CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 4, 2015April 4, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Cube i7-CM is an Ubuntu Tablet Powered by Intel Core M-5Y10 Processor

Alldocube is a Chinese company known for its Cube Android tablets, and more recently, it has launched some Windows 8.1 tablets. The company has now announced its first Ubuntu tablet with Cube i7-CM featuring a recent low power Broadwell-Y Core M-5Y10 processor. Cube i7-CM tablet specifications: SoC – Intel Core M-5Y10 dual core / four threads processor @ 800 MHz (Burst freq: 2.0 GHz) with 4MB cache, and Intel HD graphics 5300 (4.5W TDP) System Memory – 4GB RAM Storage – 64GB eMMC + micro SD card slot (up to 32GB) Display – 11.6″ capacitive touchscreen; resolution: 1920×1080; 10-point touch. Video Output – micro HDMI Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, dual speaker, microphone, and HDMI Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 Cellular (Data only, single SIM card slot) 4G – FDD-LTE Band 1/3/7 & TDD-LTE 38/39/40/41 3G – WCDMA:900/2100MHz 2G – GSM:850/900/1800/1900MHz Camera – 5MP Rear camera, 2MP front-facing camera […]

April 3, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

miniSpartan3 is a $25 Xilinx Spartan 3A FPGA Board with HDMI Output

Last year, Scarab Hardware launched miniSpartan 6+, a low cost FPGA board featuring Xilinx Spartan6 LX9, on Kickstarter. Since the, they’ve made a third iteration of the board with either Spartan6 LX9 or LX25 and an extra HDMI port, and developed miniSpartan3, a smaller and cheaper FPGA board called miniSpartan3 powered by Xilinx Spartan 3A XC3A50 or XC3A200 FPGA. miniSpartan3 specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan 3A XC3A50 (50K logic gates) or XC3A200 (200K logic gates) Storage – 4Mbit SPI Flash Video / Audio Output – HDMI USB – Micro USB OTG port Debugging – On-board USB JTAG programmer; on-board USB to Serial Interface I/Os via breadboard friendly through holes 4-channel ADC running at 200 KSPS with 8 bit resolution. 41 Digital I/O pins. Misc – 3 LEDs for debugging; 2 DIP switches. Dimensions – 6.35 x 4.06 cm They have not provided much details about development tools, but it’s quite […]

April 3, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

ESP8266 Wi-Fi Module is Now Supported in Arduino IDE

ESP8266 revolutionized the IoT world by offering an ultra low cost Wi-Fi solution either standalone or connected to a micro-controller board via SPI or UART. There are plenty of tutorials on the web to play with the Wi-Fi module, but it’s only recently an Arduino IDE has added support for ESP8266. If you want to try it, you can download the binary for Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X. Since my computer is running Ubuntu 14.04, I download and extracted arduino-1.6.1-linux64.tar.xz to install it in my PC. Now simply run the arduino script to start the IDE, and select to Tools->Board->Generic ESP8266 board. I don’t own an ESP8266 module myself, but Olimex tried it on their ESP8266-EVB: They connected a serial debug board and selected Tools->Port->/dev/ttyUSB0 in the IDE Selected Tools-> Programmer->esptool Loaded Blink example, and modified it to turn on and off the relay on their evaluation board. If […]

April 3, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Kodi 14.2 Final and Kodi 15 Alpha 2 Released

Kodi developers have recently announced two release for Kodi: the stable version of Kodi 14.2 Helix, which should be the last Kodi 14 release, and Kodi 15 Alpha 2 Isengard with some interesting new features. Since Kodi 14.2 is a minor release, no new features have been added, but they fixed several bugs: Application stopped responding on Windows Gap-less playback on MP3 Playback of rtmp protocol Scanning of newly added episodes Fix multipath source scanning Loading external subtitles in some cases packaging of PIL module on Android. This fixes some script error when using weather add-on Fix video playback on all platform after refresh rate change Various bugs that were present in PVR add-ons. Save weather location Fix filtering of foreign add-ons ftps handling Use LastWrite instead of ChangeTime for file system on Windows As usual, you can download the release via Kodi download page for Windows, Linux. Mac OS […]

April 2, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Xiaomi Mi Box Mini Unboxing

Xiaomi Mi Box Mini is probably the smallest Android media player available so far. It integrates a 100-240V power supply, and only features a single HDMI output port, no micro SD slot, and no USB ports. Although the device is primarily targeting the Chinese market, with a Chinese user interface and CCC certification only, several Chinese e-retailers have started to offer it for $50 or less. GearBest sells it for $42.98 with coupon MIBOX, and they’ve sent me a sample for review. Today, I’ll post some pictures of the device, before doing a review, including trying to switch to a user interface in English. Mi Box Mini Unboxing I’ve received the package via DHL, and for once I did not have pay custom duty or other tax. On the back of the package, they listed some key features in Chinese, such as H.265 1080p video playback, quad core processor, hexa […]

April 2, 2015September 2, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Scaleway Provides Dedicated ARM Servers for 10 Euros per Month, 0.02 Euro per Hour

Earlier this year, Online Labs launched a beta hosting program using custom-designed C1 dedicated servers powered by Marvell Armada 370/XP quad core processor. The company has now launched a commercial service called Scaleway providing hosting service on these baremetal servers for 9.99 Euros per month, or 0.02 Euro per hour, as well as a “Infinite Storage” service with 1GB data for 0.02 Euros per month. Here are the details of the 10 Euros plan: Server based on Marvell Armada 370/XP quad core ARMv7 processor Memory – 2GB Memory Storage – 50GB SSD Disk 1x Reserved public IPv4 200Mbit/s – Unmetered bandwith Operating Systems – Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, ArchLinux ARM. Docker supported. That’s not a VPS, but a dedicated server. For reference, I currently pay around $20 per month (Linode) for a server with an Intel Xeon E5-2680 dual core processor with 2 GB RAM and 50 GB SSD storage, and 3 […]

April 2, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

ActDuino S500 Development Board Features Actions Semi S500 Quad Core Processor

Actions Technology is a subsidiary of Actions Semiconductor SoC vendor, that makes solutions based on Actions Semi SoCs, and recently joined Linaro. The company is said to focus on “focuses on solutions for smart handheld and smart home devices. Its main products are tablet, over-the-Top (“OTT”) set-top boxes and Bluetooth enabled boombox solutions, along with total product and technology solutions based on the Android platform”. We already know it will soon release a 96Boards compliant board, but in the meantime, the company has officially launched Actduino S500 development board powered by a new S500 quad core Cortex A9 processor. I actually found out about this board on ARMDevices.net last October, and sent an email asking for information to the company, but I have not received an email yet after 6 months… At the time, the processor was called ATM7059, but now it’s S500, and it’s unclear if they just renamed […]

April 2, 2015April 2, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Allwinner V3 SoC Targets 1080p60 Action Cameras, Supports Linux or Camdroid OS

I’ve previously written about Allwinner V10 and V15 SoC for video applications such as cameras, digital video recorder, and so on. So far, I’ve not found devices based on these, but Allwinner already announced another V-series processor with Allwinner V3 designed for Action camera recording up to 1080p resolution at 70 frames per second. Key specifications are listed below: CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 @1.2GHz Memory 16-bit DDR3/LPDDR3/DDR3L SDRAM controller, up to 1333Mbps 16-bit DDR2 up to 800Mbps, 16-bit LPDDR2 up to 1066Mbps up to 2GB RAM Video / Picture Up to 1080p@60fps or 2-channel 1080p@30fps H.264 video encoding 8M JPEG encoding H.264 1080p@60fps decoding, MJPEG 1080@30fps decoding Integrated ISP up to 8M pixels (HawkView ISP) 2 channel outputs for display and encoding respectively Supports various input and output formats Supports AE/AF/AWB Saturation adjustment, 2D/3D noise reduction, defect pixel correction, and distortion correction Audio Codec Integrated 92dB audio codec 2x ADC […]