open source News - Page 73 of 108 - CNX Software

August 22, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Android 8.0 Oreo Launched, OS Images, and AOSP Source Code Released

Google has now formally announced Android O version and name: Android 8.0 Oreo. We already had seen the new Features in Android O-reo during the first preview release with picture-in-picture support, autofill APIs, adaptive icons and so on. There’s also a new Android Oreo character… If you want to run the latest Android 8.0 on your device, you can do so on Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel C, Pixel, and Pixel XL by getting the firmware in the download page, unless you are enrolled in Android Beta Program in which case you should receive it automatically. What I did not see (yet) is a joint announcement for a new Android 8.0 phone like last year LG V20 smartphone with Android 7.0, and Google simply said that “by the end of this year, hardware makers including Essential, General Mobile, HMD Global Home of Nokia Phones, Huawei, HTC, Kyocera, LG, […]

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

CrazyPi Board Runs Ubuntu and ROS on Rockchip RK3128 SoC for Robotics & IoT Projects (Crowdfunding)

CrazyPi is a maker board powered by Rockchip RK3128 quad core Cortex A7 processor that can take various magnetically connected modules such as LIDAR, gimbal, 4G LTE, etc.., and runs both Ubuntu and ROS (Robot Operating System) for DIY robotics & IoT projects. CrazyPi main board specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3128 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with ARM Mali GPU MCU – ARM Cortex-M3 @ 72 MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3L @ 1066 MHz Storage – 16GB eMMC flash pre-loaded with Ubuntu and ROS Connectivity – 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi @ 150 Mbps, Bluetooth 4.0 USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port Expansion Headers – Two headers with a total of 36-pin exposing 1x HDMI, 1x speaker, 1x microphone, 3x PWM, 1x I2C, 1x UART, 1x SPDIF, 1x SPI, 1x USB Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port ? Dimensions – Smaller than credit card The […]

August 10, 2017August 10, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

VoltaStream ZERO NXP i.MX6ULL Linux Audio Board Follows Raspberry Pi Zero Form Factor

Back in 2013. Philip came with the idea of designing a development board for audio application, and after various experiments with off-the shelf Raspberry Pi boards and audio DACs, he founded PolyVection company, and started designing the board. Forwarding to today, he has completed his work and introduced VoltaStream ZERO to the world, a board based on NXP i.MX6ULL processor with 512MB or 1GB RAM, and a choice of Texas Instruments DAC. It also follows Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, like the upcoming Banana Pi BPI-M2 Zero board. VoltaStream ZERO specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX6ULL ARM Cortex-A7 processor @ 996 MHz System Memory – 512 MB or 1 GB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Audio 1x I2S for integrated DAC, 1x I2S for GPIO access, 1x S/PDIF header / TOSLINK jack Analog DAC – Texas Instruments PCM5121 (106 dB) or PCM5142 (112 dB) USB – 1x micro USB […]

August 3, 2017August 3, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

Rockchip Has Setup an Official Open Source Website with Software & Hardware Documentation, Source Code

As a young engineer, I first understood the importance of good documentation thanks to an incomplete Holtek MCU datasheet that made us waste weeks of development, and the value open source software thanks to Sigma Designs’ SDK that was full of binary blobs with our applications often crashing inside those, leading to software development delays, especially since we had access to limited support. More recently, if you ever worked with the most popular Chinese processors found in ARM Linux development board, usually made by Allwinner, Amlogic, or Rockchip, you must have gone through roadblocks due to a lack of documentation and software support. So far, Allwinner is purely relying on linux-sunxi community and “leaks” of their documentation and SDKs, while Amlogic has had their “open linux” microsite for several years, but you won’t find complete documentation like technical reference manual, schematics, and part of the source code requires you to […]

July 14, 2017July 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

EduMIP Self-Balancing Robot Kit Based on BeagleBone Blue is Now Available for $50

BeagleBone Blue is a board designed for robotics projects, and one of those projects is EduMIP self-balancing robot that was first designed around BeagleBone Black and a robotics cape, but so far was not available for sale. Renaissance Robotics is now selling the kit, without board, for $50. The kit has been designed by UC San Diego Coordinated Robotics Lab in order to teach robotics to students, and it works with BeagleBone Blue, or BeagleBone Black with the Robotics Cape and an optional WiFi dongle. Some of the subjects that can be learned with eduMIP include: Dynamic modeling and feedback control (classical, state-space, adaptive, …) of unstable systems. Robot motion planning and collision avoidance. DC motor control via (built-in) H-bridges and encoder counters. Attitude estimation via (built-in) IMU and barometer. Communication via (built-in) WiFi (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth (4.1/BLE). Charging, balancing, protection, and monitoring of 2-cell LiPo (included). Multithreaded event-driven C programming […]

July 10, 2017February 28, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Opus 1.2 Allows for High Quality Stereo Music @ 32 Kbps, Speech @ 12 Kbps

The Xiph.Org Foundation has recently announced the release of Opus 1.2 open-source audio codec with ever lower high-quality audio bitrate for music (32 Kbps) and speech (12 Kbps), faster encoding and decoding, and other tweaks to the standard and library. If you’ve never heard about Opus or need to refresh your memory, you may want to read my previous article about Opus Open Source Audio Codec. The developers improve music quality by “adjusting the bit allocation trim, improving tonality analysis with better frequency resolution, and improving quality on signals with a few very powerful tones”. You can compare Opus 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2, and MP3 at different bitrates on Xiph website. You’ll need a browser that supports Opus and MP3 in HTML5 for this to work (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera do), or you may hear another sample as if Opus support is missing the file will be played as a […]

July 8, 2017March 29, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

1btn is a Battery Powered Open Source ESP8266 WiFi Button

If you have some WiFi power switch like Sonoff TH16 at home, you’d normally control them using a mobile app or a web interface. This is all good, but getting your phone, unlocking it, and launching the app to turn on or off an appliance is not the most efficient way to operate, and in some cases, some people in the household may not know how to use a smartphone. Physical WiFi buttons are the solution, but there aren’t so many for sale. We’ve seen previously it was possible to hack an Amazon Dash, but it’s not really that flexible, and 1btn could potentially be a better option, as it’s open source and based on Espressif ESP8266 WiSoC. 1btn specifications: WiFi Module – ESP-12F based on Espressif ESP8266 MCU – Microchip Atmel ATmegaxx8 AVR MCU Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/b WiFi up to ~50 meter range USB – 1x USB port […]

July 3, 2017June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 4.12 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.12: Things were quite calm this week, so I really didn’t have any real reason to delay the 4.12 release. As mentioned over the various rc announcements, 4.12 is one of the bigger releases historically, and I think only 4.9 ends up having had more commits. And 4.9 was big at least partly because Greg announced it was an LTS kernel. But 4.12 is just plain big. There’s also nothing particularly odd going on in the tree – it’s all just normal development, just more of it that usual. The shortlog below is obviously just the minor changes since rc7 – the whole 4.12 shortlog is much too large to post. In the diff department, 4.12 is also very big, although the reason there isn’t just that there’s a lot of development, we have the added bulk of a lot of new header files […]