open source

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments on $99 Parallella Supercomputer is Now Open Source Hardware

$99 Parallella Supercomputer is Now Open Source Hardware

Parallella is a low cost supercomputer designed by Adapteva using Xilinx Zynq-7010/7020 FPGA+2x Cortex A9 SoC combined with Adapteva Ephipany 16 or 64 cores epiphany coprocessor. The project had a successful kickstarter campaign which allowed then to provide the 16-core version for $99, and the 64-core version for $750. The board will soon be shipped to people who pledged on kickstarter, and one of the promise of the campaign was to fully open source the platform, and today, they just fulfilled that. Before going into the details of the open source release, let’s have a look at the specs: SoC – Xilinx Zynq7000 Series (Z-7010 or Z-7020) Dual-Core ARM Cortex A9 with 512KB L2 Shared Cache Coprocessor – Epiphany Multicore Coprocessor. The Parallella-16 board includes the 16-core Epiphany-III processor The Parallella-64 board includes the 64-core Epiphany-IV processor System Memory – 1024MB DDR3L Boot Flash – 128 Mb QSPI Flash Indicators […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments on $199 Minnowboard is an Open Source Embedded Board Powered By Intel Atom E640 Processor

$199 Minnowboard is an Open Source Embedded Board Powered By Intel Atom E640 Processor

Minnowboard is a development board designed by Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, powered by Intel Atom E640 processor @ 1GHz with 1GB RAM, SATA2 and Gigabit Ethernet support, and several embedded I/O such as SPI, I2C and CAN, and that ships with Angstrom Linux distribution. Minnoboard Specifications: Processor –  Intel Atom E640 @ 1GHz (32bit) Chipset – EG20T Intel Platform Controller Hub GPU – Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 600 System Memory – 1 GB DDR2 RAM Storage – 4 MB SPI Flash (for Firmware),  micro SD card slot and SATA Video Output – SDVO to DVI (over HDMI connector) Audio –  1/8″ (3.5mm??) jack line Input and Output I/O: 1x SATA2 3Gb/sec 2x USB host ports + 1x micro USB device 1x Serial debug via Serial (UART 0) to USB conversion (mini-USB-B port) 10/100/1000 Ethernet PCI Express Expansions: 8x Buffered GPIO pins 2x GPIO controlled LEDs 4x GPIO […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments on Open Source Prosthetic Arm Controlled By Muscle Movements

Open Source Prosthetic Arm Controlled By Muscle Movements

Gustavo Brancante is working on a very interesting project that let you control a prosthetic arm with your muscle movement using open source technology with InMoov Hand (which can be 3D printed), Arduino Uno R3, and Olimex Electrocardiography electromiography shield (SHIELD-EKG-EMG). This is called a Myo-Electric Prosthesis. Gabriel wrote a tutorial to use his “open arm” which I’ll summarize here. On the hardware front, you’ll also need a UDP compatible Wifi Shield configured as a UDP server with a fixed IP in the same LAN as the smartphone, and 57600 bps. TouchOSC (for smartphone and Workstation) is used with the following layout for calibration and feature selection. Finally load the program below to your Arduino board: Once everything is connected together, you should be able to do that: The demo looks impressive, but this is still work in progress, and next step will be to use a four channel EMG instead […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Souliss Automation and IoT Framework Makes Your Home Smarter

Souliss Automation and IoT Framework Makes Your Home Smarter

Souliss is an open-source framework written in C/C++ for the Internet of Things and home automation that runs on Arduino boards, or other Atmel AVR MCU based boards, and let your control lighting, heating, or anything else you can think of via your Android device, or switches connected to your board(s). You can get started with Souliss in 3 steps: Getting the building blocks, for example: Arduino, Olimex, or other AVR boards (See list of supported boards) Relay boards ON/OFF Switches, Lights, etc… Wi-Fi router Download and load Souliss to an AVR powered board controlling real things such as lights. Monitor and/or control via Souliss Home Automation App for Android. A detailed getting started guide is provided on Souliss Google Code page. Internally, the framework is composed of three parts: Souliss, an application level layer, MaCaco, a communication protocol and vNet, a transport layer. I’ll skip details in this post, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments on Yocto Project 1.4 “Dylan” Release

