CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 10, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

FCC: That Cheap Chinese TV Box may end up Costing you $147,000

Buying inexpensive TV boxes from China is fun, but in order to provide the lowest possible price, some manufacturers may cut corners, and forgo things like FCC certification. It seems the FCC has noticed an issue an enforcement advisory / public notice entitled “VIDEO TV SET-TOP BOXES, INCLUDING THOSE THAT STREAM INTERNET CONTENT, MUST COMPLY WITH FCC EQUIPMENT AUTHORIZATION REQUIREMENTS” with the threat of fines exceeding $147,000. If you are an individual you may think that you are safe since you are not “marketing” anything, but a footnote explains the meaning of marketing: Importing, advertising and selling are three aspects of “marketing” under the Commission’s rules. The text of the notice further mentions that even just operating the device is a violation, and anyone doing so should stop immediately. The document explains a little more about the fines: Users, manufacturers, importers, and retailers that violate Commission marketing or operating rules […]

April 9, 2019July 30, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Amungo NUT2NT+ is an Open Source High Precision GNSS Board (Crowdfunding)

Amungo Navigation NUT2NT+ is an open-source hardware four-channel, all-frequency, GNSS RF-to-bits receiver for precision, satellite-based positioning. Connected to the right antennas, the board can achieve centimeter positioning resolution by connecting to multiple navigation satellite systems including GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, and IRNSS. Amungo claims that while several startups and large companies already offer proprietary GNSS positioning solutions NUT2NT+ is the only open source option in this class of GNSS devices. NUT2NT+ key features and specifications: Receiver chip – NTLab NT1065 4-Channel RF Front-End IC FPGA – Lattice ECP5 with 12K LUTs + 28 DSP blocks (LFE5U-12) opened for custom design USB – 1x USB 3.1 Type-C port via CYUSB3014 USB 3.0 controller: Clock – 10 MHz TCXO, soldered RF inputs – 2x bands dedicated; – 5 dB referred noise floor ADC – 2-bit resolution up to 99 MHz Samples transfer – Continuous full stream, from 10 to 50 Mbytes/sec GNSS […]

Graperain Samsung, Rockchip RK3588, and Qualcomm CPU modules, SBCs, and carrier boards

April 9, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Batocera.Linux OS Combines Kodi & Retro Gaming for Raspberry Pi & ODROID Boards

There are already several ways to run retro games on development boards, with for example RetroPie, and derivatives like RetrOrangePi, Lakka and Recalbox. Batocera.Linux is another option that I had never heard about so far, and works on PCs, as well as Raspberry Pi and ODROID boards, with ODROID-N2 support having been added very recently. batocera.linux operating system can easily be run from a USB flash drive on your computer without altering your existing OS, while it will boot from a standard microSD card on Raspberry Pi and ODROID boards. Beside retro-gaming support, the OS also includes Kodi media center for playing videos, or listening to music. You may even play games in it since retro-gaming support was added in Kodi 18. The partial compatibility table above shows all platforms have a different level of support, and for Intel hardware support more emulators than Arm based boards. The Orange arrow […]

April 9, 2019April 9, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

T96G 4G LTE TV Box Sells for under $80

We’ve already covered several 4G LTE TV boxes in the past, but none of those were easy to buy since the manufacturers would mostly sell to distributors and resellers, and there was no way to easily purchase the device online. But this morning, I found out Geniatech started to sell their ATV329A model online for $129 on their own website, so I decided to look for it on Aliexpress, and instead I found out T96G 4G LTE TV box was selling for just under $80. T96G specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905W quad core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with penta-core Arm Mali-450 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot up to 32GB Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDR support, AV port for composite video Video Decoding – 10-bit H.265, H.264 up to […]

April 8, 2019April 9, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Panfrost is an Open Source Driver for Arm Mali Midgard GPUs

Getting GPU drivers to work on Linux with Arm SoCs was really a struggle a few years ago due to close-sources binary blobs that required all bugs to be fixed by a single team. But in recent years we’ve seen good progress with open source mobile GPU drivers including Freedreno for Adreno GPUs, and Etnaviv for Vivante GPUs. Arm Mali also got its own open source Lima driver worked on for many years but only for older Utgard GPUs (Mali 400, Mali 450). However, during the Opensource GPU Drivers BoF at Linaro Connect Bangkok 2019, Rob Herring, Technical Architect at Linaro and Tomeu Vizoso, Principal Software Engineer at Collabora, discuss the status of drivers, and I learned about an open source driver for Mali Midgard (Mali-T6xx, Mali-T7xx) GPU called Panfrost. As we’ll see below, the driver is already capable of running basic demos, has been upstreamed to Mesa, and tested […]

April 8, 2019November 26, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Kettlepop is a Limited Edition of a CHIP Pro Derivative with 8GB eMMC flash

Next Things Co. CHIP was a $9 Arm Linux board based on Allwinner R8 processor that become fairly popular due to its low price, built-in WiFi & Bluetooth connectivity, open source hardware design, and integration into fun kits such as PocketCHIP portable gaming console/ Linux handheld computer. Later the company expanded their product line with CHIP Pro featuring Allwinner GR8 system-in-package, and designed as a low profile system-on-module to make it more suitable for integration into commercial products. Sadly, the company eventually ran into financial problems, and had to fold later in 2018. However, later that year, a company called Source Parts announced they were working on Popcorn Computer, a derivative of C.H.I.P. board, and appears to have sold it through Amazon US for a time. But this morning, I was informed that a board called Kettlepop was added to HackerBoards database with Next Things Co. GR8 SiP, and also […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025

April 7, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Google OTT Turnkey Solution to Deliver Fast-to-Market Pre-Certified 4K HDR Dongles

Despite Google offering Android TV for an optimized big screen experience, many TV boxes are still running a heavily modified version of Android for smartphone, since it’s not that trivial for manufacturers and TV operators to get certification for Android TV. Operators normally just want their own branded hardware with their own streaming app and/or launcher, and “Google OTT Turnkey” aims to help this section of the market by providing pre-certified OTT (Over-The-Top) hardware with low investment and a quick time to market. The dongle/TV box will come with a voice remote control, include certified for Google services and Netflix, receive firmware from Google, while still allowing operators’ customization. The solution would allow a time to market of about 2 to 3 months. We learned about Google OTT Turnkey in the first part of “the Android TV Workshop” at the Connected TV World Summit 2019. The solution is quickly mentioned […]

April 6, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Avnet Azure Sphere MT3620 Starter Kit Features Two mikroBUS Sockets

Microsoft and MediaTek worked together to design MediaTek MT3620 Arm Cortex-A7 processor with Microsoft Pluton security sub-system required for Microsoft Azure Sphere IoT ecosystem. We’ve already covered boards from Seeed Studio including the just announced low cost MT3620 mini dev board. But Microsoft also cooperated with Avnet which has recently introduced Azure Sphere MT3620 Starter Kit equipped with two mikroBUS sockets enabling the platform to leverage one of the 633 “click boards” available from MikroElektronika. Just like the latest Seeed Studio board, Avnet Azure Sphere MT3620 Starter Kit is comprised as a baseboard with a soldered-on CPU module that can later be used for mass-production is a custom designed board. Specifications: Azure Sphere MT3620 CPU Module Mediatek MT3620AN single core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 500 MHz with 4MB SRAM, dual core Arm Cortex-M4F real-time core @ 200 MHz with 64KB RAM, Microsoft Pluton security sub-system, and WiFi. Storage – TBD […]

Boardcon LGA3576 Rockchip RK3576 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications