open source News - Page 44 of 92 - CNX Software

May 17, 2019June 23, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Programmable-Air is an Arduino Nano Powered Pneumatics Kit (Crowdfunding)

Programmable-Air Arduino Nano Pneumatics Kit

Programmable-Air is a hardware toolkit that allows you to inflate and deflate objects. Powered by an Arduino Nano board, the kit comes with high pressure and vacuum pumps, valves, and a pressure sensor that enables users to experiement and learn about pneumatics and inflatables. Some of the potential applications include vacuum pick and place machines, soft robots able to walk, soft robotics hands, using a syringe as a linear actuator, inflatable bras, arts projects and more. Programmable-Air specifications: MCU Board – Arduino Nano board based on Microchip ATMega328P microcontroller Pneumatics – Full channel control, i.e. high pressure through atmospheric pressure to vacuum output in the same tube. Max pressure – 0.5 atmosphere (7.5 PSI / 50 kPa) Min Pressure – -0.5 atmosphere (-7.5 PSI / -50 kPa) Flow rate: 2 liters per minute per motor Expansion Grove I²C connector to easily add sensors (Not shown in prototype photo above) Expandable […]

May 13, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

e.Foundation to Sell Refurbished Phones Running Google-Free /e/ Android OS

Most Android phones come with Google services, which is both a boon and a curse, as those services are often convenient, but they come at the loss of your privacy. For example, most people get all upset and lost if a firmware image for an SBC is shipped without Google Play Store, but yet at the same time they worry about their privacy providing all their data to a single company like Google. There must be a better way, and that’s what the e.foundation is attempting with /e/ operating system based on Android, but without any of the Google Services, and targetting your typical end-users, as opposed to geek. /e/ operating system aims to provide privacy both inside the phone, and via cloud services unrelated to Google. It is a fork of LineageOS 14.1 itself a fork of AOSP, and replaces Google services and apps with programs such as MicroG […]

May 7, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 Gets a Linux Kernel, Faster File System, Docker Support

Microsoft first introduced Windows Subsystem for Linux in 2016 in order to let developers runs bash command from Ubuntu user space without having to install Ubuntu in a virtual machine or container. It relies on the Windows kernel with a library converting Linux system calls into ones compatible with Windows. Performance is great until you start to involve file systems calls, for example during code compilations, something that’s fairly common for developers… Microsoft has been working on solving this performance issue, and compatibility issues with software such as Docker, and is now close to releasing Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) featuring its own Linux 4.19 kernel instead of the Windows kernel plus a translation layer. WSL 2 uses virtualization technology to run its custom Linux kernel inside of a lightweight utility virtual machine (VM) which takes just 2 seconds to boot. That also means there will be separate […]

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Toradex Torizon Industrial Linux Distribution Targets Windows Developers

When we interviewed Toradex right before Embedded World 2019, they told us they would focus on their new software offering called Torizon, an easy-to-use industrial Linux Platform, especially targeting customers are coming from the Windows / WinCE environment or who have only experience with application development and are not embedded Linux specialists. The company has now officially launched Torizon, and provided more details about their industrial open source software solution especially optimized for their NXP i.MX modules. Torizon specifically relies on foundries.io Linux microPlatform which provides full system with a recent stable kernel, a minimal base system built with OpenEmbedded/Yocto, and a runtime to deploy applications and services in Docker containers. The microPlatform is part of TorizonCore (light blue section above) that also includes an OTA client (Aktualizr). TorizonCore is free open-source software, and serves as the base to run software containers. To get started, Torizon provides a Debian container […]

May 2, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

This Open Source Hardware Smartwatch Project is Fully Documented

While there are plenty of smartwatches available, they may not perfectly match your requirements and needs. But did you wake up one day and just decided to build your own? Probably not. But Samson March had his own plans, and as a professional electrical engineer and product designer, he decided to start a smartwatch project during his spare time. What makes it really interesting is that he provided a long list of photos and short videos explaining in details the process, and open-sourced all materials from hardware design files, to firmware source code, and 3D print files for the body and charging dock! The OSHW watch does not have a name (yet) and features the following hardware: Wireless MCU – Dialog Semiconductor DA14683 Arm Cortex-M0 microcontroller up to 96 MHz 128KB RAM, 128KB ROM, 64KB OTP, and with Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity Storage – 128 Mbit SPI flash Display – 1.3″ […]

May 2, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Semtech Releases Open Source Software for LoRa Gateways & Devices

Semtech has released open source software for LoRa-based gateways including LoRa Basic Station packet forwarder for Linux-based gateways, LoRa Basic MAC implementation of the LoRa Alliance’s LoRaWAN specification, and LoRa Basic loader bootloader capable of handling firmware updates. All three components are available for free under a revised 3-Clause BSD license. LoRa Basic Station supports LoRaWAN Classes A, B, and C, presents a unified radio abstraction layer supporting Concentrator Reference Designs v1.5 and v2, and implements various backend protocols. Apart from mbedTLS and libloragw/-v2, it does not rely on external dependencies, the code is written in C language only, and easily portable to Linux gateways and embedded systems. LoRa Basic MAC is a fork of IBM’s LMiC library, also implemented in C language, supports multiple regions selectable at compile and/or run time, and can handle Class A, Class B, and Class C devices. Basic MAC uses LoRa Basic loader to […]

April 22, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server Launched with Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 Board

Olimex works on open source hardware boards, while the FreedomBox Foundation has been developing FreedomBox, a free and open source private server system, since 2010 with the goal of empowering regular people to host their own internet services, like a VPN, a personal website, file sharing, encrypted messengers, a VoIP server, a metasearch engine, and more. When you mix open source hardware, open source software, and a bit of Internet freedom it gives birth to a product called “Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server” based on Olimex A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 board and running FreedomBox software. Pioneer Edition FreedomBox Home Server specifications: SoC – Allwinner A20 dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU @ 1.0 GHz with dual-core Mali 400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – microSD slot fitted with 32GB class 10 card loaded with FreedomBox, SATA data and power connectors, 2KB EEPROM for MAC address and custom data Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet Video […]

April 8, 2019April 9, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Panfrost is an Open Source Driver for Arm Mali Midgard GPUs

Getting GPU drivers to work on Linux with Arm SoCs was really a struggle a few years ago due to close-sources binary blobs that required all bugs to be fixed by a single team. But in recent years we’ve seen good progress with open source mobile GPU drivers including Freedreno for Adreno GPUs, and Etnaviv for Vivante GPUs. Arm Mali also got its own open source Lima driver worked on for many years but only for older Utgard GPUs (Mali 400, Mali 450). However, during the Opensource GPU Drivers BoF at Linaro Connect Bangkok 2019, Rob Herring, Technical Architect at Linaro and Tomeu Vizoso, Principal Software Engineer at Collabora, discuss the status of drivers, and I learned about an open source driver for Mali Midgard (Mali-T6xx, Mali-T7xx) GPU called Panfrost. As we’ll see below, the driver is already capable of running basic demos, has been upstreamed to Mesa, and tested […]