Yocto Project 1.4 “Dylan” Release

The Yocto Project Release 1.4 has just been announced. This release codenamed “Dylan” and based on Poky 9.0.0 is the sixth release of the project. The Yocto Project is a framework that creates embedded Linux distributions, and has been getting more and more traction with silicon vendors such as Intel, Freescale and Texas Instruments. Yocto Project 1.4 bring the following new features and updates: Major performance improvements – The overall build time has been reduced by more than 10%. Kernel build time is reduced by about 25%. With rm_work enabled, 40% less storage will be used for the tmp directory. Smart, a replacement for zypper Support for read-only rootfs Wayland support, an X replacement. Systemd support, a replacement for the system V init daemon. Usability improvements to HOB, bitbake, yocto-bsp and other tools, including UI improvements, new features and bug fixes. Documentation improvement/update and a new kernel development manual and […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Freescale i.MX 6 TV Dongle Schematics, PCB Layout, and Application Notes

Freescale i.MX 6 TV Dongle Schematics, PCB Layout, and Application Notes

We already had the source code for Freescale i.MX6 HDMI TV dongle, and some work has been done on the Linux front by imx6-dongle community to make Ubuntu work on Hi802 and GK802 mini PCs. Today, I’ve just found out Freescale has also released the hardware files and some application notes for their HDMI TV dongle reference platform (MX6x_HDMI_DONGLE). There are 2 files for download: hdmi_dongle_hardware_design_package.rar.zip – Hardware files for i.MX 6 mini PC app_note.rar.zip – Zip file with some hardware application notes Let’s have a look at the hardware design files: wifi_rtl8192ce.zip – Schematics in PDF and DSN (OrCAD) format, gerber files, BoM and manufacturing files for the Wi-Fi module. bom_hdmi_dongle_revb2_20130116_1500.xls – Bill of materials for i.MX 6 HDMI dongle pcb_hdmi_dongle-revb2-20130116_1700.rar – PCB layout (.brd) and gerber files sch_hdmi_dongle_revb2_20130116_1500.rar – Schematics for i.MX6 mini PC in PDF and DSN formats. We also have three application notes: AN4397  Common Hardware […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Open Source Time Machine #2 – Build A Complete Watch Yourself

Open Source Time Machine #2 – Build A Complete Watch Yourself

There are already some watches such as Texas Instruments ez430-Crhonos and MetaWatch that are used as development platform and let you develop software yourself. Some hardware documentation is usually provided as well, but Energy Micro forums’ member hairykiwi is trying to go a bit further. He created a watch based on EFM32 Cortex M3 MCU and already released the KiCad schematics and gerber files, with 3D printer files and firmware source code to be released once they are ready. The project is called “Open source Time Machine #2” (OTM2). The project makes use of the following components and features: EFM32LG332F256 – Energy Micro Cortex M3 Leopard Gecko MCU with 256KB flash and 32KB SRAM A 128×128 pixel (23.2 x23.2mm visible area) ultra low power Memory LCD from Sharp Microelectronics, Recharge and programming via Micro USB connector. JTAG programming is also available. 150mAh Li-Po Battery + on-board battery fuel gauge IC. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments on AllWinner A20 Linux Source Code, EVB Schematics and Product Brief

AllWinner A20 Linux Source Code, EVB Schematics and Product Brief

Hardware based on AllWinner A20 such as Cloudsto Media PC PRO DRIVEDOCK, should start to be available soon, and resources for developers have been slowly released (or leaked) to the community. AllWinner A20 Source Code The source code for AllWinner A20 and A31 has been released to sunxi-linux a while back, and they have started to clean up the code before hardware becomes available. The code apparently hasn’t made it to sunxi-linux github account just yet, but Linux for A20  has been imported into github at https://github.com/amery/linux-allwinner/tree/import/lichee-3.3/a20-dev. AllWinner A20 is known as sun7i in the code. AllWinner A20 Evaluation Board Schematics and Product Brief Olimex received A20 EVB schematics and product brief from AllWinner earlier this week, and as usual, they promptly uploaded those documents to their github account. The 3-page product brief does not bring anything new, and the data sheet does not seem to be available right now. […]

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