CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 1, 2017December 1, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

$45 AIY Vision Kit Adds Accelerated Computer Vision to Raspberry Pi Zero W Board

AIY Projects is an initiative launched by Google that aims to bring do-it yourself artificial intelligence to the maker community by providing affordable development kits to get started with the technology. The first project was AIY Projects Voice Kit, that basically transformed Raspberry Pi 3 board into a Google Home device by adding the necessary hardware to support Google Assistant SDK, and an enclosure. The company has now launched another maker kit with AIY Project Vision Kit that adds a HAT board powered by Intel/Movidius Myriad 2 VPU to Raspberry Pi Zero W, in order to accelerate image & objects recognition using TensorFlow’s machine learning models. The kit includes the following items: Vision Bonnet accessory board powered by Myriad 2 VPU (MA2450) 2x 11mm plastic standoffs 24mm RGB arcade button and nut 1x Privacy LED 1x LED bezel 1x 1/4/20 flanged nut Lens, lens washer, and lens magnet 50 mil […]

November 30, 2017August 26, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

MatchBox LoRaWan Gateway Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown

Last spring, I wrote about MatchX.io MatchBox LoRaWAN gateway with GPS, WiFi, and Ethernet connectivity. The gateway is equipped based on a Mediatek WiFi module running Linux (OpenWrt/LEDE), Semtech chips for the LoRa part, and support up to 65,535 nodes, such as the as well as MatchStick, MatchModule, and MatchCore sensors provided by the company. I’ve just received MatchBox gateway for review, but I’m still waiting for 920-925MHz LoRa nodes as they are going through the FCC certification process, and I also have to wait for clarifications regarding local regulations. So in the meantime, I’ll check out the gateway hardware. MatchBox LoRaWAN Gateway Unboxing The gateway is shipped with a power supply, power cord, two antennas, an installation guide,… as well as three screws and pegs to wall mount the gateway and power supply, and in case you want to install the gateway on a pole, as shown below, for […]

November 30, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

AWS DeepLens is a $249 Deep Learning Video Camera for Developers

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched Deeplens, the “world’s first deep learning enabled video camera for developers”. Powered by an Intel Atom X5 processor with 8GB, and featuring a 4MP (1080p) camera, the fully programmable system runs Ubuntu 16.04, and is designed expand deep learning skills of developers, with Amazon providing tutorials, code, and pre-trained models. AWS Deeplens specifications: SoC – Intel Atom X5 Processor with Intel Gen9 HD graphics (106 GFLOPS of compute power) System Memory – 8GB RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, micro SD slot Camera – 4MP (1080p) camera using MJPEG, H.264 encoding Video Output – micro HDMI port Audio – 3.5mm audio jack, and HDMI audio Connectivity – Dual band WiFi USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports Misc – Power button; camera, WiFi and power status LEDs; reset pinhole Power Supply – TBD Dimensions – 168 x 94 x 47 mm Weight – 296.5 grams The […]

November 30, 2017November 30, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

ZeroShell Firewall/Router Linux Distribution Works on x86 Hardware, Raspberry Pi 2/3, & (Some) Orange Pi Boards

We’ve just seen pfSense is now available for Arm via firewall appliances such as Netgate SG-3100, but AFAIK there’s no pfSense community Arm firmware images yet. Several Arm SoCs & boards are now supported by FreeBSD, so in theory pfSense could be ported to those, but the page on FreeBSD does not seem to have been updated for a while. If you want a firewall distributions with an easy-to-user web interface like pfSense, but that also works on cheaper Arm hardware, Linux based ZeroShell distribution could be worth a try, as beside working on Intel & AMD x86 platforms, the developers also provides images for Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 boards, and several Orange Pi boards, namely Orange Pi R1, Orange Pi Zero, Orange Pi PC, and Orange Pi Plus/Plus2. The latter is the only supported Arm board with Gigabit Ethernet. Some of ZeroShell features include: Load Balancing and Failover of […]

November 30, 2017December 1, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Netgate SG-3100 is an ARM based pfSense Firewall Appliance

pfSense software is a popular open source firewall distribution based on FreeBSD operating system that is entirely managed via a web interface. Up until recently, FreeBSD (see comments section) pfSense would only support x86-64 (Intel or AMD hardware). But progress has been made with pfSense (and FreeBSD) for ARM, and Netgate, the company behind pfSense, is now selling two ARM based firewall appliances with SG-1000 microFirewall powered by Texas Instruments AM3352 Cortex A8 SoC, and sine a little over of month, SG-3100 firewall appliance based on a more suitable Marvell dual core Cortex A9 processor. Netgate SG-3100 hardware specifications: Processor – Marvell ARMADA 38x 88F6820 dual core ARM Cortex-A9 @ 1.6 GHz with NEON SIMD and FPU System Memory – 2GB DDR4L Non ECC Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash Network Interfaces 2x Gigabit Ethernet configured as dual WAN or one WAN one LAN 4x ports Gigabit Marvell 88E6141 switch, uplinked […]

November 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Mozilla Adds HTML5 AV1 Video Support to Firefox 59 Nightly Builds

Last year, we wrote about AV1 royalty-free open source video codec managed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a non-profit organization with members such as Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and other companies. Eventually AV1 should be 25 to 35% more efficiency than H.265 or VP9, but encoding will be slower, and at the time, my AMD FX8350 based computer could encode CIF (352×288) video at less than 0.5 fps, and I had to use command line tools to encode and decode/playback the videos. But thing are progressing nicely, and it’s now possible to stream AV1 video with HTML5 / in Firefox 59.0 (nightly) using Bitmovin Player. If you are using Ubuntu, you can also install Firefox nightly as follow:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-trunk

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install firefox-trunk

Start it and visit the demo page to stream an AV1 MPEG-DASH/HLS stream in your web browser. It works from 360p @ 200 Kbps up to 720p […]

November 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Vorke Z3 Rockchip RK3399 TV Box Gets Android 7.1 Firmware

Earlier today, I discovered Cloudnetgo CR19 TV Box based on Rockchip RK3399 SoC and equipped with an external SATA port sold on GeekBuying. At first, I thought it was something completely new, but soon remembered that I had reviewed a very similar device: Vorke Z3. At the time of the review however, the device was pre-loaded with Android 6.0, and while performance itself was clearly at step up compared to other TV boxes, video playback was rather poor, and there were too many bugs to my taste. Then I realized that the new device came with Android 7.1, and a quick search revealed Vorke Z3 had also received an Android 7.1 firmware upgrade late September. That will be old news for some owners, but if you’ve gotten frustrated by your device while running Android 6.0, it may be worth checking out Android 7.1. If OTA firmware update from Android 6.0 […]

November 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

HDMI 2.1 Features Overview

HDMI 2.1 was announced last January with support for up to 10K @ 120 Hz while using Display Stream Compression (DSC) and new 48Gbps cables, as well as other improvements. The HDMI Forum has now released version 2.1 of the HDMI specifications. The detailed specifications are only available to HDMI adopters, but an overview of the specifications can be downloaded by simple mortals. From the table above, we can see HDMI 2.1 adds 7 new features compared to HDMI 2.0b: Dynamic HDR (HDR dynamic metadata) – HDR data (depth, detail, brightness, contrast, and color gamuts) can now be optimized on a scene-by-scene or even a frame-by-frame basis Enhanced audio return channel (eARC) – eARC supports high-bitrate home theater audio formats, object-based audio, uncompressed 5.1 and 7.1, and 32-channel uncompressed audio thanks to up to 37 Mbps audio bandwidth. Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) – Syncs up source and display with continually […]