TTGO-T-Beam

Design ESP32 LoRa GPS Tracker Applications with TTGO T-Beam Board

TTGO introduced a small ESP32 LoRa board with OLED display last year that is still selling  for around $14 shipped. But the company is now back with a similar board called TTGO T-Beam that does without the display, but adds GPS support, and a 18650 battery holder, so it should be ideally suited for all sorts of LoRa GPS tracking applications. TTGO T-Beam board specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32 dual core Xtensa LX6 processor with WiFi and Bluetooth Memory – PSRAM Storage – 4MB SPI flash Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 150 Mbps +  Bluetooth 4.2 Classic and LE with “3D antenna” soldered on PCB LoRa 433, 868, and 915 MHz versions with SMA antenna Transmit current – 120 mA @ +20dBm; 90 mA @ +17dBm; 29mA @ +13dBm Receive sensitivity -139dBm with LoRa & 62.5Khz & SF=12 & 146bps -136dBm with LoRa & 125Khz & SF=12 & 293bps […]

Vivo TOF 3D Sensing Technology

Vivo Announces TOF 3D Sensing Technology with 300,000 Sensor Points

Earlier this year, I reviewed a TOF sensor board based on STMicro VL52L0X Time-of-Flight ranging sensor that allows to measure distance accurately up to 2 meter using a 940 nm laser and a detection array with a few points to measure the time it takes for the light to travel and determine the distance. VIVO has showcased a smartphone solution leveraging time-of-flight technology at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2018, but instead of using it for 2D measurements with a small detection array, their TOF 3D Sensing Technology creates 3D scans of objects using a whopping 300,000 sensor points. The technology will enable features & applications such as facial, gesture and motion recognition, 3D photography and extended/augmented reality. Vivo’s TOF 3D Sensing solution is said to deliver 10 times more depth of information than existing Structured Light Technology, for example used for FaceID in the latest iPhones. Vivo’s technology allows 3D […]


Toradex-Embedded-Linux

Visual Studio 2017 with an Embedded Linux Arm Device

This is a non-sponsored guest post written by Marc Goodner: Principal Program Manager, Microsoft, and Jeremias Cordoba: Innovation Engineer, Toradex. Today many embedded devices run some flavor of Linux as their primary operating system. This poses a challenge to developers who run Windows on their development machine. This article explains a new way to use the latest Visual Studio for C++ development on an embedded Arm Devices from a Windows Host PC using containers for the build environment. The device we are deploying to is from the Toradex Colibri Family of System on Modules using the NXP i.MX 6ULL SoC, which features an Arm Cortex A-7. As a demo project, we will connect a Bluetooth Sensor with the Toradex Colibri Module. Please note that Visual Studio support for this case is in an early state, you will see improvements from Microsoft and Toradex in the coming months. Prerequisites Colibri i.MX 6ULL […]

Three Add-on Boards for UP Board and UP Squared – UP-AUDIO HAT, UP-CAMERA HAT, UP-POE HAT

AAEON has announced three add-on boards for their Intel based UP board (Cherry Trail) and UP Squared board (Apollo Lake): UP-AUDIO HAT –  Features external ports for a microphone and speakers/headphones UP-CAMERA HAT – Comes with two FPC/FFC connectors for 2M security camera UP-POE HAT – Adds WAN and LAN Gigabit Ethernet ports and PoE support UP-AUDIO HAT AAEON’s UP-Audio HAT currently only works with UP board, and features the following: Audio Codec – Realtek ALC5672 3.5mm Audio Jacks – 1x Line out, 1x MIC Headers – 2x speaker Built-in Components – 2x digital microphones, 1x buzzer Connects to board via 40-pin GPIO female header Dimensions – 85 mm x 56 mm The board is supported in Windows 10, Android 6, and Ubuntu 16.04. UP-CAMERA HAT The camera board works with UP Board, UP Squared and UP Core boards. UP-CAMERA HAT specifications & features: 2x MIPI CSI-2/ DSI DPHY Re-timer […]

Armbian-Services

Armbian History, Infrastructure, and Progress Report

Many of us rely on Armbian Debian and Ubuntu images for our cheap Arm development boards since they usually offer better support than vendor supplied firmware images. The community has just updated Armbian website, but the thing that caught my eye in the announcement was a link to a 45-minute presentation by Igor Pečovnik, working full-time on the project, that details the history about Armbian, and provides a relatively recent progress update as it was made at BalCCon – Balkan Computer Congress in November 2017. I’ve embedded the video further below, but first I’ll provide summary of the key point made during the presentation. It all started with Cubieboard (A20) as Igor was trying to fix some issues, and learn how to improve software support on the board. Several people joined his efforts on Cubieboard forums, and eventually Armbian website launched in mid 2014 running on the Cubieboard then ODROID-XU4 […]

Measy-RC220

Measy RCA220 is a $35 Wireless AV Transmitter / Receiver Kit with a 200m Range

There are several ways to send video & audio data over a distance without using long cables, from professional DVB-T transmitters with up to 10km range, to cheaper DIY SDR solutions with a shorter range , and HDMI transmitters leveraging your existing electrical cables. Those all work for different target applications (drones, video signal extender), but cost at least a few hundred dollars. If you just intend to transmit composite video (PAL/NTSC) and audio within a house or building, Measy RCA220 will be a more cost effective solution with a range of up to 200 meters. Measy RCA220 AV transmitter / receiver specifications: Connectivity – 2.4GHz wireless transmission with up to 200m range; built-in antenna, 8x selectable channels Video / Audio Ports Transmitter – RCA composite input, 2x RCA L/R audio input Receiver – RCA composite output, 2x RCA L/R audio output Misc – IR jack, channel selection button, front […]

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Ugoos Releases Android 7.1.2 Nougat (Beta) for Rockchip RK3288 TV Boxes

Rockchip RK3288 quad core Arm Cortex A17 processor was first released in early 2014 with Android 4.4, and TV boxes that are still sold with the processor – e.g. Lenovo G66 – often still come with Android 4.4 or Android 5.1, and development boards do barely better as ASUS Tinker Board supports Android 6.0.1, while Firefly-RK3288 may never get its expected Marshmallow update. However, Ugoos decided to support their RK3288 TV boxes for a longer time, and has now released a beta version of Android 7.1.2 firmware for Ugoos UM3, UT3, and UT3s TV boxes. Some of the features and Ugoos specific settings available in the firmware include: CIFS & NFS Clients Support, Samba Server Masked HDMI Screen Rotation Root access Hardware Monitor Wireless Assistant Gamepad Settings Debug Settings User Scripts USB Mode Settings If you want more details about what each setting does, read the post about Ugoos settings. […]

Linux 4.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.16: So the take from final week of the 4.16 release looks a lot like rc7, in that about half of it is networking. If it wasn’t for that, it would all be very small and calm. We had a number of fixes and cleanups elsewhere, but none of it made me go “uhhuh, better let this soak for another week”. And davem didn’t think the networking was a reason to delay the release, so I’m not. End result: 4.16 is out, and the merge window for 4.17 is open and I’ll start doing pull requests tomorrow. Outside of networking, most of the last week was various arch fixlets (powerpc, arm, x86, arm64), some driver fixes (mainly scsi and rdma) and misc other noise (documentation, vm, perf). The appended shortlog gives an overview of the details (again, this is only the small stuff in […]

Boardcon MINI1126B-P AI vision system-on-module wit Rockchip RV1126B-P SoC