wearables News - Page 24 of 25 - CNX Software

September 21, 2014January 23, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Getting Started with LinkIt ONE Development Kit for Wearables & IoT

After going through WRTnode Quick Start Guide, it’s now time to play with LinkIt ONE, the IoT development board from Mediatek designed by Seeed Studio. LinkIt ONE is the first Hardware Development Kit (HDK) for Mediatek LinkIt, so there may be a LinkIt TWO, and/or other hardware platforms in the future. LinkIt ONE specifications Let’s quickly go through the specifications first: Processor – Mediatek MT2502A (Aster) ARM7 EJ-STM processor @ 260 MHz System Memory – 4 MB Storage – 16MB Flash for firmware + micro SD slot shared with SIM slot for up to 32GB additional storage Connectivity: Wi-Fi – 802.11 b/g/n (MT5931) with external antenna Bluetooth – BR/EDR/BLE(Dual Mode) GPS – Mediatek MT3332 with external antenna GSM/GPRS – 850/900/1800/1900 MHz band, Class 12 GPS with external antenna Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack (including mic support) – Support for MP3, AAC, and AMR codecs. Serial – Software Serial (Serial), and […]

September 15, 2014September 15, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

$125 Com 1 Android Wear Watch Powered by Ingenic JZ4775 MIPS Processor (Crowdfunding)

If you’d like to get an Android Wear watch, but are not quite ready to spend $200+ for the models currently available, the Com 1 Android Wear smartwatch could be interesting as you may get one for as low as $125, albeit with higher risks since it’s part of a flexible funding Indiegogo campaign. The watch is powered by Ingenic JZ4775 MIPS processor, features a 1.6″ AMOLED display, and is IP67 rated (Water- and dust-proof). Com 1 watch hardware specifications: SoC – Ingenic JZ4775 XBurst (MIPS) processor @ 1.0 GHz with 2D graphics, and VPU (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, H.264, VP8, RV9), 720p@30fps System Memory – 375 MB LPDDR1 Storage – 4 GB eMMC Display – 1.6” AMOLED touchscreen display, 320 x 320 resolution, 16.7 Million Colors , LED back light, Brightness: 300 cd/m^2. Connectivity – WiFi (802.11 a/b/g/n at 2.4/5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.0 + EDR (BLE Compliant), FM, and NFC Sensors – […]

September 10, 2014September 10, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

$50 Intel Edison Board for Wearables Features an SoC with a Dual Core Atom Processor, and a Quark MCU

Intel announced the Edison board for wearables applications last January at CES 2014. When it first came out, it looked like an SD card, but the board look has now drastically changed. Nevertheless, the important point is that Intel Edison is now available, together with various development kits, and runs Linux (Yocto built), as well as an RTOS. With the official release, we’ve also got the full specifications: SoC – Dual-core, dual-threaded Intel Atom (Silvermont) processor (22nm) processor @ 500 MHz and a 32-bit Intel Quark micro-controller @ 100 MHz. Includes 1GB LPDDR3 PoP memory System Memory – 1 GB LPDDR3 (PoP memory) – 2 channel 32bits @ 800MT/sec Storage – 4 GB eMMC (v4.51 spec) + micro SD card connector Connectivity – Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi (Broadcom 43340) with either an on-board antenna or external antenna, and Bluetooth 4.0 USB – 1x micro USB connector I/Os: 2x UART […]

August 11, 2014October 20, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Vigekwear is a Modularized, Open source, Wearable BLE Development Kit (Crowdfunding)

[Update: Atomwear has been renamed to Vigekwear due to (Intel’s) copyrights infringement]. Giayee is a company mainly manufacturing Android tablets, thin clients, and mini PCs, but their latest product, called Atomwear, is a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) development kit based on Nordic nRF51822 chipset that comes with various modules such as battery charger, accelerometer, gyroscope, OLED display, heart rate monitor, etc… which connect together via 24-pin connector on a standard rigid baseboard or a flexible printed circuit (FPC). All modules are connected via the same 24-pin connector with power, I2C, SPI, UART, ADC, and GPIOs signals. The baseboard and FPC both contain 6 such connectors connected in parallel for up to 6 modules, and two baseboard can be connected together via a bridge circuit to accept more modules. The minimum configuration is with a BLE MCU module, and a power module. The different boards and modules are listed as follows: […]

