CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 29, 2018April 29, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

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. […]

April 28, 2018August 31, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

RockPro64 Board is Now Available for $59.99 and Up for Early Adopters & Developers

Several Rockchip RK3399 development boards and SBCs were announced or launched in Q4 2017 / Q1 2018, including Orange Pi RK3399, ODROID-N1, Rock960, etc… RockPro64 was the most aggressively priced of the lot as it was expected to launch for about $60. The good news is that Pine 64 is now selling the first production batch for $59.99 (2GB RAM) or $79.99 (4GB RAM). The less good news is that software is still being worked on so the company only recommends it for early adapters and developers. RockPro64 specifications have changed a bit since the board now comes with LPDDR4 memory instead of LPDDR3: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with 2x ARM Cortex A72 cores up to 2.0 GHz, 4x Cortex A53 cores, and an Arm Mali-T860 MP4 GPU System Memory – 2 or 4 GB LPDDR4, dual channel Storage – eMMC flash module (up to 128 GB), micro […]

April 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Jorjin WS2118/WS2119 is a Sigfox & Bluetooth LE Module Based on STMicro BlueNRG-1 & S2-LP Chips

Jorjin WS211X is a family of certified dual radio modules combining Sigfox wireless technology thanks to STMicro BlueNRG-1 BLE System-on-Chip (SoC) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) using STMicro S2-LP sub-1GHz RF transceiver. Two models are currently available: WS2118-00 certified for Sigfox regions RCZ1 (Europe, Middle East, South Africa) and RCZ3 (Japan), and WS2119-A0 for regions RCZ2 (USA, Mexico, Brazil) and RCZ4 (Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Argentina). Jorjin’s WS211x specifications: Connectivity Bluetooth LE STMicro BlueNRG-1 Arm Cortex M0 @ 16 MHz with 160 kB flash, 24 kB RAM with retention Up to +8dBm BLE RF output power Sigfox STMicro S2-LP sub-1GHz transceiver WS2118-A0 – Up to +16 dBm sub-1GHz RF output power WS2119-A0 – Up to +27dBm sub-1GHz RF output power Receiver sensitivity – Up to -88dBm (BLE) and -130dBm (Sub-1GHz). I/Os – 38-pins package. Security – STSAFE-A1SX for SIGFOX secure element Power Supply – 2.0 to 3.6V Dimension […]

April 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Eufy EverCam Full HD Waterproof WiFi Security Camera Works for Up to a Year on a Single Battery Charge

Wired security cameras can be troublesome to installed due to the cabling required, but luckily there are solutions to avoid all those long cables with solar powered IP cameras, or battery powered IP cameras. A few years ago I wrote about Immedia Blink WiFi HD camera that claimed to last a year on a charge, and despite several complains on Kickstarter, they seem to still be in business. There’s now a more advanced model by Eufy – an Anker brand – that supports 1080p video recording with motion sensing and face recognition, that also lasts up to one year on a charge, and offers free storage. Eufy EverCam specifications: Resolution – 1080p Video Format – H.264 High profile Image Sensor – Sony Exmor IMX323, 1/2 9-inch Field of View (FoV) – 140° Night Vision Range – up to 10 meters Digital Pan & Zoom – Yes, up to 8x Motion […]

April 27, 2018April 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Pepper Jobs W10 GYRO is an Air Mouse Designed for Windows 10

Air mice are remote controls including motion sensors allowing to wave the remote to emulate a mouse, as well as some buttons like in a standard remote control, and in some cases a keyboard. Some people do not like this type of user input, but that’s my favorite way (I’m using MINIX NEO A2 Lite) of controlling TV boxes, as it provides a mouse pointer, a QWERTY keyboard, and various keys including volume keys and a D-Pad. The air mouse is also compatible with computers running Windows, Ubuntu, or other operating systems but some operations can not easily be done as the “Windows” key is missing, and shortcuts such as Alt+Tab are not possible. The guys at Pepper Jobs must have had the same kind of problem, as they’ve designed an air mouse working better with Windows 10 with keys to launch the default web browser, Task Manager, File Explorer, […]

April 26, 2018April 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Ubuntu 18.04 Released – What’s New?

Canonical should release Ubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver” long term support distribution later today. One of the most obvious change compared to Ubuntu 16.04 is the switch from Unity to GNOME 3.28 resulting in a fairly different user interface, although the company tried to keep the look-and-feel are close of the Unity version as possible. There are still some differences such as the dash now appearing on the top center of the screen. Eventually, Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop ISO file will be found on Ubuntu website, but in the meantime, I could update an Ubuntu 17.10 virtual machine to Ubuntu 18.04 using the following commands:

sudo apt update 
sudo apt dist-upgrade 
sudo do-release-upgrade -d

sudo apt update

sudo apt dist-upgrade

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

I’ll update my main machine a little later, maybe after the dot release in July, and my server after that, just in case some bugs have gone unnoticed. You’ll be greeted with a “What’s new in Ubuntu” window after upgrade showing the main part of the […]

April 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

QEMU 2.12 Released with Raspberry Pi 3, RISC-V Support

QEMU is open source machine emulator and virtualizer, which I used in the past at a time when Arm boards were more expensive or hard to get than today, and more recently I tested RISC-V Linux using QEMU (fork). QEMU 2.12 has now been released with some interesting new features including RISC-V support, and initial support for Raspberry Pi 3 machine model. The Changelog is rather long, but some other notable changes include: Cortex-M33 Armv8-M emulation, used by the new mps2-an505 board. Support for various AArch64 v8.1/v8.2/v8.3 extensions. Initial support for Raspberry Pi 3 machine model i.MX7 SoC and i.MX7 Sabre board emulation. Spectre/Meltdown mitigation support for x86/pseries/s390 guest Intel IOMMU support for 48-bit addresses Many SD card emulation cleanups and bugfixes. Etc.. You can get the source code and build instructions in the download page. If you are interested in running Debian on RPI 3 model, or/and want to […]

April 26, 2018April 26, 2018 by Karl Johnson - 9 Comments

How-to Make Your Own 3D Printing Goo

Karl here…just want to do a little post about bed adhesion and what I have been doing for the past month. What spurred this is I saw a ton of videos on Magigoo a while back. It is a product that you wipe on your glass/mirror bed and 3D prints stick very well to it and once the bed cools the part pops off very easily. It is quite expensive and it got me to think about alternatives. I have used glue stick almost exclusively while printing on glass/mirror but a lot of time the prints stick too well and prints can get marred up removing with a tool. It is quite easy to make. 1 cup water and 1 large 22g Elmers glue stick. I put both in water and let sit thinking it would dissolve on its own. After several hours I got impatient and put it in […]