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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Embest SBC8118 Single Board Computer Based on TI AM1808 Processor

Embest SBC8118 Single Board Computer Based on TI AM1808 Processor

Embest recently unveiled the SBC8118 Single Board Computer, an industrial grade SBC powered by Texas Instruments AM1808 ARM9 processor with 128MB Mobile DDR2 RAM and 128MB NAND Flash. The SBC8118 Single Board Computer is aimed at medical, industrial automation, control, communication, and other cost sensitive applications. As you can see from the picture above, it is comprised of a CPU board and an expansion board. Here are the specifications of the CPU board (Mini8118): Processor – 375MHz TI AM1808 ARM926EJ-S Microcontroller (also supports 456MHz operation) Memory – 128 MByte Mobile DDR2 Storage – 128 MByte NAND Flash (on the rear of the board) & 8 Mbit SPI Flash Connectors – Two 2.0mm space 3*27-pin dip connectors and the expansion board: Audio/Video Interfaces: TFT LCD interface (50-pin FPC connector, RGB565) 4 line resistive Touch Screen interface Camera interface (30-pin FPC connector, supports CCD and CMOS cameras) Data Transfer Interfaces: Serial port: […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Rowboat Releases Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean for Beagleboard-XM and Beaglebone

Rowboat Releases Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean for Beagleboard-XM and Beaglebone

Rowboat announced a preliminary version of Android 4.1.1 (Jean Bean) for beagleboard and beaglebone platforms last week. These releases support SGX (3D graphics acceleration) on both Texas Instruments Sitara AM37x processor (Beagleboard-XM) and  AM335x processor (Beaglebone), and all download and build instructions are available on their Wiki: Jellybean On Beagleboard JellybeanOn Beaglebone – Tested with LCD7 cape. If you could not care less about building it yourself, Rowboat provides pre-built binaries that you can install on a micro-SD card (4GB and greater) as follows : For Beagleboard-XM (DVI output):

For Beaglebone (with 7″ LCD Cape):

The full source is available on rowboat gitorious  account, but there are lots of repo over there, so the best way to get the source is probably the “repo init” instructions in the 2 links above. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on $39 Variscite VAR-SOM-AM33 SoM Powered by TI Sitara AM335x

$39 Variscite VAR-SOM-AM33 SoM Powered by TI Sitara AM335x

Variscite has announced a new system-on-module based on Texas Instruments Sitara Cortex A8 AM335x processors (AM3352 or AM3354) named VAR-SOM-AM33, which sells for as little as $39 US (in large quantities I assume). This SoM is available in commercial and industrial grades, and the company expects the module to be used in applications such as automotive, control systems, lighting, refining and processing. Here are the specs of this module: CPU – Texas Instruments AM335x Processor @ up to 720 MHz withPowerVR SGX530 GPU (AM3354 only) System Memory – 256MB 606MHz DDR3 Storage – 128 to 512MB SLC NAND Flash Display interface – LCD interface – Parallel RGB Supporting 1400×1050 24bit and4/5/8-Wire touch panel interface Audio – Line-in, line-out, stereo headphone out, digital microphone, analog microphone and S/PDIF Out Connectivity: 10/100Mbps Ethernet PHY 10/100/1000Mbps RGMII Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (via TI WiLink 6.0) Bluetooth V4.0 + EDR (via TI WiLink 6.0) Interfaces: 2 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on LinuxCon North America 2012 Schedule

LinuxCon North America 2012 Schedule

LinuxCon (North America) 2012 will take place on August 29 – 31, 2012 at Sheraton Hotel & Marina, in San Diego, California. The event will be co-located with the Linux Kernel Summit, the Linux Plumbers Conference, and CloudOpen 2012. LinuxCon consists of 3 days of keynotes, business and developers related sessions as well as tutorials. There will be over 80 sessions and keynotes during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting and related to embedded Linux, software development and ARM. August 29 10:45 – 11:30 – Life After BerkeleyDB: OpenLDAP’s Memory-Mapped Database by Howard Chu, Symas Abstract: OpenLDAP’s new MDB library is a highly optimized B+tree implementation that is orders of magnitude faster and more efficient than everything else in the software world. Reads scale perfectly linearly across arbitrarily many CPUs with no bottlenecks, and data is returned with zero memcpy’s. Writes are on […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Discounted and Free Development Kits by Future Electronics and Texas Instruments

Discounted and Free Development Kits by Future Electronics and Texas Instruments

If you have a project in mind, Future Electronics and Texas Instruments are currently offering free development boards and 50% discounts on selected development kits respectively. Future Electronics Boards4Free Initiative In August, Future Electronics will be giving away 5 boards every Wednesday (20 boards in total). Here’s how it works: Every Wednesday at 12 pm EST from August 1 to August 22 Future Electronics will post a board on their  Twitter, Facebook and Google+ feeds. Reply to them on Twitter, comment on their post on Facebook or comment on their post on Google+ with your project idea to enter into the contest. Each action counts as on entry, so you can get up to 3 entries Each weekly drawing period begins at 12 pm EST and ends at 12:30 pm EST. (So you’ve just got 30 minutes to enter, unless I missed something) Future Electronics will draw 5 winners and […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Texas Instruments Launchpad MSP-EXP430G2 & Capacitive Touch Booster

Texas Instruments Launchpad MSP-EXP430G2 & Capacitive Touch Booster

This is a guest post about the low cost Launchpad MCU devkit. This kit was unveiled in 2010, but since I’d never written about this $4.30 development kit previously, I’ve accepted to publish the post below with slight modifications and amendments. You may be itching to get started with a micro-controller based project but held back because of the high cost of the development boards, and the complex nature of tools required. The good news is that Texas Instruments have come up with a development kit – including a board and the required development software tools. This tool is intended for beginners as well as experienced users. In fact, at under $5, the Texas Instruments’ LaunchPad gives you a complete environment in which you can get started with your projects. This LaunchPad Development Kit is a part of the Texas Instruments MSP430 Value Line series of micro-controllers. You can program, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on TechNexion EDM Modules: Open Software and (somewhat) Open Hardware ARM & x86 CPU Modules

TechNexion EDM Modules: Open Software and (somewhat) Open Hardware ARM & x86 CPU Modules

TechNexion, a Taiwanese “embedded solution” company, was present at Computex 2012 showcasing their ARM & x86 CPU Modules and corresponding development kits. The company recently created the EDM Standard, an open hardware and software standard for x86 and ARM Computer on Modules available under the creative commons share alike license. Their EDM modules come in three form factors: EDM Compact: 82 x 60 mm (ARM only) EDM Standard: 82 x 95 mm (ARM and x86) EDM Extended: 82 x 145 mm (x86 only) They have already designed 5 modules based on this standard: EDM-CF-iMX6 EDM Compact Module powered by Freescale i.MX6 (solo, dual or quad) EDM-CT-AM437x EDM Compact Module powered by TI Sitara AM437x (single core Cortex A9) EDM-SF-iMX6 EDM Standard Module with Freescale i.MX6 EDM-ST-AM437x EDM Standard Module with TI Sitara AM437x EDM-XI-QM77 EDM Extended Module with Intel QM77 3rd generation i3/i7 core I could not find information about […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Texas Instruments Wi-Fi Miracast Wireless Display on OMAP 4470

Texas Instruments Wi-Fi Miracast Wireless Display on OMAP 4470

A few days ago, Texas Instruments announced a Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast Video Streaming Solution based on OMAP4470 and WiLink 7.0, and they said in their press release that they would demo the platform at Computex 2012. Charbax is currently there, and shot a video showcasing different use cases possible with Miracast such as multi-tasking while streaming and mirroring. This technology looks very promising, especially since existing devices based on OMAP4470 will be able to support it with just a software update. You’ll also need to have a Miracast compliant TV, but eventually you should be able to buy a Miracast HDMI dongle for your TV (instead of buying a new TV), which is basically the board used in the demo except they use cables. This technology could be a threat to the MHL standard. The only advantage of the latter is that you don’t need power supply as it will […]