CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 29, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

CloudProject Air X1 and Air S1 Intel Bay Trail Mini PCs to Support Windows 8.1, Android 4.4, and Linux Distributions

Lots of Intel Atom Z3735 based mini PCs have been announced, and some such as MeegoPad T01 have already ended up in the hands of end users, but most of them are running Windows 8.1 with bing, with some featuring a dual boot image with Windows and Android, but no company has yet committed to release one supporting a Linux desktop distribution. This may change thanks to CloudProject Air X1 and Air S1 mini PCs that already support Windows 8.1 (with bing or pro), and Android 4.4.4, but the company is also working on a Linux port, and both models will be available in consumers and enterprise editions. Air X1 is the black mini PC, and Air S1 an HDMI stick stick, both powered by Intel Atom Z3735F processor, and they share most of the same specifications: SoC – Intel Atom Z3735F “Bay Trail” quad core processor @ 1.33 GHz […]

December 29, 2014December 29, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

WeTek Play Review with Android 4.2.2 Firmware v1.1.1

I had already reviewed WeTek Play Android DVB-S2 STB this summer, but at the time it was still an early sample, so the company asked me to review it again with the latest firmware that includes bug fixes and new features such as WeCloud Antenna IPTV service with over 180 Live TV channels, now that they’ve officially launched WeTek Play with either a DVB-S2 tuner as in my sample, a DVB-T/T2/C tuner, or no tuner at all. You can find pictures of WeTek Play in my unboxing post. As usual the review will include my first impressions, video testing, and various benchmark, but I’ll also have sections for WeCloud Antenna Live TV over IP service, and WeTek Theater for live TV from my satellite dish. OTA Firmware Update But first of all, I’ll test OTA firmware update, as many companies claim to support OTA updates, but you often end up […]

December 28, 2014December 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

How to Install Ubuntu ARM64 on Nexus 9 Tablet

HTC Nexus 9 is one of the first 64-bit ARM platform with powerful ARMv8 cores (e.g. not Cortex A53) that both commercially available, and relatively affordable at $399 to $599, at least significantly cheaper than the server boards such as Applied Micro X-C1. The tablet comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop, but for those of you who wish to have an ARM64 platform running Ubuntu or other 64-bit Linux operating systems, Ubuntu installation instructions provided by Ryan Houdek, Dolphin emulator developer, might come handy, especially it won’t affect your Android installation provided you have already unlocked your bootloader. The instructions are fairly long so I won’t reproduce them all here, so I recommend you check the detailed instructions on XDA, but the short summary below may give an idea of the amount of work needed: Install dependencies such as Aarch64 toolchain:

sudo apt-get install gcc g++ git gcc-4.9-aarch64-linux-gnu g++-4.9-aarch64-linux-gnu

1	sudo apt-get install gcc g++ git gcc-4.9-aarch64-linux-gnu g++-4.9-aarch64-linux-gnu

Build a initramfs with buildroot. You’ll need to enable […]

December 27, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Best Android Mini PCs Awards of 2014

I’ve reviewed quite a few Android media players this year, and as 2014 comes to an end, I thought it might be worth writing a best of 2014. But it’s difficult to announce an overall winner since all have some flaws one way or another, I’ll classified by categories: Best Ethernet, Best Internal Storage, … a bit like for “Oscars ceremony awards, based mostly on objective results from my tests. However, and somewhat oddly for a media player, I won’t select any TV boxes based on their video playback capabilities, as so far I haven’t found one that can play most 4K / H.265 videos reasonably well in Kodi, and video playback tests are also subjective. This is obviously a flawed contest as they all are, because in order to be nominated, the media player must have been reviewed on CNX Software. But it should be fun anyway, so let’s […]

December 26, 2014January 7, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 44 Comments

Vensmile iPC002 is an Ultra Thin Windows 8.1 mini PC with a 7,000 mAh Battery

Several mini PCs and sticks based on Intel Atom Z3735f/g tablet processors have been announced in the last few months, including MeegoPad T01 and MINIX NEO Z64. But iPC002 introduced to me by VISSON, is a little different, as it includes most features of a tablet with a thin form factor, and an internal battery, but the display, and adds full sized USB ports. iPC002 specifications: SoC – Intel Atom Z3735F “Bay Trail” quad core processor @ 1.33 GHz (Bust freq: 1.83 GHz) with Intel HD graphics Gen 7 (2W TDP) System Memory – 2 GB DDR3L Storage – 32 GB eMMC + micro SD slot Video Output – micro HDMI Audio I/O – micro HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, and built-in microphone Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG 2.0 port Misc – Volume Up/Down Key, Power Key […]

December 24, 2014December 24, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

WebGL Demos in Radxa Rock Pro Board Running Firefox OS 2.1

Radxa Rock Pro is a development board powered by Rockchip RK3188 quad core Cortex A9 processor, and although 2D/3D graphics acceleration via Mali-400MP4 is shown to be possible in Linux with tools like es2gears and glmark2-es2, full integration is seldom worked on, and things like WebGL may not work in web browsers. But thanks to the work of naobsd and MatchStick team, Firefox OS has been ported to this Rockchip development board, and as you’ll see in the video below, some WebGL demos work amazingly well. The hardware setup for this demo is comprised of Radxa Rock Pro development board, a 7″ LCD display with touchscreen, and some lego bricks :). WebGL demos can be found @ https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/demos/tag/tech:webgl, so you could try your own platform to see how it performs. If you own a Radxa Board Pro (or Lite), you can even build Firefox OS by yourself by following the […]

December 24, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Full Version of Android 5.0 Ported to Nexus Player

Asus Nexus Player is the first consumer device running Android TV, which itself is a subset of Android 5.0 but focusing on usability and user experience for the TV. That means anything that works on this Intel based media player should work pretty well, but for the same reasons Android TV has limited features compared to Android 5.0 operating system used in tablets or smartphones. So the developer of Droidmote app decided to get a Nexus Player, and port the full version of Android 5.0 to it, and called it Nexus Player LolliRock. The Linux kernel used in this firmware support NTFS, NFS, CIFS, and F2FS file systems as well as USB webcam and USB audio, and LolliRock is based on AOSP source code, includes Google Play, and you can transfer files between the device and your PC via USB. It’s still a preliminary version, and a few things still […]

December 24, 2014December 24, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Kodi 14.0 Helix Release

XBMC (name) is definitely dead, as developers of the popular open source “entertainment center” project have announced the first stable Kodi release – the new name of XBMC – with XBMC 14.0 Helix. Key changes and new features include: Update to FFmpeg 2.4.4 – Adds H.265 / HEVC and VP9 video codecs support. Software decode only. Library Improvements – Scanning speed greatly improved, better UPnP support including with PlanOn and MediaBrowser servers. New Configuration features – Add-on update controls, choice of virtual keyboard layouts for tablets and remote control users in order to support multiple languages. Android, iOS and Embedded – 4K support for Amlogic S802, more ARM SoCs are now supported in Android, fast forward/rewind improvements. Airplay support fixed, except for Android. Freescale i.MX6 support for Kodi Linux. Windows, OSX, and Linux – Audio playback improvements. DXVA video playback has been improved for Windows too. A critical Kodi Linux […]