CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 15, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

LeTV Smartphones Feature USB Type C connectors, Mediatek Helio X10 and Snapdragon 810 Processors

LeTV has launched three new smartphones namely LeTV S1, LeTV S1 Pro, LeTV Max with zero bezel on its sides, a new USB type C reversible connector, and powered by Mediatek Helio X10 octa core Cortex A53 processor (S1) and Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 big.LITTLE octa core Cortex A53 & A57 processor (S1 Pro & Max) combined with 3 to 4GB RAM, and up to 128GB internal storage. LeTV smartphones specifications: SoC S1 – Mediatek Helio X10 (MT6795) octa core Cortex A53 @ 2.2 Ghz with PowerVR G6200 GPU @ 700 MHz S1 Pro & Max – Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 quad core Cortex A53 + quad core Cortex A57 in big.LITTLE configuration with Adreno 430 GPU System Memory S1 – 3 GB LPDDR3 S1 Pro & Max – 4 GB LPDDR4 Storage S1 – 16, 32 or 64 GB eMMC 5.0 S1 Pro – 32 or 64 GB eMMC 5.0 Max […]

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Mifree HX-V5 Bluetooth Smart Fitness Tracker sells for $14

Mifree HX-V5 is a waterproof Bluetooth 4.0 activity tracker with fitness tracking and sleep monitoring functions just like Vidonn X5, except the device bring the price level to a new low, as it sells for just $14 including shipping on GeekBuying, and currently about $20 on Aliexpress, but there are few sellers, and more may come up around the $15 mark. HX-V5 smart band specifications differ depending on the sites too, not for the user exposed features, but for the internals [Update: GeekBuying told me they were given the wrong information, so I updated the specs accordingly): SoC – TI CC2541 Bluetooth SoC Storage – 4MB flash, enough to preserve 60 days of data Display – 0.91″ OLED display, 128×32 pixels Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0 LE Sensors – 3-axis MEMS sensor IP Rating – IP67 (unlikely IMHO) Battery – 3.7V/70mAh Li-ion battery, good for 10 to 12 days. 2 to 3 hours charging time. Dimensions […]

April 14, 2015April 15, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

HPC Performance & Power Usage Comparison – Intel Xeon E3 vs Intel Atom C2720 vs Applied Micro X-Gene 1 vs IBM Power 8

Last year, the CERN published a paper comparing Applied Micro X-Gene (64-bit ARM) vs Intel Xeon (64-bit x86) Performance and Power Usage, and they’ve now added IBM Power 8 and Intel Atom Avoton C2750 processor to the mix in a new presentation entitled “A look beyond x86: OpenPOWER & AArch64“. So four systems based on Intel Xeon E3-1285L, Intel Atom C2750, Applied Micro X-Gene 1, and IBM Power 8 were compared, all running Fedora 21, except the HP Moonshot 1500 ARM plarform running Ubuntu 14.04 and an older kernel. All four systems use gcc 4.9.2, and Racktivity intelligent PDUs were used for power measurement. I’ll just share some of their results, you can read the presentation, or go through the benchmark results to find out more. HEP-SPEC06 is a new High Energy Physics (HEP) benchmark for measuring CPU performance developed by the HEPiX Benchmarking Working Group, and here it’s not […]

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

AtHome Video Streamer App Transforms Android TV Boxes into IP Security Cameras

Some Android mini PCs come with cameras, for example Measy U2C or CS928, but depending on firmware support, most will also take a USB webcam, and the obvious application is for video conferencing with Skype or Google Hangout. But I’ve just found out an app called “AtHome Video Streamer” can transform any Android device with camera support into as IP camera for security or monitoring. The app will show with the name AVS, and it should detect your camera automatically, and show a live feed. I installed the app in Zidoo X9 TV box to which I connected a UVC USB camera in order to monitor… my chameleon plush / pillow. X9 camera support might need to be improved, as I lost access to the webcam a few times. You don’t have many options in AVS app, except Dimming the screen, and change the streamer name, username and/or password. So […]