July 29, 2014July 29, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Hardkernel Unveils $30 Raspberry Pi Compatible Module with RTC, ADC, and LiPo Battery Support

Hardkernel is better know for its ODROID boards powered by Samsung Exynos SoC. So I was surprised to discover ODROID-W, “a miniature computing module which is fully compatible with all software available for the Raspberry-Pi”. Software compatible, really? Yes, because they used the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC found in the Raspberry Pi, packaged it in a smaller form factor, while keeping HDMI, USB, and CSI interface, and expansion headers, and all that for $30, plus just $9 for shipping. Let’s go through ODROID-W specifications first: SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM1176JZ-F processor @ 700 Mhz with VideoCore IV GPU System Memory – 512MB LPDDR2 (Samsung K4P4G324EB PoP) Storage – microSD slot + eMMC socket (bottom of the board) Video Output – micro HDMI (with NXP IP4791CZ12 protection IC) USB – micro USB connector, and USB host (not soldered) Expansion Headers: R-Pi compatible 26-pin expansion header (through holes) R-Pi compatible 15-pin CSI […]

July 25, 2014July 25, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Freescale WaRPBoard Reference Platform for Wearables is Now Available for Pre-order

Back in January, Freescale announced WaRP (Wearable Reference Platform) comprised of the WaRPboard, a tiny board based on Freescale i.MX 6SoloLite running Android, and a daughter board with KL16 Cortex M0+ MCU and several sensors. The company collaborated with Revolution Robotics for the hardware design, and Kynetics for the software, and the platform is now available for pre-order for $149, and a few more details have surfaced since my first article. The hardware specifications of WaRP are as follows: WaRPboard: SoC – Freescale i.MX 6SoloLite Cortex A9 processor @ 1GHz with 2D graphics Vivante GC355 and GC320 GPUs. System Memory – LPDDR2 (Micron Multi-Chip Package) Storage – 4Gbit eMMC (Same Micron MCP chip as for RAM) Connectivity – WLAN and Bluetooth 4.0 LE via Murata LBEH17YSHC Display I/F: MIPI DSI for LCD display + touchscreen EPCD for E-Ink Display Sensors – Xtrinsic FXOS8700CQ, 6-Axis Sensor with Integrated Linear Accelerometer and Magnetometer. Daughtercard: […]

July 22, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Imagination Technologies Unveils Low Power Low Footprint PowerVR GX5300 GPU for Wearables

Up to now most wearables are based on MCU solutions or derived from mobile platforms, which may either not provide the advanced features required by users, or consume too much power and take more space than needed. With Ineda Dhanush and Mediatek Aster, we’ve already seen silicon vendors design wearables SoCs, and now Imagination Technologies has just announced PowerVR GX5300 GPU targeting wearables with support for OpenGL ES 2.0, 480p to 720p resolution, and using 0.55mm2 silicon area based on 28nm process. PowerVR GX5300 GPU will be support Android, Android Wear, and Linux based operation systems, and according to the company has the following key features: Unified shaders – The TBDR graphics architecture offers unified shaders where vertex, pixel and GPU compute resources are scaled simultaneously. Low power and high precision graphics – All PowerVR GPUs offer a mix of low (FP16) and high precision (FP32) rendering and implement the […]

July 12, 2014July 12, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

More Details on Mediatek MT2502 Aster SoC and Linkit Platform for Wearables (Video)

Last month, Mediatek announced their Mediatek MT2502 SoC for wearables, codenamed Aster, as well as the Linkit development platform targeting the developer’s community. But at the time they did show the actual hardware, and thanks to Charbax we know have more interesting details about Aster and Linkit. First they compare a design based on Aster to Samsung Galaxy Fit wearable band, and show why it uses less space, will cost less, and they claim over twice the battery life. Simple and smaller design (~36% reduction in size) Aster solution – MT2504 (6.2 x 5.4 mm) plus all required resistors, capacitors and inductors require 89.97 mm2 Galaxy Fit – MCU. Bluetooth Transceiver, external memory, a linear charger, and all required resistors, capacitors and inductors require 140.97 mm2 Battery life – Samsung Galaxy Fit is supposed to last between 1 and 1.5 days on a charge, whereas devices based on Aster should last about […]