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May 5, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

PicoVNA 5 software for vector network analyzers supports Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Raspberry Pi

Pico Technology has released PicoVNA 5 control software for their vector network analyzers for Windows x86 64-bit, Mac, Linux x86 64-bit, and Raspberry Pi 3 and greater single board computers, superseding the Windows-only PicoVNA 3 software. As a Ubuntu user, I hate it when some hardware tool forces me to install software on Windows when there’s no Linux alternative, so any company that provides cross-platform tools is making the right move. I’m also not quite sure what a “vector network analyzer” (VNA) is, so I’ll first look into the PicoVNA 106 and PicoVNA 108 6/8.5 GHz VNAs from the company. PicoVNA 106/108 vector network analyzers highlights and specifications: Frequency ranges PicoVNA 106 – 300 kHz to 6 GHz PicoVNA 108 – 300 kHz to 8.5 GHz Up to 5500 dual-port S-parameters per second > 10 000 S11 + S21 per second Quad RX four-receiver architecture Up to 124 dB dynamic […]

January 31, 2023February 12, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Green Metrics Tool helps developers measuring & optimizing software power consumption

The Green Metrics Tool (GMT) is an open-source framework that allows the measurement, comparison, and optimization of the energy consumption of software with the goal of empowering both software engineers and users to make educated decisions about libraries, code snippets, and software in order to save energy along with carbon emissions. While the firmware of battery-powered embedded devices and the OS running on your smartphone are typically optimized for low power consumption in order to extend the battery life, the same can not be said of most software running on SBCs, desktop computers, and servers. But there are still benefits of having power-optimized programs on this type of hardware including lower electricity bills, a lower carbon footprint, and potentially quieter devices since the cooling fan may not have to be turned on as often. The Green Metrics Tool aims to help in that regard. The developers explain how that works: […]

October 19, 2021May 27, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Cortex-M55 based Arm Virtual Hardware is now available in AWS Cloud

The Arm DevSummit 2021 is taking place on October 19-21, and the first announcements from Arm are related to IoT with “Arm Total Solutions for IoT delivering a full-stack solution to significantly accelerate IoT product development and improve product ROI”, “Project Centauri” aiming to achieve for an extensive Arm Cortex-M software ecosystem in the way that Project Cassini does for the Cortex-A ecosystem, starting with support for PSA Certified and Open-CMSIS-CDI cloud-to-device specification, and Arm Virtual Hardware based on Corstone-300 IoT platform with a Cortex-M55 MCU core and an Ethos-U55 microNPU accessible from Amazon Web Services. The first two are quite abstract right now, and more information may become available in the future, but the Arm Virtual Hardware is available now from AWS as a public beta, with 100 hours of free AWS EC2 CPU credits for the first 1,000 qualified users. The virtual hardware does not emulate only the […]

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Timesys Embedded Board Farm enables remote access to hardware for software development & QA

When you design a new board with an international team working in multiple locations, there may only be a couple of boards available for testing, and that’s mean some members of the team may not have access to the hardware. The same problem can be true for test farms with a larger number of boards. So it would be good to have a solution to remotely access and control the hardware to speed up development. A few years ago we wrote about MuxPi board using NanoPi NEO SBC to enable remote testing of development boards, but now Timesys has come up with a more advanced solution with the Embedded Board Farm (EBF) capable of sharing multiple boards across teams spread around the world. The solution is comprised of three main components besides the target boards: The Master Server integrated with LAVA test automation framework – It handles docker images, firmware/file […]

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

MuxPi Board Relies on NanoPi NEO to Enable Remote Testing of Development Boards

Product development often occurs in different location over the world, there may be one team in Asia, and another in Europe and the US. At the beginning, the number of working samples for a board may be limited, so the project manager may have to decide who gets the boards since those may not be available to all teams. So it would be great if somehow there was a way to do remote testing of boards, so maybe the team in Asia could setup the testbed, used it during there time, and once they are back home, the US team can take over remotely to carry on their own development work on the hardware. That’s exactly what MuxPi board is all about. The solution provide remote access via the Ethernet port of a NanoPi NEO board, and connects to the DUT (Device under Test) via HDMI, Ethernet, USB and other […]

May 11, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Astro Design HDMI Test Equipment Supports 8K @ 120 Hz

8K media players and 8K TVs are coming, but if you develop one of those products how do you test them since 8K players/TVs are not available just yet. Answer: Test equipment. Astro Design offers just that with their VG-879 digital video generator, as well as their VA-1844A HDMI protocol analyzer. VG-879 digital video generator key features: 4K/60p is transmitted by one channel of 12G-SDI. Max.4 slot-type interface units can be selected from 12G-SDI, HDMI2.0b 3G or 6G, DisplayPort 1.2a, V-by-One and Analog. By synchronizing 4 or 2 units of VG-879, 8K/120p or 8K/60p signals are supported. (8K/120p by V-by-One HS, 8K/60p by V-by-One HS and HDMI.) HDMI 2.0b test functions supported EIA CEA-861-F Timing Format including 4K/50, 60p, YCBCR 4:4:4/4:2:2/4:2:0 timing. SCDC parameter change and status display. ITU-R BT.2020 color bar and video output setting 4K6G with Scrambling Enable setting CEA-861.3 HDR (High Dynamic Range) InfoFrame setting HDR Test Patterns supported […]

March 7, 2018March 7, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Nutaq PicoLTE IoT Kit Allows NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1 Devices Testing Anywhere

If you’ve been following cellular IoT news you must have read plenty of announced about NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1 (eMTC) hardware platforms bring LTE connectivity at lower power and somewhat lower cost than existing 3GPP networks. That’s all good, and you may have decided to go ahead with a commercial project, except none of the Telco are providing LTE IoT connectivity in your area just yet, or if it does, you may also want to test your device in bands not allowed/supported in your country (at a permitted power level). If that’s the case, Nutaq PicoLTE IoT Kit should help as an LTE NarrowBand & Cat M test measurement platform for IoT that can test NB-IoT and Cat-M1 devices in all frequency bands. Nutaq PICOLTE IoT kit key features: Supports M1 & NB-IoT devices Proven compatibility with M1 & NB-IoT devices from over 5 manufacturers Test multiple devices simultaneously […]

November 3, 2017November 3, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Lab in a Box Concept Embeds x86 Server and 6 ARM Boards into a PC Case for Automated Software Testing

The Linux kernel now has about 20 millions line of code, Arm has hundreds of licensees making thousands of processors and micro-controllers, which end up in maybe hundreds of thousands of different designs, many of which are not using Linux, but for those that do, Linux must be tested to make sure it works. The same stands true for any large software used on multiple hardware platforms. Manual testing is one way to do it, but it’s time consuming and expensive, so there are software and hardware continuous integration solutions to automate testing such as Linaro LAVA (Linaro Automated Validation Architecture), KernelCI automated Linux kernel testing, and Automotive Grade Linux CIAT that automatically test incoming patch series. Both CIAT and KernelCI focus on Linux, and rely on LAVA, with KernelCI leveraging hardware contributed by the community, and proven to be effective as since it’s been implemented, failed build configs dropped […]