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

lowRISC Open Source SoC Project Announces its First Release with Tutorials for Simulators and Zedboard

lowRISC project aims to produce a completely open-source SoC (System-on-Chip) based on the 64-bit RISC-V instruction set architecture, as well as a corresponding development board, thus eventually producing a fully open hardware systems. The project has now announced its first release “tagged memory preview release” with a tutorial explaining how this has all been designed, and how to run simulations with software tools, or FPGA boards such as Zedboard. The project is based on Rocket core, written in Chisel language by the RISC-V team at UC Berkeley. Chisel can generate code to produce a cycle-accurate C++ emulator, Verilog optimised for FPGAs or Verilog for use in an ASIC flow.If you want to try it out, you’ll need a Linux machine, preferably running Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, with GNU GCC 4.8 installed, and follow the tutorial in order to get the source code, and build tools such as riscv64-unknown-elf-gcc compiler, and […]

April 13, 2015April 13, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments

How to Program STMicro STM8S $1 Board in Linux

In January, I discovered there was such thing as a one dollar development board based on STMicro STM8S103F3P6 8-bit MCU with 1KB SRAM, 8KB flash, and 640 bytes EEPROM, some GPIOs as well as I2C, UART, SPI, ADC, and PWM signals. Links to documentation and source code were provided, but development tools were only Windows based. However, one of my reader informed me SDCC (Small Devices C Compiler) supported STM8, and development in Linux should be feasible. So I decided to buy the board on eBay for $1.62, as well as an ST_link V2 programmer for STM8 / STM32 for $4.52 in order to flash the firmware. The board came pretty quickly, i.e. within 2 to 3 weeks. But due to a lost package, the programmer took nearly 3 months to reach me, as the seller had to re-send after I failed to receive it within 2 months. It comes […]

April 13, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Perseus Video Codec Claims 2 to 3 Times Better Compression than H.265 using Legacy Hardware

H.265 (aka HEVC) is supposed to half the video bandwidth / bitrate required compared to H.264 by delivering the same quality, and VP9 should also offer equivalent compression, but it’s just not as broadly supported in media processors. UK based V-Nova claims its Perseus codec can even beat that, by providing 2 to 3 times better compression than H.265 thanks to a new approach to video encoding, that allow the codec to leverage existing hardware, meaning it can be encoded with existing computers, and decoded by leveraging the CPU and GPU parallel processing capabilities in existing mobile & computing devices. Perseus codec highlights: Highly efficient – >3x compression vs. state-of-the-art in practical use cases. Benefits further increase with increasing resolutions & frame rates. Extremely fast – Significant processing time reduction thanks to massively parallel architecture. Designed to take advantage of modern hardware Multi-scale (continuously hierarchical) – Single bit stream for […]

April 12, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ARDHAT adds Arduino Shield Compatibility, an ISM Band Radio to Raspberry Pi and ODROID-C1 Boards (Crowdfunding)

NinjaBlocks created Pi Crust add-ons board adding a 433MHz radio and Arduino compatibility to the Raspberry Pi Model A & B a few years ago, but the product has since been removed from their store. But a startup called ubIQio has now created a similar product compatible with Raspberry Pi Model A+, B+ and B2, as well as ODROID-C1 which also comes with a 40-pin R-Pi header. The ARDHAT board is a HAT compatible add-on board with an Atmel MCU, Arduino headers, as well as an optional long range mesh ISM radio (433, 868 and 915 MHz) and various sensors. There are four versions of the board: Basic Ardhat, Ardhat-I, and Ardhat-W and Ultra, which share the following specifications: MCU – Atmel MCU @ 16MHz Headers and I/Os Arduino compatible header accepting 5V Arduino shields 12 ch PWM O/P, 6 ch analog I/P Real-time Clock Programmable Power/Navigation combo switch Programmable […]