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July 19, 2013July 19, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

A Preliminary XBMC Image is now Available for Wandboard, GK802

Yesterday, Stephan Rafin left a message on Wandboard mailing list saying he had released a preliminary (Linux) XBMC image that can run on Wandboard Quad development board. GPU and VPU acceleration work, but this is still work in progress, so if you want something that just works, this is not for you. But if you just want to give it a try, it should work on any hardware based on Freescale i.MX6, such as Wandboard Dual or GK802 mini PC, with some minor modifications. If you’ve got a Wandboard Quad board, the installation is straightforward from a Linux machine: Download the SD card image Decompress it with xz or 7x:

 7z x wand.bin.xz

1	7z x wand.bin.xz

Dump the resulting to a 2GB or greater microSD card:

dd if=wand.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=4M

1	dd if=wand.bin of=/dev/sdx bs=4M

Where /dev/sdx is the sdcard device (e.g. /dev/sdc). You can check with lsblk command. If you’ve got a machine running Windows only, you can use Win32DiskImager for step […]

July 18, 2013July 18, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

$10 Rockchip RK2928 Miracast/DLNA Adapter Video Demo

Rockchip showcased an ultra low cost Linux-based Miracast adapter at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair in April, and we learned the device was powered by Rockchip RK2928 with just 16 MB RAM, a small NOR flash, and would just cost around $10. Rockchip demonstrated the device to Charbax at Computex 2013 in early June, and he uploaded the video yesterday. The demo includes showing off Miracast and DLNA support, with the device connected to an HDTV @ 720p. The adapter as a latency as low as 80ms. Rockchip representative explains that as long as it’s below 100ms it’s not noticeable for typical use (but it might be different for games). They used AMOI N828 smartphone for the demo, but Miracast is supposed to work with any Android 4.2 devices supporting Wi-Fi direct, although I’ve read several users’ reports indicating that may not be the case in practice. The price is […]

July 17, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Waxberry Pi2 Development Board Based on Rockchip RK3066

The other days I announced CubieTech and Olimex were working on low cost Rockchip development boards, but it turns out there’s already one on the market called Waxberrry Pi2, or WB-RK3066, made by Waxberry, a Chinese company. Here are the specifications of this development board: SoC – Rockchip RK3066 dual core Cortex-A9 processor @ 1.6GHz with Mali-400 MP4 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 8GB NAND Flash + micro SD card slot USB – Standard USB OTG + Micro USB OTG; Connectivity: 10/100M Ethernet; WIFI 802.11b/g/n (MediaTek MT5931) Bluetoothv2.1+EDR (MediaTek MT6622) Video Output – HDMI + AV Debugging – Serial port Misc – IR Sensor Dimensions – 72mm x72mm The board comes with a Mini HDMI cable, a 5V/2A power supply, a USB Data cable, and a USB-serial board for debug. There’s also a CD with the board schematics, Android 4.1.1 SDK and Linux Kernel 3.x source […]

July 15, 2013July 16, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Freescale SABRE Lite i.MX6 Development Board Unboxing, Wandboard Quad Comparison, and Quick Start Guide

Freescale SABRE Lite is a development board powered by i.MX6 Quad processor with 1GB RAM, SATA, GbE Ethernet, and more. You can get SABRE Lite specifications in my first post about the board. I recently participated in Element14’s “brainteaser” competition for the 4th birthday of their community, where the company offered 9 SABRE Lite development kit to randomly selected participants, and I got lucky. The board can be purchased for $179 from Element14 (MCIMX6Q-SL). I’ll start by showing what in the package, followed by a side-by-side comparison with Wandboard Quad, and show how to getting started by following the Quick Start Guide provided with the board. SABRE Lite i.MX6 Development Kit Unboxing I received the board about 5 days after I provided my address in a large staple carton box with a few goodies. Beside SABRE Lite devkit, the package comes with Element14’s T-Shirt (not my size), double walled tumbler, […]

July 15, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

$99 (and up) Compulab Utilite ARM based Computer Runs Ubuntu or Android

If you’re ready to tinker it’s possible to run Linux in one of the low cost ARM based set-top boxes or mini PCs currently available, although if you need Linux with 3D acceleration and video playback, your only realistic option is to go with solutions based on Freescale i.MX6. Compulab has been developing a mini desktop computer based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo, Dual or Quad that will run either Ubuntu or Android, so you don’t need to mess around to run Ubuntu on cheap ARM hardware. The device is expected to sell for $99 and up starting in August according to Fanlesstech. Compulab Utilite will have the following specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX6 single / dual / quad core Cortex-A9 up to 1.2GHz, with Vivante GPU, and Video Processing Unit supporting multi-stream 1080p H.264, VC1, RV10, DivX HW decoding System Memory – Up to 4GB DDR3-1066 Storage – 1MB SPI […]

July 13, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Juice Extreme 2 Android TV Home Gateway Features 4 DVB Tuners for Multiscreen Support

Antik Technology, a Slovakia based company, has developed a Android set-top-box powered by STMicro StiH416 SoC. I wrote about the StiH416 development platform previously, and although it’s just a dual core Cortex A9 SoC, its video capabilities are impressive as it supports multiple simultaneous video decoding streams. The set-top box called Juice Extreme 2 leverages those capabilities with 4 DVB tuners (DVB-T or DVB-S2) that provide four different streams, and transcode them, to all video playback devices around your home such as TV, PC, tablet and smartphones, or record them to an internal SATA drive. JUICE EXTREME 2 key features: SoC – STMicro STiH416 (Orly) dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.2 GHz + ARM Mali 400MP4 GPU System Memory – 2 GB DDR3 Storage – 1 GB Flash + internal SATA connector + SD card slot Video: Quadruple DVB Tunner CVBS/Y Pb Pr (3.5mm jack) Tuner board connector RF IN/OUT […]

July 12, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 32 Comments

Linux-Rockchip Developers Community Up, Rockchip Development Boards Coming Soon?

Companies like Freescale and Texas Instruments provide good software support, and documentation, which is why they can be found in many embedded devices, because without documentation or source code low-level customization is nearly impossible or extremely time consuming. They also usually open most of the documentation and code, because they understand this can foster the use of their chips. On the other hand, Chinese-based SoC manufacturers focus on high-volume platforms such as tablets and smartphones, and usually management don’t understand the advantage to make documentation and GPL source code available, or even may consider it bad for business. Some individuals and small companies do not see it that way however, and they either want to access to the source code to improve existing mobiles devices, or use low cost Chinese SoCs to provide highly customizable hardware and software solutions. So source code and documentation have started to leak, and tools […]