CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

August 13, 2018August 13, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Dragino LoRaST M.2 LoRa Card Convert Compatible Platforms into LoRa Nodes

Modern motherboards or single board computers often expose mPCIe or M.2 / NGFF socket, and we’ve seen it was possible to easily add a LoRa radio using RAK833 mPCIe LoRaWAN gateway card to hardware with an mPCIe (USB/SPI) socket. You can now do something similar with Dragino LoRaST M.2 LoRa card by inserting into a spare M.2 / NGFF socket. There’s an important distinction however, as while RAK833 is designed for LoRa gateways, LoRaST is based on SX1276/SX1278 for LoRa end nodes. Dragino LoRaST M.2 LoRa card specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32L072CZT6 Arm Cortex M0+ MCU @ 32 MHz with 192 KB flash, 20 KB of RAM, 6 KB data EEPROM LoRa Connectivity Semtech SX1276/78 LoRa Wireless Modem Available Bands – 433/868/915/920 Mhz Built-in antenna or optional external antenna via I-PEX connector Host interface – Standard M.2 (NGFF) interface Supply Voltage – 1.8V ~ 3.6V Dimensions – 22 x 42 […]

August 12, 2018February 29, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

NanoPC-T4 Review with Android 7.1 Firmware

NanoPC-T4 is one of the many Rockchip RK3399 SBCs now available, and as we’ve seen in the “unboxing review” the company sent me two samples. So far, I’ve been reviewing RK3399 boards with Linux distributions in posts such as “Checking Out Debian and Linux SDK for VideoStrong VS-RD-RK3399 Board” and more recently “AIO-3399J Development Board Review with Ubuntu 16.04“. But in this NanoPC-T4 review, I’ll switch to Android, specifically Android 7.1, as I’ll soon try Android 8.1 on Firefly-RK3399 which might make for an interesting comparison between the two versions of the OS, before switching to Linux with Pine64 RockPro64 board which I received yesterday. First Boot with NanoPC-T4 Development Board I had already assembled the board in the first part of the review, so I just added the two WiFi antennas, the optional USB to serial debug board, and connected various accessories and cables from left to right: USB […]

August 12, 2018August 12, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

How to Build an Orange Pi Zero LoRa Gateway

LoRa gateways tend to be fairly expensive, especially because of the radio part, but anything that may help lower the cost is probably welcomed. And one way to to do that is to use dirt cheap boards like Orange Pi Zero as Edzelf did, by combining the low cost Arm Linux board ($15 shipped) with Rak wireless RAK831 concentrator module kit ($143) via a custom cable, and a power supply board. All assembled into a metal case. RAK831 communicates with Orange Pi Zero over an SPI connection. While some other Orange Pi boards are suitable for the project, note that Orange Pi Zero Plus lacks a spare SPI interface, and can’t be used with this particular application. A fan was also added for cooling, a well as a USB serial debug board for debugging purpose, but it can be removed once the gateway is in the field. Software-wise, Edzelf installed […]

August 11, 2018August 11, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Rikomagic R5 Mini Projector Features Rockchip RK3328 Processor, Android 7.1

Last year, I reviewed Rikomagic RKM R1 Android mini projector with a typical TI DLP with 854×480 native resolution found in competitors, but what I really like what the touchpad and buttons at the top of the device that made it so much easier to configure and control compared to a device like Doogee P1. However with a Rockchip RK3128 quad core Cortex A7 processor and 1GB RAM, performance was on the lower side, and software already felt a little outdated (in 2017) with Android 4.4 and Kodi 14.2. The good news is that company has now launched Rikomagic R5 mini projector with significantly better hardware (Rockchip RK3328 processor + 2GB RAM), and a more recent Android 7.1 operating system. Rikomagic R5 mini projector specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad core Cortex A53 processor with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, micro SD […]

August 10, 2018August 12, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Self-hosted OpenGL ES Development on ChromeOS?

