CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 5, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

Between the AllWinner A10 and AllWinner A13 processors, there’s now an alternative. AllWinner A10s is based on AllWinner A13 architecture (sun5i), but adds HDMI and Ethernet MAC which makes it suitable for mini PCs and set-top boxes. The first time I heard about this processor was in August with IP878 mini PC, and in October, one reader (Alex) informed me AllWinner had posted more details about his new processor. Here are the key features of this (relatively) new SoC: CPU/GPU – ARM Cortex-A8 Core with 32KB D-Cache/ 32KB I-Cache / 256KB L2 Cache, and Mali-400 VPU HD Video Decoding 1080p@30fps of VP8/6, H.264/H.263, WMV9/VC-1, WMV7/8, MPEG-4/2/1, Xvid codecs HD Video Encoding 1080p@30fps with H.264 codec Video Out – HDMI 1.4 (1080p), Memory Up to 1GB DDR2/DDR3 up to 533MHz (16/32 bits Data Bus) MLC/TLC/SLC/EF-NAND ECC 64-bit Peripherals: USB2.0 OTG, USB2.0 HOST （OHCI/EHCI） SD Card V.3.0, eMMC V.4.2 SPI, TWI and […]

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Diyomate A5 Dual Core Android Set-Top Box Powered by Infotmic iMAPx820 Processor

I’ve been tipped off about a new Android set-top box – Diyomate A5 Dual Core – that features Infotmic iMAPx820 dual core A5 SoC @ 1 GHz with Mali-400 GPU, 1 GB RAM & 4 GB Flash, and runs Android 4.0.3. Here are the specs of this media player: SoC – Infotmic 820 dual Cortex-A5 + dual core Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB NAND Flash + SD card socket Video Output – HDMI and composite Audio Output – HDMI and Stereo audio output Video Codecs – H.263, MPEG1/2, MPEG-ASP, MPEG-AVC(H.264), VC-1, RV, AVS, MJPEG/JPEG, VP8, MVC, VP6(FLV), ETC Audio Codecs – MP3, WMA, M4A (AAC), WAV, OGG, LPCM, FLAC, AC3 and DTS Connectivity: Ethernet – 10/100Mbps Wi-FI – 802.11 b/g/n USB – 2x USB 2.0 Host ports Power supply – 5V/2A AC Adaptor Dimension – 98*98*20 mm Weight – 160 grams Beside featuring 2 Cortex A5 cores up to […]

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Leap Motion Demos: AirHarp and Hands-Free Quadrator

The Leap Motion, a 3D gesture recognition USB device, has been announced in May, but developer kits have only recently been sent out to… developers, and lots of demo has started to pop up, many of which are posted on Leap Motion Facebook page. My favorite demo is the Airharp which, as the name implies, is an harp controlled by finger gestures you do in the “air”, as it demonstrates both the accuracy and responsiveness of the Leap Motion. The project is written by Adam Somers, Senior Software Engineer at Universal Studio and Stanford Alumni, who released both the binary and source code for this demo: AirHarp 0.1 – Binary built against Leap SDK v. 0.6.6 that lets you add & remove strings, cycle through scales and toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode. The source code for the Airharp which uses muskit, a C++ toolkit for music applications, both of which […]

December 4, 2012December 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ZOPO ZP900S Leader Smartphone Unboxing and Review

I’ve just received ZOPO ZP900S smartphone from Pandawill by Fedex. This phablet features a 5.3″ display, MediaTek MTK6577 dual core cortex A9 processor with 512 MB RAM, 4GB flash and runs Android 4.0 (upgradable to Android 4.1 once the firmware is released). This is the lite version of ZOPO ZP900 which comes with 1GB RAM. Both devices look like low cost versions of the Samsung Galaxy Note as you can see from the comparison table below between ZOPO ZP900S, ZOPO ZP900 and Samsung Galaxy Note N7000. ZOPO ZP900S & ZP900 Specifications ZOPO ZP900S Leader ZOPO ZP900 Leader Samsung Galaxy Note CPU Mediatek MTK6577 @ 1GHz Samsung Exynos 4210 @ 1.4 GHz GPU POWERVR SGX531T ARM Mali-400MP RAM 512 MB 1GB 1GB Storage 4 GB Flash + microSD 16GB/32GB Flash + microSD Display 5.3″ IPS 960×540 (qHD) 5.3″ super AMOLED 1280×800 Camera 8MP Rear, 2MP Front 8MP Rear, 2MP Front Wi-Fi […]

December 3, 2012December 3, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Collabora and Fluendo Release GStreamer SDK for Android

Collabora and Fluendo have recently announced the availability of GStreamer’s Software Development Kit for Android, which allows developers to create multimedia playback applications for Android smartphones and tablets using Gstreamer and the Android NDK.. The GStreamer SDK for Android targets Android 2.3.1 Gingerbread or higher (API Level 9 or greater). However, due to some of the restrictions of previous versions of Android, some features such as hardware acceleration are only available on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (API Level 16 up). Normally, you’d need the GStreamer SDK which can be installed on Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian), Windows (XP/Vista/7/8) and Mac OS X (10.6 to 10.8). But for developing Android applications using Gstreamer, you don’t. What you do need first is a typical Android development environment with the latest Android SDK, the latest Android NDK, and optionally, but recommended, the Eclipse IDE with Android ADT and NDK plugins. Once everything is […]

December 3, 2012May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

2D/3D Graphics Linux Demo (X11, EGL, GLES2, Qt4) on AllWinner A10 Tablet

Xlab (Maxim Kouprianov) has tested 2D & 3D capabilities of AllWinner A10 SoC (with Mali-400 GPU) on a Ployer MOMO11 Bird Edition tablet running OpenEmbedded with kernel 3.0.52+ testing X11, EGL, OpenGL ES2 and Qt4 on the platform, and the results are pretty smooth as you can see in the video below, although there appears to be some flickering in LunaSysMgr demo. The tools used in the demos are xfwm4 (Xfce Windows Manager), es2gears_x11, cube (Qt), LunaSysMgr (Qt/WebOS) and glmark2-es2. Qt4 acceleration is done via XlibGL platform which in turns uses X11-EGL. He used the Mali drivers version r3p0 (mali400-gles20-gles11-linux-x11-ump) and xf86-video-mali on sunxi-linux github repository mainly maintained by rz2k. You can get more details on how to build Mali-400 support for AllWinner A10 on http://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400, and GPU benchmark results for A10 show the drivers seem to work as expected.

November 30, 2012December 1, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

$69 ODROID-U & $89 ODROID-U2 Exynos 4412 Development Boards

Hardkernel has just announced 2 tiny quad core development boards based on Exynos 4412 @ 1.4 GHz (as used in Samsung Galaxy S3) and Exynos 4412 Prime @ 1.7 GHz (as used in Samsung Galaxy Note 2) called respectively ODROID-U and ODROID-U2. The other difference is the U version comes with 1 GB RAM, and the U2 version with 2 GB RAM. Here are the specification the ODROID-U and ODROID-U2 boards: Processor – Samsung Exynos4412 @ 1.4 GHz (ODROID-U) or Exynos 4412 Prime @ 1.7 Ghz (ODROID-U2), which can be overclocked respectively to 1.8 GHz and 2 GHz. GPU – Mali-400 clocked at 400MHz (ODROID-U) or 440MHz (ODROID-U2), which can be overclocked respectively to 533 and 633 MHz. System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 DRAM @ 800MHz (ODROID-U) or 2GB @ 880MHz (ODROID-U2) Storage – microSD socket, eMMC connector USB – 2x USB 2.0 Host ports, 1x USB 2.0 device for ADB/mass […]

November 30, 2012February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Kontron Unveils ULP-COM-sA3874i Module Powered by TI Sitara AM3874

Kontron introduced ULP-COM-sA3874i, another family of computer-on-module based on ULP-COM standards, based on Texas Instruments Sitara AM3874 Cortex A8 processors that aims to drive down system costs for ultra-low power SFF (small form factor) solutions in military, industrial automation/HMI, digital signage and medical markets. Here are the technical specifications of this module family: CPU – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3874 Cortex A8 @ 800 MHz Main Memory – On-board 1 or 2 GB DDR3 depending on model. Flash – Onboard Up to 32GB NAND FLASH build option Graphics – Single Channel 18bit,24bit (18bit compatible) LVDS, and HDMI with dual independent displays support. Ethernet – 10/100/1000 MBit Ethernet USB – 2x USB 2.0, USB OTG SATA – 1x SATA Interface Interfaces – GPIO, I²C, 4x I²S, 2x CAN, 2x SPI, 4x UART Camera input – 10bit parallel interface PCI Express / PCI support – 1x PCI Express x1 Lanes Power Supply – […]