Posted on

VIA APC Rock and Paper Boards Now Officially Support Firefox OS

VIA has just announced a partnership with Mozilla for support and development of Firefox OS for APC Rock and APC Paper platforms based on WonderMedia WM8950 single core ARM Cortex A9 SoC. Firefox OS source code and documentation for the APC boards are available on the company’s apc-firefox-os github repository. To motivate the developer’s community, the company is also offering free APCs to developers that fix specific bugs. A first version was released on the 22nd of November 2013, with the following fixes: Updated firmware package to support HDMI hotplug as the solution from VIA Switched to latest base from Mozilla and using master branch for all Mozilla repos Support multiple hardware keyboard hot plug Fixed so that Mozilla soft home button can be enabled via settings Supports Ethernet cable hot plug Enabled SNTP with Ethernet network Set default display timeout to never Fixed some orientation bug due to migration to […]

Posted on

$15 and Up NavSpark is a tiny GPS / GNSS Arduino Software Compatible Board (Crowdfunding)

[Update: I’ve been told the project is actually launched by SkyTraq. But later, after Indiegogo perks are shipped, they expect to have our customer NAVIN handle later orders and manufacturing, the non-engineering development side of things. Updated post accordingly] Navin, a Taiwanese start-up specialized in location products, SkyTraq, a fabless semiconductor company, which develops GPS chipset for consumer navigation and tracking applications, has recently launched an Indiegogo campaign for NavSpark, their low cost GPS / GNSS board with a 32-bit LEON3 SPARC V8 MCU that can be programmed with the Arduino IDE. Two other models are available:  NavSpark-BD for GPS/Beidou, and NavSpark-GL for GPS/GLONASS. NavSpark NavSpark specifications: GSP Receiver – SkyTraq Venus 822 LEON3 Sparc-V8 MCU @ 100MHz with IEEE-754 Compliant FPU, 1024KB Flash Memory, 212KB RAM. GPS – quad-GNSS engine capable of handling 34 GPS / GLONASS/ Beidou / Galileo signals in parallel I/Os – 1x full duplex asynchronous […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
Posted on

$39 86Duino ZERO is an x86 Arduino Compatible Board that Supports DOS, Windows, and Linux

Intel Gallileo Development Board with a Intel Quark processor, and Arduino software and hardware, now gets some competition with DM&P Electronics’ 86Duino ZERO board powered by the company’s Vortex86EX processor and 128MB RAM, that is said to support DOS, Windows, and Linux. 86Duino ZERO Specifications: Processor – DM&P Vortex86EX 32-bit x86 processor @ 300MHz System Memory – 128MB DDR3 Storage – 8MB SPI flash, and microSD card slot Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet (at the back of the board, not RJ45) USB – USB host connector, micro USB port for development Arduino Leonardo compatible headers Misc – Reset button, PCIE bus Power Supply – DC-IN 7 to 12V, or via microUSB port. The board is comprised of a daughter board (DM-222) and a System-on-Module (SoM) either called DM-205 and or Vortex86EX SOM-128-EX which the following specs (some of which are not accessible in 86Duino Zero): Processor – Vortex86EX @ 300MHz System […]

Posted on

Terasic’s Altera DE1-SoC Board Based on Cyclone V Dual Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC Sells for $150 Up

A few months ago, Terasic unveiled its SoCKit powered by Altera Cyclone V dual Cortex A9 + FPGA. They’ve now announced a cheaper version will a less powerful Cyclone V SoC and lower specs (e.g. less RAM, only one sensor, etc…) that sells for as low as $150 for educational or academic purposes, and $199 for the rest of us. Altera DE1-SoC Board specifications: FPGA Device Cyclone V SoC 5CSEMA5F31 Device Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 (HPS – Hard Processor System) 85K Programmable Logic Elements 4,450 Kbits embedded memory 6 Fractional PLLs 2 Hard Memory Controllers Configuration and Debug Quad Serial Configuration device – EPCQ256 on FPGA (EPCQ = Erasable Programmable Configurable Quad-SPI device) On-Board USB Blaster II (Normal type B USB connector) Memory Device 64MB (32Mx16) SDRAM on FPGA 1GB (2x256Mx16) DDR3 SDRAM on HPS 128MB QSPI Flash on HPS (QSPI Flash does not come pre-installed out of factory) Micro SD […]

