CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 21, 2018November 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Diskio Pi 13.3″ DIY Tablet Kit for Raspberry Pi – Take 2 on Kickstarter

Diskio Pi was a DIY tablet kit for Raspberry Pi, ODROID-C2/XU4 and other compatible boards with a 13.3″ Full HD display that launched last year on Kickstarter. But the project failed likely due to the high costs (350 Euros and up for early bird pledges without battery nor SBC) and an elevated funding target of 400,000 Euros. But the team did not give up, worked on reducing costs, improved the design, and recently relaunched Diskio Pi on Kickstarter with a more achievable 52,096 Euros target, and reasonable pricing with rewards starting at 189 Euros including VAT. Diskio Pi “basic” DIY tablet kit content and main specifications: Display – Innolux 13.3″ TFT/IPS display with 1920×1080 resolution, WLED backlight + 10-point touch capacitive panel connected over USB 2.0 Video control board with HDMI 1.4 to eDP converter, stereo amplifier, and 2x 1W speakers Daughter board with Genesys USB hub, 9V to 5V/4A […]

November 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Microchip Releases Tiny SAM R34/R35 LoRa SiPs and Development Kit

Microchip has been offering RN2483 & RN2903 LoRa modules for respectively 868 MHz and 915 MHz frequencies for several years, but the company has now announced SAM R34 and SAM R35 LoRa systems-in-package (SiP) that offer similar functionality in a much smaller form factor. Both SiPs integrate a Microchip SAM L21 Arm Cortex-M0+ based MCU,a sub-GHz RF LoRa transceiver operating from 862 to 1020 MHz, and a software stack. That means you don’t need different SiP depending on the region, and the only difference between SAM R34 and SAM R35 is the latter does without a USB interface for lower cost. Microchip SAM R34/R35 key features and specifications: MCU – Arm Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz System Memory – Up to 40 KB RAM including 8KB LP-RAM Storage – Up to 256 KB Flash for application code and stack Wireless Connectivity 862 MHz to 1020 MHz coverage Up to 20 […]

November 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

HiSilicon Hi1620 Server SoC to Features up to 64 Arm “Ares” Cores

A few years ago we covered Hisilicon D02 server board powered by the company’s Hip05 SoC with 16 or 32 Arm Cortex A57 cores. I had not seen any updates since then myself, but HiSilicon has released new “TaiShan” Arm based server SoCs every year, and recently unveiled Hi1620, the world’s first 7nm datacenter Arm processor, featuring 24 to 64 Arm “Ares” cores clocked at up to 3.0 GHz. Ares cores are supposed to greatly improve single thread performance in order to compete with x86 server chips. HiSilicon Hi1620 processors specifications: CPU – 24 to 64 Ares ARMv8.2 cores clocked at 2.4 – 3.0 GHz Cache – L1: 64KB I-cache, 64KB D-cache; L2: 512KB private per core, L3: 24-64 shared among cores (1MB/core) Memory – 8x DDR4 channels up to 3200 MHz Interconnect – Coherent SMP interface for 2S & 4S, 3 ports up to 240 Gbit/s per port I/Os […]

November 20, 2018November 20, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Xiaomi Mi Box Android TV TV Box is Sold for $52.99 (Promo)

Xiaomi recently launched the Mi Box S an update to their popular Xiaomi Mi Box with pretty much the same specifications, but an improved remote control and a lower price of $59 in the US. We also saw promotions as low as $55.99 for the new model. That means there’s very little reason to buy the original Xiaomi Mi box at the normal price now, and it would make sense for companies to offer discounts to get rid off their stock. That’s exactly what GearBest is doing by selling the Xiaomi Mi box TV Box running an official Android TV OS for $52.99 during a flash sale starting now until November 27 23:59 (Beijing Time) with allegedly no limits in quantity for this promotion. Here’s just a quick reminder of the specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X-H quad core ARM Cortex-A53 with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage […]

November 20, 2018November 20, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 47 Comments

ODROID-H2 Intel SBC Launched for $111

Hardkernel introduced ODROID-H2 single board computer with an Intel Celeron J4105 processor last month. The first Intel board from the company supports up to 32GB RAM via two SO-DIMM sockets, as well as M.2 NVME SSDs and SATA drives, and exposes various other ports such as HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort video outputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and more. We already knew most details about the board, except for the price and exact launch date. Hardkernel launched the board today for $111 on their online store with shipments scheduled the start on November 27th. Here are ODROID-H2 specifications again with letters in parenthesis referring to the location on the photo below: SoC – Intel Celeron J4105 quad core processor @ up to 2.3 GHz (real frequency) with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 (A) System Memory – Dual-channel Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) supporting up to 32GB RAM in total (B) Storage – M.2 PCIe […]

November 19, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

BitBumper ESP8266 Flash is a Standalone OTA Update Tool

While it’s possible to perform OTA firmware update of ESP8266 with platformIO, Jochen wanted a standalone program to update the firmware of his ESP8266 based devices, and since he could not find any that satisfied his needs, he decided to write his own ESP8266 standalone OTA update tool: BitBumper ESP8266 Flash. The tools work in the local network or over the Internet, and the firmware needs to support PlatformIO OTA update mechanism with the code having the line:

ArduinoOTA.begin();

1	ArduinoOTA.begin();

If your ESP8266 device is already running such firmware, you just need to load the new firmware in the program, input the IP address and port, and click flash. Jochen programmed BitBumper ESP8266 Flash with Lazarus/Pascal, but as not released the source code at this stage. Instead he shared FlashEsp8266.exe tools for Windows as a freeware program, as well as user and developer documentation here. If somebody needs this tool for […]

November 19, 2018November 19, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

PyGo Wearable Devices Create LoRa Mesh Networks (Crowdfunding)

Pycom has made some interesting IoT boards running MicroPython in the past starting with WiFi capable WiPy in 2015, and followed by various others supporting various wireless standard including Bluetooth, LoRa, Sigfox, and NB-IoT with LoPy and Fipy. The company launched all their boards via crowdfunding campaigns, and they are now back on Kickstarter for their PyGo plug-n-play wearable devices creating PyMesh networks with up to 12km range between nodes, and managed using Pylife mobile app. Typical use cases include basic connectivity (e.g. messaging) in remote areas without cellular access, and assets / pets / kids location tracking, There are two version of PyGo: PyGo1 with mesh networking only, and PyGo2 that adds cellular network access. Pygo hardware specifications: SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32 dual core WiFi 4 + BLE SoC System Memory – 64 Mbit (8MB) RAM Storage – 8MB flash Display – 128×36 OLED display Connectivity PyMesh up […]

November 19, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Ubuntu 18.04 To Get 10 Years Long Term Support

Canonical releases new Ubuntu versions every six months, but most of those are then supported for 9 months only. If you want long term support, you need to install the LTS (Long Term Support) version released every two years such as Ubuntu 16.04 or Ubuntu 18.04 which are supported (for free) for 5 years. If for whatever reasons you cannot or do not want to update after 5 years, the system will not get any security fixes, unless you purchase a Ubuntu Advantage subscription with Extended Security Maintenance, which allows you for example to run a fully supported Ubuntu 12.04 (Server) until April 2020 (8-year support). But this will change for the better, as ZDNet reports that Mark Shuttleworth told the audience at a keynote at the OpenStack Summit in Berlin that Ubuntu 18.04 support will be extended from 5 years to 10 years “In part because of the very […]