CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

March 9, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Calaos is an Open Source Home Automation Suite for Raspberry Pi, Allwinner A10/A20 and x86 Platforms

Calaos is a Linux based home automation software released under GPLv3 license that works on Raspberry Pi, some Allwinner platforms like Cubiebaord 1/2, Mele A1000(G)/A2000, as well as x86 / amd64 hardware platforms that allows you control switches & lights in the rooms of your home or office, control your music, and manage security cameras.. The developers have recently released Calaos v2.0, the first stable release, so it’s a good time to have a look. The software stack is comprised of 6 main components: Calaos Server – Daemon that exports the state of the house via a JSON protocol. It can currently manage the following hardware components and protocols: Wago’s PLC, with digital or analog I/O, DALI or DMX light bus IPX800 web relay board GCE Electronics Eco Devices used to monitor power consumption. Web API 1-Wire, X10 Zibase I/O GPIO (Linux based GPIO, for direct use of RaspberryPI GPIO […]

March 9, 2015March 11, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 229 Comments

Giveaway Week – Nagrace HPH NT-V6 Android TV Box

That’s the beginning of the new giveaway week that will take place between on March 9 – 15, with one device given away every day. I’ll start with a bang with Nagrace HPH-NTV6, an Android TV box powered by Rockchip RK3288 SoC with 4GB RAM and 32GB Flash. In my initial HPH NT-V6 review, I found the device to have very good performance, but at the time XBMC support was rather weak on RK3288, and the device had serious Ethernet issues. Since then XBMC / Kodi / SPMC has greatly improves, and the company recently released a new firmware that fixes the critical Ethernet performance bug, so in 2015 it has become a much better device. There’s also a Ubuntu / Android dual boot image. You can check out HPH NT-V6 unboxing post for more pictures. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. Other rules are as follows: […]

March 8, 2015December 1, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Rocketbook Takes Your Written Notes to the Cloud, Erases in Your Microwave Oven (Crowdfunding)

Maybe I’m old style, but I still prefer taking notes with pen and paper rather than typing on a computer. That means I need to buy some notebooks (the ones made of paper) from time to time, and once they are full I store them away. But now you can combine the good old written notes with the cloud thanks to RocketBook, a standard looking notebook combined with a mobile app that will scan your notes and send them to various cloud services, and more amazingly it’s re-usable since you can erase by putting in 30 seconds your microwave. I was perplexed at first, as it looked like a scam to me. But finally, I’m pretty sure it’s not since it’s using existing technology, namely Pilot Frixion pens. They looks like standard ball-point pens, but they use a “thermo-sensitive gel ink formula” that can be erased with friction, and they […]

March 7, 2015February 1, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Sigrok and Pulseview in Ubuntu 14.04 with UNI-T UT61E Digital Multimeter

A couple of months ago, I received a new digital multimeter UNI-T UT61E that can send data to a computer via a serial cable, and allows you draw some nice charts. I’ve already done that in Windows 7 with the provided tools, and reported on the power consumption of some Chinese Android TV boxes. However, since I use Ubuntu 14.04 as my main operating system, Linux based tools would be more convenient, and open source sigrok-cli command line client and its graphical interface pulseview are supposed to support UT61E DMM, so I had to give it a try. A Quick Look at UNI-T UT61 Digital Multimeter Before going into Sigrok, I’ll quickly show what the multimeter received from DealExtreme . It took longer than expected to ship because of of included 9V battery, and at the first shipping attempt it was returned to DX, but after 8 weeks or so, […]

March 6, 2015June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

How to Build a Single Kernel Module (Driver) in Ubuntu

When I bought UNI-T UT61E digital multimeter, I planned to to use the open source tool Sigrok to capture voltage, current or resistance data with my Ubuntu 14.04 machine. Unfortunately, it was just not working for me and I kept getting some “Invalid function byte” error messages, so I asked on Sigrok mailing list, and since it worked for others, I was in big troubles. It turned out the RS-232 to USB dongle I used:

idVendor           0x1a86 QinHeng Electronics
idProduct          0x7523 HL-340 USB-Serial adapter

1 2	idVendor 0x1a86 QinHeng Electronics idProduct 0x7523 HL-340 USB-Serial adapter

was most likely to culprit, so I decided to buy another random USB to serial dongle on eBay, and after a few weeks I received it only to find out it had the exact same VID:PID, so I was out of luck. Finally, I gave up on Sigrok on Linux, and tested the power consumption of some Rockchip RK3288 & Amlogic S802 devices in a Windows 7 virtual machine running in my Ubuntu 14.04 […]

March 6, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Compulab Utilite2 Android / Ubuntu mini PC is Now Up for Sale for $192 and Up

Compulab Utilite2 is a new family of mini PCs powered vt Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad core Krait 300 processor, with 2GB RAM, 4GB eMMC and optional mSATA storage that runs Android 4.4 or Ubuntu Linaro, with CM-QS600 SoM found in the device being officially supported by Linaro. Utilite2 Standard 4G and Standard 4G + 32SSD (or just SSD for short) are now listed on UK based TinyGreenPC for respectively £158.00 ($241) and £181.00 ($276), but the two models can also be bought direct on Compulab website for $192 and $229 with a 4 weeks lead time. Utilite2 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 APQ8064 quad-core Krait 300 @ 1.7GHz with Adreno 320 GPU compliant with OpenGL ES 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0 and OpenCL System Memory – 2GB DDR3-1066 Storage – 4GB eMMC, mSATA socket (mini-PCie form-factor, populated with 32 GB SSD on SSD model), and micro-SD slot up to […]

March 5, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

DonglePi is a USB Dongle with a Raspberry Pi Header for your PC

While the newer Raspberry Pi A+, B+ and B2 boards feature the new 40-pin connector, the Raspberry Pi boards Model A and B have a 26-pin expansion header, but both are use to access GPIOs, UART, SPI, I2C and interface with external hardware, and many add-ons boards have been developed for the Raspberry Pi. But what if you’d like to use R-Pi add-ons board on your PC, or instead you are developing your own add-on board, but would like to do so directly on your PC for convenience? DonglePi is the answer. It’s a small USB dongle with Atmel SAMD21 MCU and a 26-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header, that you could use connect to your Android/Linux/Windows PC to play with GPIO, I2C, SPI, Serial, PWM just like on a Raspberry Pi, and using RPi/GPIO or smbus Python libraries for programming. The project is still in development, and so far most […]

March 5, 2015March 7, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

iConsole Micro Intel Atom TV Stick To Run Android 5.0 based Console OS

Console Inc., previously Mobile Media Ventures, Inc., is the company developing Console OS operating system based on Android 4.4 / 5.0 for Intel platforms that includes customizations for a better desktop experience, and you can already try the preview version of Console OS Standard for free on some Intel hardware, with another paid version to become available at the time of the stable release. The company has now announced iConsole Micro a Console OS HDMI TV Stick based on a quad core Intel Atom processor that looks very much like MeegoPad T01, but it’s said to be based on Intel Compute Stick technology. iConsole Micro specifications have not been fully released, but here’s what we know so far: SoC – Unnamed Intel Atom 64-bit quad core processor System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 32 GB eMMC + micro SD slot up to 128GB (160GB in total) Video & […]