CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

March 19, 2018March 19, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

LG Releases webOS Open Source Edition Optimized for Raspberry Pi 3

webOS, originally developed by Palm, is a Linux based multitasking operating systems with support for HTML5 and CSS3. It is now found in most (all?) new LG smart TVs, and the TV manufacturer has decided to expand the adoption of webOS by collaborating with the South Korean government and local startups, and released an open source version , webOS Open Source Edition, available publicly at http://webosose.org. webOS Open Source Edition 1.0 is said to be optimized for the Raspberry Pi 3, and the company provides build instructions on the “setting up” page of the website to build the firmware image, which you can then flash to a micro SD card. The idea is to for a community around the open source version webOS, and let different categories of developers or users contribute to the project: System UI Developers – The System UI is based on Blink and Qt, and developers […]

March 19, 2018March 8, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

FOSSASIA Summit 2018 Schedule – March 22-25

FOSDEM is the “Free & Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting” takes place the first week-end of February every year in Brussels, Belgium. It turns out there’s an event in Asia called FOSSASIA Summit that’s about to take place in Singapore on March 22-25. There are some differences however, as while FOSDEM is entirely free to attend, FOSSASIA requires to pay an entry fee to attend talks, although there are free tickets to access the exhibition hall and career fair. There are also less sessions as in FOSDEM, but still twelve different tracks with: Artificial Intelligence Blockchain Cloud, Container, DevOps Cybersecurity Database Kernel & Platform Open Data, Internet Society, Community Open Design, IoT, Hardware, Imaging Open Event Solutions Open Source in Business Science Tech Web and Mobile Since the event is spread out over four days, it should be easier to attend the specific sessions you are interested in. I’ve […]

March 19, 2018March 28, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

96Boards Unveils Four A.I. Developer Platforms: HiKey 970, Ultra96, ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition

Many new processors include a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) – aka Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) – in order to speed up talks associated with artificial intelligence, such as object or other patterns recognitions. With Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018, 96Boards has just unveiled four development boards specifically designed for artificial intelligence solution with Hikey 970 powered by Hisilicon Kirin 970 processor, Ultra96 based on Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU3EG ARM+ FPGA SoC, and ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition featuring the upcoming Rockchip RK3399Pro processor. Hikey 970 Preliminary specifications: SoC – Kirin 970 with 4x Cortex A73 @ 2.36GHz, 4x Cortex A53 @ 1.8GHz, Arm Mali G72-MP12 GPU, NPU with 256MAC/cycle @ 960MHz System Memory – 6GB 1866MHz, 4 Channel LPDDR4x Storage -64GB UFS storage, micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p60 Camera – 4 lanes CSI + 2 lanes CSI Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, wireless module, […]

March 18, 2018March 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

WeLoop Hey 3S Sports Smartwatch Review – Part 1: Specifications, Unboxing, First Try with Android App(s)

It’s been a while since I have reviewed a smartwatch or fitness tracker, simply because I found most devices to be lacking, and break easily after a few weeks or months. It’s also difficult to find a device that combines long battery life, waterproofness, a decent screen, and all that at a reasonable price. But I decided to give it another try when Geekbuying asked me whether I was interested in reviewing WeLoop Hey 3S sports smartwatch with 5 ATM waterproofness, a standby time of 30 days, a color display, an optical HRM, and built-in GPS. I’ve just received it , so I’ll start by posting specifications about the watch, and checkout what’s inside the package. Weloop Hey 3S Specifications Display – 1.28″ color memory LCD display with 176×176 resolution, touchscreen Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0 LE, built-in GPS Sensors – Heart rate monitor Battery – 270 mAh LiPo battery good […]

March 17, 2018March 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

HEIF Image Container Format Leverages H.265/HEVC to Store Photos and Image Sequences

A few years ago, Google introduced WebP image format leveraging VP8 video codec, and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has decided to do something similar but instead of using VP8, they went with their own H.265/HEVC video codec for HEIF image container format. HEIF stands for High Efficiency Image File, and is defined by ISO/IEC 23008-12 (MPEG-H Part 12). The storage of the data is based on ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF), and HEIF appears to be especially useful to replace animated GIFs file with better quality and much lower sizes, as well as burst photos. HEIF also appears to compress a little better than JPEG photo with similar quality, but HEIF appears to fallback to JPEG codec sometimes, so it may be improvement in the way metadata is handled? The comparison table show the different features between HEIF and other well-known image format (JEG, WebP, GIF, etc…). […]

March 16, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments

ASRock J5005-ITX Pentium J5005 Motherboard Coming Soon for around $120 and Up

Several products based on Gemini Lake processors have already been announced, and some are already available through pre-orders, but so far, I’ve not seen many retail hardware based on Intel Pentium J5005, the most powerful processor of the family, except for one Intel NUC. ASRock J5005-ITX motherboard brings another option, and while it had been expected for a while, the company has now setup a proper product page, and the motherboard can be seen as “coming soon” for about $120 and up (excluding VAT) on some websites like Alzashop (in Europe) or Kakaku (in Japan). ASRock J5005-ITX motherboard specifications: SoC – Intel Pentium J5005 quad core processor @ 1.50/2.8 GHz with 18EU Intel UHD Graphics 605 up to 800 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory – 2x DDR4-2400/2133 SO-DIMM slots up to 8GB (2GB per module not supported) Storage 2x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug 2x […]

March 16, 2018March 16, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Android Wear Becomes “Wear OS by Google”

Android Wear is an operating systems for wearables based on Android, but it may be confusing to (some) consumers, since an Android Wear watch may pair with an iPhone and an Android phone is not requires. Google actually reports one third of Android Wear watch users also own an iPhone, so the company has now decided to rename Android Wear to “Wear OS by Google“. Apart from the name change and new micro website, everything remains the same. Now if they could also change “Android TV” to “TV OS by Google” that would also prevent an other type of confusion among users…

March 16, 2018September 26, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

How to Run Linux on RISC-V with QEMU Emulator

RISC-V open-source architecture is starting to become more and more interesting thanks to the growing RISC-V hardware & software ecosystem, and with the recent release of HiFive Unleashed, we even have a board capable of running Linux. The only problem: it costs $999. But luckily, it’s possible to experiment with Linux on RISC-V without extra hardware, just using your current PC. Imperas offers a commercial solution working on both Windows and Linux that relies on busybear-linux RISC-V Linux root filesystem comprised of busybox and dropbear SSH server. The rootfs also works with QEMU, so I tried it in Ubuntu 16.04. The instructions on Github are quite easy to follow. My computer is powered by an AMD FX8350 processor coupled with 16GB RAM, and the whole process took around 2 hours, so better use the fastest computer possible. It also requires around 26 GB of storage on your build machine. First, […]