable ones include: Lots of changes and updated to the Live TV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder) include PVR backend clients addons New Settings user interface Media library improvements with multiple sources support, more filtering & rating options, and better scanning & database performance Audio Engine […]

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