Ziilabs Unveils Low Cost Jaguar3 Android Tablet Reference Designs

Earlier this May, Ziilabs announced the ZMS-20 dual core processors targeted at Android Honeycomb tablets. They have now unveil the 3rd generation of Android Tablet reference designs based on ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 called Jaguar3. Here’s an excerpt of the press release: ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd), today introduced its JAGUAR3, the most powerful 3rd Generation Android 3.2 tablet series. JAGUAR3 is a series of ultra-slim, ultra-lightweight and stylish 10.1” tablet reference designs targeted at the OEM markets. With over a decade of designing experience in portable mobile devices, Creative provided the ergonomic and sexy design of this series of JAGUAR3 tablets. ZMS-20 StemCell Processors JAGUAR3’s superior performance, low power consumption and rich feature set comes from the dual-core 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 based ZMS-20 StemCell Processors. ZMS-20 has another 48 StemCell Processing cores within, which effectively make it into a 50-core processor. […]

Android 2.3.4 Release For ST Ericsson Snowball Development Board

Igloo Community – the team developing for ST Ericsson Snowball Nova A9500 development board – has released the first version of Android 2.3.4 for the board. It can be downloaded at http://igloocommunity.org/download/android/images/20110910/. Here are the main features for this release: Based on Android 2.3.4 HDMI/DVI-D display support Graphics acceleration with the Mali 400 GPU Bluetooth support Multimedia acceleration Ethernet connectivity microSD card support Sensors support ADB over ethernet (by default) and over USB OTG port and the Known issues: WLAN connectivity is disabled in the UI due to startup problems with the interface. Audio recording does not work Consecutive audio playback might not work Potrait mode does not work (rotating the device corrupts screen until rotated back) Might be a temporary problem, but the browser crashes on the default google page when loading finishes. Other pages seem to work fine, so interrupting loading or going through the search acts as […]

Android NDK revision 6b

Google has just released Android Native Development Kit Revision 6b, the Android SDK that allows developers to reuse C/C++ code. It is a bug fix version without new feature compared to Revision 6. Here’s the Changelog of the most important bug fixes: Fixed the build when APP_ABI=”armeabi x86″ is used for multi-architecture builds. Fixed the location of prebuilt STLport binaries in the NDK release package. A bug in the packaging script placed them in the wrong location. Fixed atexit() usage in shared libraries with the x86standalone toolchain. Fixed make-standalone-toolchain.sh –arch=x86. It used to fail to copy the proper GNU libstdc++ binaries to the right location. Fixed the standalone toolchain linker warnings about missing the definition and size for the __dso_handle symbol (ARM only). Fixed the inclusion order of $(SYSROOT)/usr/include for x86 builds. See the bug for more information. Fixed the definitions of ptrdiff_t and size_t in x86-specific systems when they […]

200 Android Development Video Tutorials

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to develop applications for Android but reading books bores you, you now have the chance to teach yourself Android software development with 200 video tutorials (about 20 hours). The videos have been uploaded to ChangingTheUnknown Youtube channel and can be accessed via TheNewBoston – Android playlist. To give you an idea of what you’ll learn, here are the titles of the first 10 tutorials: Download and Install the Java JDK Installing Eclipse and Setting up the ADT Installing Android SDK and Set up Emulator Setting up an Android Project Overview of Project and Adding Folders Introduction to Layouts in XML Creating A Button in XML and Adding an ID Setting up Variables and Referencing XML ids Set up a Button with OnClickListener Using setText method for our button You can watch the first tutorial: “Android Application Development Tutorial – 1 – Download and […]

LinuxCon 2011 Presentation: Embedded Systems

The fourth presentation entitled  “Embedded Systems” was presented by Tim Harder, developer at OSUOSL (Oregon State University Open Source Lab) on the 16th of August 2011 at LinuxCon 2011. Abstract: This presentation deals with software development for Embedded Systems especially focusing on Linux and open source.  It describes current software development challenges such as fast software life cycle and memory footprint issues, lists several open hardware projects (Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Bug Labs, Gumstix),  microcontrollers (Arduino and TI MSP430), different operating systems (Android, Meego) and toolchain build tools (Buildroot, Yocto) for embedded systems. It also explains specific challenges to embedded software development such a the numerous number of hardware platforms and software & hardware  tools. Finally, it deals with the cross-compilers, emulators (e.g. qemu) and debugging tools (gdb, jtag, serial console, etc…). If you want to download the presentation slides, please go to Embedded Systems and use the download button on top of […]

Preview of Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK

Google announced that Android Market is coming to Google TV at Google I/O with a preview of the Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK. Google TV devices will be Android compatible with the upcoming OS update to Honeycomb. That means developers can build new Android apps for TV, optimize existing mobile or tablet apps for TV and/or distribute those apps through Android Market. Although this add-on does not contain all features of Google TV, it will allow developers to emulate Google TV and build apps using the standard Android SDK tools. It also provides new APIs for TV interaction, such as TV channel listing. Google TV emulation is currently supported on Linux with KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) only, but Google will provide support for other operating systems later on. An existing Android app may work well on Google TV or it may require fixes depending on the design and […]

Energy Harvesting Development Kit by Microchip Technology

The XLP 16-bit Energy Harvesting Development Kit is a  development platform for realizing energy harvesting applications powered by Microchip nanoWatt XLP PIC MCUs which are suited for  low power applications with sleep currents down to 20nA, active mode currents down to 50uA/MHz, code execution efficiency, and multiple wake-up sources. The power for the kit is supplied by Cymbet’s EVAL-08 Solar Energy Harvester which features a solar panel suitable for use with indoor or outdoor light. The XLP kit enables rapid prototyping of low power applications such as RF sensors, temperature/environmental sensors, utility meters, remote controls, security sensors and more. For software development and programming, the kit includes the PICkit 3 programmer/debugger for use with the Microchip’s free MPLAB™ Integrated Development Environment. Microchip also provides XLP 16-bit Energy Harvesting RF Demo Code  in C language  (The file is a Windows Executable, but it’s just an executable compressed file so it can […]

Texas Instruments TRF7970A NFC Transceiver

Texas Instruments has introduced the TRF7970A NFC Transceiver ” speeds designs with easy-to-configure software that helps developers bring peer-to-peer, ultra-low-power capabilities to more applications”. Here’s an excerpt from the press release: Raising the standard for ultra-low-power near field communication (NFC) devices, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today announced the industry’s lowest power contactless short-range communication transceiver. Ideal for infrastructure devices, the new TRF7970A extends battery life up to 2 times longer than competitive products, as it provides eight selectable power modes ranging from <1 uA in power-down mode to 120 mA in full-power mode. The transceiver comes with easy-to-configure software to help developers get started quickly. Royalty-free stacks are compatible across a broad range of ultra-low-power MSP microcontrollers. Additionally, developers are able to directly access all control registers, allowing for easy fine-tuning of various parameters for the highest performance in every application. You can also read the complete TRF7970A […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case