This is a guest post by blu about developing OpenGL ES applications on Chrome OS. Ever since I’ve been using a chromebook in developer mode as my daily notebook (can’t beat 10h-plus battery life on ~300EUR well-performing machines), I’ve been missing one thing ‒ OpenGL ES coding under ChromeOS. My chromebook is more than well-equipped for GLES3 hardware-wise (verified via dual-booting to ArchLinux), and I always have up-to-date toolchains self-hosted under ChromeOS, thanks to an excellent package manager aptly named Chromebrew. And yet my coding-on-the-go under ChromeOS has been limited to console apps ‒ ChromeOS has strict limitations which include no X11 display manager, or any other industry-standard display manager that I’m aware of, and I don’t feel like dual-booting into ArchLinux too often ‒ ChromeOS has spoiled me with its fine-tuned performance. The no-display-manager limitation of ChromeOS is usually worked-around via Crouton but in my case Crouton would not […]

August 10, 2018August 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ioLight High Resolution Portable Microscope Works with Tablets and Smartphones

We’ve all read about those cheap USB microscopes that can be used to checkout PCB issues or read IC part numbers, but ioLight is a different beast. The device is a proper microscope offering up to 1 μm resolution that could be used by a biologist in the field coupled with an Android mobile device, an iPhone, or iPad. ioLight portable microscope specifications: Magnification Field of view (FoV) – 1mm fixed width, giving ~ x200 on a 9.7″ screen. Larger screens give greater magnifications Digital zoom on captured image to x500 on 9.7″ screen Resolution – 1µm (0.001 mm) Working distance – 1mm from lens to sample Illumination – Adjustable top and bottom illumination Sample stage – Glass Image / Video format 5MP (2592 x 1944 pixels); JPEG; color MPEG-4; color; up to 1296 x 972; 10 fps Images and videos are stored in the tablet’s camera roll ready for […]

August 10, 2018August 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

$100 GLIGO E-Ink Smartwatch Promises “2-Year Battery Life” (Crowdfunding)

Wearables are useful little devices, but many of them suffer from short battery life, and in my case at least, I forget to charge mine from time to time. So when I saw GLIGO E-Ink smartwatch promising 2-year battery life on a charge, it caught my eyes. But then looking into the details, it looks like battery life is really 6 months unless you don’t plan on using the display: We adopted an energy-efficient dual-core design:the quartz core has a battery life of up to two years, e-ink screen has a battery life of up to 180 days. Six months is not that bad either, so let’s still have a look. GLIGO E-Ink smartwatch specifications: MCU – Unamed Arm Cortex M3 microcontroller with 128KB memory Display – E-ink segmented display Japanese Watch Movement Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.2 LE Sensors – Green light heart rate sensor (HRM), 3D G-sensor, 3-axis accelerometer […]

August 10, 2018August 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Samsung Galaxy Note9 Launched with Exynos 9810 or Snapdragon 845, 4,000 mAh Battery, S-Pen

Samsung has just launched a new version of their Galaxy Note smartphone with Samsung Galaxy Note9, and it’s always interesting to check out the specifications and features to see if they’ve brought forward some innovations, beside improved performance and features. Samsung Galaxy Note9 specifications: SoC (one or the other depending on market) Samsung Exynos 9810 octa-core processor with 4x Exynos M3 @ up to 2.7GHz , 4x Arm Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.8 GHz, Arm Mali-G72MP18 GPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with four Kryo 385 performance cores @ 2.8GHz, 4x Kryo 385 efficiency cores @ 1.7GHz, Adreno 630 GPU Memory / Storage Options 6GB LPDDR4x, 128GB UFS, microSD slot up to 512GB 8GB LPDDR4x, 512GB UFS, microSD slot up to 512GB Display – 6.4″ Quad HD+ Super AMOLED with 2960×1440 resolution (516ppi). Default is Full HD+, but that can be changed to Quad HD+ in the settings […]