Embedded Linux Conference & IoT Summit 2018 Schedule

The Embedded Linux Conference 2018 and the OpenIoT Summit 2018 will jointly take place next month, on March 12 – 14, 2018 in Portland, Oregon, USA. The former is a “vendor-neutral technical conference for companies and developers using Linux in embedded products”, while the latter is a “technical conference for the developers and architects working on industrial IoT”. The Linux Foundation has already published the schedule, and it’s always useful to learn what will be discussed about even for people who won’t attend. With that in mind, here’s my own virtual schedule with some of the talks I find interesting / relevant to this blog. Monday, March 12 10:50 – 11:40 – Progress in the Embedded GPU Ecosystem by Robert Foss, Collabora Ltd. Ten years ago no one would have expected the embedded GPU ecosystem in Linux to be what it is now. Today, a large number of GPUs have […]

BigClown is a Battery Powered Modular Wireless IoT Kit for Makers (Crowdfunding)

BigClown IoT Kit is designed to be as easy to use as building a castle from LEGO bricks or an IKEA cabinet. The open source kit is comprised of a coreboard module with STMicro STM32L0 Cortex M0+ micro-controller, and a sub GHZ (868/915MHz) radio for wireless communication, that accepts one or more compatible modules (currently ~30 different options), and communicate to a gateway such as Raspberry Pi or Turris Omnia where you’d connect BigClown RF USB dongle, although it’s also possible to include a Sigfox module for communication, and , LoRa & NB-IoT module appear to be planned. That’s for the hardware…The kit then connects to your chosen gateway via MQTT, which in turns accesses cloud services such as Ubidots, Microsoft Azure IoT, AWS, IFTTT, etc… , and you can monitor the data or control the kit through a web based dashboard or your own application. Core Module specifications: MCU […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

FOSDEM 2018 Open Source Developers Meeting Schedule

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) occurs every year on the first week-end of February, where developers meet for two days discussing about open source software projects. FOSDEM 2018 will take place on February 3-4 this year with  652 speakers, 684 events, and 57 tracks, an increase over  last year 608 speakers, 653 events, and 54 tracks. There will be 8 main tracks namely: Community, History, Miscellaneous, Performance, Python, Security and Encryption, Space, and Global Diversity CFP Day. There will also be 33 developer rooms, and since the full schedule is now available, I’ll make a virtual schedule mostly based on sessions from the Embedded, mobile, and automotive, Hardware Enablement, and Internet of Things devrooms. Saturday 3, 2018 09:50 – 10:15 – Turning On the Lights with Home Assistant and MQTT by Leon Anavi In this presentation you will learn the exact steps for using MQTT JSON […]

Year 2017 in Review, Top 10 Posts, and Some Fun Stats

2017 is coming to an end, and as I do every year, I’ll take a look back at the year that was on CNX Software. The pace of development boards launches has not slowed down this year, and we get an even wider range from the low-end with Orange Pi or NanoPi boards, to much more powerful ARM boards, and some new entrants like Libre Computer. The same is true for TV boxes, most of which now support 4K HDR, ranging from ultra cheap models selling for less than $20 to higher end Android TV boxes, while mini PCs were dominated by Intel Apollo Lake models, although some Cherry Trail products were also launched. Processor-wise, Amlogic launched more Amlogic S905X derivatives with S905W/S905D/S905Z, which are popular in the TV box market. Rockchip’s most interesting processor this year was RK3328 quad core Cortex A53 processor designed for 4K HDR Android TV […]

Gumstix AutoBSP Automatically Generates Device Tree Files for Hardware Designed with Geppetto

Gumstix launched Geppetto Design-To-Order (D2O) system back in 2013, and at the time you could design complete baseboard for their Overo CoMs right in your Chrome or Firefox web browser, and once complete, order the board from the website. The system is meant to save you time, and “design” here does not mean drawing schematics, and laying out PCBs, but instead selecting board size, and adding ports as needed. Since then, the company has added support for more modules, and you can now easily build you own baseboard for Raspberry Pi Compute Module, Technexion PICO-IMX6 module, Toradex Colibri SoM, 96Boards Mezzanine, and they even have Beaglebone Black and 96Board CE or IoT connectors, among others. Support for Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c, Atmel (Arduino) , and STMicro platforms is also being worked on. Their latest feature – AutoBSP – automatically generates device tree files for your custom boards, so you can simply […]

TECHBASE Moduino X Series Industrial IoT Modules / Endpoints are Based on ESP32 WiSoC

We’ve previously covered TECHBASE ModBerry industrial IoT gateways leveraging Raspberry Pi 3, FriendlyELEC NanoPi M1 Plus, or AAEON’s UP Linux boards. The company has now launched Moduino X series modules powered by Espressif ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth SoC to be used as end points together with their ModBerry gateways. Two models have been developed so far, namely Moduino X1 and X2, with the following specifications: Wireless Module – ESP32-WROVER with ESP32 dual-core Tensilica LX6 processor @ 240 MHz, 4MB pSRAM (512KB as option), 4MB SPI flash; External Storage – X2 only: micro SD card slot Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 16 Mbps + Bluetooth 4.2 LE with u.FL antenna connector X2 only: 10/100M Ethernet Options: LoRa (Semtech SX1272); Sigfox (TI CC1125); LTE Cat M1/NB1; Zigbee Serial – 2x RS-232/485 Display – Optional 0.96″ OLED display with 128×64 resolution Expansion I/Os 4x Digital I/O (0 ~ 3V) 2x Analog Input: […]

Intel Arc Graphics Technology

Embedded Systems Conference 2017 Schedule – May 3-4

The Embedded Systems Conference 2017 will take place over two days in Boston, US on May 3-4, and the organizers have published the schedule of the event. Even if you’re not going to attend, you’ll often learn something or find new information by just checking out the talks and abstracts, so I’ve created my own virtual schedule with some of the most interesting sessions. Wednesday, May 3rd 08:00 – 08:45 – Combining OpenCV and High Level Synthesis to Accelerate your FPGA / SoC EV Application by Adam Taylor, Adiuvo Engineering & Training Ltd This session will demonstrate how you can combine commonly used Open source frameworks such as OpenCV with High Level Synthesis to generate a embedded vision system using FPGA / SoC. The combination of OpenCV and HLS allows for a much faster algorithm development time and consequently a faster time to market for the end application. 09:00 – 09:45 […]

Bosch Rexroth IndraControl XM22 PLC Runs Ubuntu Core IoT, Supports Industrial Apps

Canonical wants you to run Ubuntu apps (snaps) for everything and on all types of devices, not only on your computer or smartphone. For example, base station apps (4G LTE, Bluetooth, LoRa…) will soon be able to run on LimeSDR board, the company is pushing for branded app stores, like the one for Orange Pi Boards, and now they have introduced the concept of App Logic Controllers (ALC) which are PLC devices running apps, thus bringing the concept of apps to the industrial world. Bosch Rexroth demonstrated the solution at Embedded World 2017 on their IndraControl XM22 PLC running Ubuntu Core. Let’s have a look at the hardware first with IndraControl XM22 specifications: Processor – Intel Atom E620 one core / two threads processor @ 600 / 1300 MHz (3.3W TDP) Memory – 512 MB RAM Storage – likely some flash + SD card slot Networking Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC