Flint OS is a Chromium OS Build for Raspberry Pi & Firefly-RK3288 Boards

Chromium OS for SBC aimed to bring Chromium operating systems to low cost development boards such as the Raspberry Pi 3 board, but the website is now down, and the developer announced he had stopped working on it several months ago due the hardware limitations of the Raspberry Pi 3 board. But others decided it was still worth the effort, and created Flint Innovation company (based in UK/China) to develop Flint OS, a build of Chromium OS with optimizations for Raspberry Pi 3 and Firefly-RK3288 boards with more boards likely coming soon. The developers also provide an x86 image, but after asking more details, it turns out they only changed the boot splash screen for now on the x86 image, with most of the early work done on Raspberry Pi board: At this moment our public Flint OS releases are still pretty much vanilla Chromium OS (we changed the boot […]

Azul Systems’ Zulu Embedded is a Build of OpenJDK for ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and x86 Compliant with Java SE standard

Yesterday as I wrote about the Embedded Systems Conference 2017 schedule I came across a potentially interesting talk entitled “Building A Brain With Raspberry Pi and Zulu Embedded JVM” by Azul Systems that will explain how to build a brain emulator using a cluster of Raspberry Pi boards. I wanted to find more about it, but I have not been able to find any details about the project/demo at this stage. However, I could still learn a bit more about Zulu Embedded, which is said to be an open source Java Virtual Machine based on OpenJDK, compliant with Java SE standard, working on 32-bit & 64-bit ARM & x86, MIPS, and PowerPC, as well as  multiple operating systems. Some of the key features of Zulu Embedded include: Java Support – Java 6, 7, 8, and 9 when available Java Configurations – Headless, headful, or compact Java Compact Profiles Hardware – […]

Embedded Systems Conference 2017 Schedule – May 3-4

The Embedded Systems Conference 2017 will take place over two days in Boston, US on May 3-4, and the organizers have published the schedule of the event. Even if you’re not going to attend, you’ll often learn something or find new information by just checking out the talks and abstracts, so I’ve created my own virtual schedule with some of the most interesting sessions. Wednesday, May 3rd 08:00 – 08:45 – Combining OpenCV and High Level Synthesis to Accelerate your FPGA / SoC EV Application by Adam Taylor, Adiuvo Engineering & Training Ltd This session will demonstrate how you can combine commonly used Open source frameworks such as OpenCV with High Level Synthesis to generate a embedded vision system using FPGA / SoC. The combination of OpenCV and HLS allows for a much faster algorithm development time and consequently a faster time to market for the end application. 09:00 – 09:45 […]

FriendlyELEC Introduces $12.99 1-bay NAS Dock Kit for NanoPi NEO & NEO 2 Boards

NanoPi NEO is a tiny board with Fast Ethernet and USB 2.0 interface, so in theory it could make a nice low-end NAS as long as you don’t need the best performance. As always the problem is that there was no case for it, but FriendlyELEC changes that as they just launched a 1-bay NAS Dock Kit for NanoPi NEO / NEO 2 board selling for just $12.99 (promotional price at launch). The kit comes with the following: 1-bay NAS Dock expansion board with JMicron JM20329 USB to SATA bridge SATA connector for 2.5″ HDD drive Extra USB host port On/off switch, and dual color status LED Header to connect NanoPi NEO board 12V DC power input Dimensions – 151 x 89.7 mm NS-120 aluminum enclosure (154 x 100 x 47.5 mm, 4141 grams) Heatsink set for NanoPI NEO M3 6mm screws, M2.5 6 mm screws Four rubber pads Front […]

Open Source ARM Compute Library Released with NEON and OpenCL Accelerated Functions for Computer Vision, Machine Learning

GPU compute promises to deliver much better performance compared to CPU compute for application such a computer vision and machine learning, but the problem is that many developers may not have the right skills or time to leverage APIs such as OpenCL. So ARM decided to write their own ARM Compute library and has now released it under an MIT license. The functions found in the library include: Basic arithmetic, mathematical, and binary operator functions Color manipulation (conversion, channel extraction, and more) Convolution filters (Sobel, Gaussian, and more) Canny Edge, Harris corners, optical flow, and more Pyramids (such as Laplacians) HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradients) SVM (Support Vector Machines) H/SGEMM (Half and Single precision General Matrix Multiply) Convolutional Neural Networks building blocks (Activation, Convolution, Fully connected, Locally connected, Normalization, Pooling, Soft-max) The library works on Linux, Android or bare metal on armv7a (32bit) or arm64-v8a (64bit) architecture, and makes use […]

Orange Pi 2G-IoT ARM Linux Development Board with 2G/GSM Support is Up for Sale for $9.90

Orange Pi 2G-IoT was unveiled at the start of the year as an ultra cheap ($10) Linux development board with 2G cellular connectivity. The board has just launched for $9.90 + shipping on Aliexpress. Orange Pi 2G-IoT specifications have changed a little since the initial announced as WiFi is confirmed to be supported: SoC – RDA Micro 8810PL ARM Cortex A5 processor @ up to 1.0 GHz with 2Gbit (256 MB) on-chip LPDDR2 RAM, 4Gbit (512 MB) on-chip SLC NAND flash , 256KB L2 cache, Vivante GC860 3D GPU, and GSM/GPRS/EDGE Modem (Download datasheet) External Storage – micro SD slot Display I/F – LCD connector up to qHD resolution Video – Decoding up to 1080p30, encoding up to 1080p30 H.264 Audio I/F – 3.5mm audio +FM jack, built-in microphone? Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 2.1/EDR module (RDA5991), and 2G GSM/GPRS/EDGE module with SIM card slot Camera – MIPI […]

FalconGate Open Source Anti-Hackers Smart Gateway Runs on Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, and other ARM Debian Boards

Everyday we can read stories about password database hacking, malware, ransomware, and so on, and companies can try to protect themselves by paying professionals that do a more or less good jobs, but individuals can’t afford professional service, so it is harder to protect oneself. One solution is to educate yourself as much as possible, but everybody has the time and/or skills to do it, so developers have worked on  FalconGate open source smart gateway that’s supposed to protect home devices against hackers, and alerts the user in case of intrusions on your home network, or devices misbehaving. FalconGate is said to be able to: Block several types of Malware based on open source blacklists Block Malware using the Tor network Detect and report potential Malware DNS requests based on VirusTotal reports Detect and report the presence of Malware executables and other components based on VirusTotal reports Detect and report […]

CubieBoard6 Development Board Powered by Actions Semi S500 Processor Comes with SATA, LiPo Battery Support

CubieTech launched Cubieboard with Allwinner A10 processor in 2012, and while they may not be as popular as some other boards like Raspberry Pi, ODROID, or Orange Pi boards in 2017, the company is still around after around 5 years, and their latest board is Cubieboard6 powered by Action Semi S500 quad core Cortex A9 processor with 2GB RAM, 8GB flash, HDMI, wired & wireless connectivity, SATA, battery support and more. Cubieboard6 specifications: SoC – Actions Semi S500 quad core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with Imagination PowerVR SGX544 GPU System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 Storage 8GB eMMC flash SATA 3.0 port for 2.5″ HDD/SSD up to 4TB micro SD card slot up to 32GB Video Output  – HDMI 1.4b up to 1080p60 Audio I/O – Via HDMI output, 3.5mm audio output (HP) jack, 3.5mm audio input (MIC) jack Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE (AP6212) with u.FL […]