Posted on

XBMC on ARM News: Updated XBMC Image for i.MX6 Boards, Geniatech Releases XBMC for Android Source Code

Stephan Rafin has recently released a new XBMC image for Freescale i.MX6 based Wandboard development boards (dual and quad only) and Utilite computers. The images have been built with Yocto 1.5 (Dora) released last month, and are based on XBMC Gotham Alpha 9, the latest alpha before feature freezes. That means this is not a stable image just yet, but features won’t change, and this version of XBMC is now going though bug fixes. Stephan’s XBMC image includes the following: iMX6 hw accelerated decoding (VPU) for most standard formats iMX CEC support (for utilite only as wandboards are not properly wired) WIFI configuration thanks to network manager addon Support for HDMI/SPDIF/Analog sound outputs (including pass-through for HDMI and SPDIF) SMB/NFS/uPNP network shares and other standard XBMC features Bug fixes against previous version – No more transient black screens, trick modes (ffwd, frwd, ..) are now working, and smoother video playback. […]

Posted on

Hardkernel ODROID-XU2 Development Board with Exynos 5420 Coming Up in Q1 2014

Insignal recently announced that Arndale Octa with an Exynos 5420 was available for pre-order with shipping expected in December 2013, making it the first company providing a low cost big.LITTLE development board. But there will be some competition as Hardkernel will launch ODROID-XU2 also based on Samsung Exynos 5420 octa-core processor according to a tweet by SamsungExynos official twitter account. The board is also briefly mentioned in an article in Samsung website as it was showcased at ARM Techcon 2013. That’s actually all the information I have. There’s a brochure on ARMFlix’s video, but it’s unreadable. However, we can derive (guess) some of the specifications based on the picture above and ODROID-XU specs: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5420 octa core SoC with 4x Cortex A15 cores up to 1.8 GHz, 4x Cortex A7 cores up to 1.3 GHz in big.LITTLE configuration, and ARM Mali T-628 MP6 GPU System Memory – […]

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

$179 Arndale Octa Developement Board Gets an Upgrade to Exynos 5420 big.LITTLE SoC

Hardkernel ODROID-XU may have been the first low cost big.LITTLE development board, but since it’s using Exynos 5410 SoC, big.LITTLE processing is limited to cluster migration that means using A15 cores or A7 cores. Insignal’s Arndale Octa was also initially announced with Exynos 5410, but the good news is that we’ll soon get a fully functional big.LITTLE development board as Arndale Octa has been upgraded to Exynos 5420 Octa-core SoC. This board will support both In-Kernel Switching (IKS) and Global Task Scheduling (GTS) implementations, and be officially supported by Linaro like the first Arndale board based on Exynos 5250 dual core Cortex A15. Here are the specifications of the board (derived by me from several pages, and pictures): SoC – Samsung Exynos 5420 octa core SoC with 4x Cortex A15 cores up to 1.8 GHz, 4x Cortex A7 cores up to 1.3 GHz in big.LITTLE configuration, and ARM Mali T-628 […]

Posted on

$25 Flutter is a Wireless Arduino compatible Board with Up to 1 km Range

There are already several ways to add wireless connectivity to your hardware project. For short ranges, we can use protocols such as Bluetooth (e.g. RFDuino, BLEDuino projects, or Bluetooth USB dongle), for much longer ranges 3G/4G connectivity may be required, and achievable via a 3G/4G USB dongle, or SparqEE CELLv1.0 project for example. But what if you want something in the middle with a range closer to 1km? Flutter boards using the 915MHz band (US only) can provide such range, and are software compatible with the Arduino. There are two version of the board: Flutter Basic – Board with an low-profile integrated antenna. It features micro USB for power, an LED, and a button, as well as several digital and analog I/O. Flutter Pro – Board with external antenna (and probably longer range). It comes with all features found in Flutter Basic, and adds battery charging, an additional button, and […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications