Manivannan Sadhasivam is an Applications Engineer at Linaro on the 96Boards team here Demonstrating some of his latest projects created out of 96Boards Consumer Edition such as the Self Balancing Bot capable of balancing itself using the MPU6050 IMU controlled by Dragonboard 410c. You can find that project at github and a Home Surveillance Kit powered by Dragonboard 410c. OpenCV is used to identify the faces, combined with AWS and servo control to create a home surveillance solution. You can find that project at github
Author:
Self Balancing Bot and Home Surveillance Kit by Manivannan Sadhasivam, Applications Engineer, Linaro
Posted by – October 3, 2017
$25 Hoperun Uranus 96Boards IoT board with TI CC3220 ARM Cortex-M4
Posted by – October 3, 2017
This development board runs the TI CC3220 is for IoT applications featuring an ARM Cortex-M4 with an associated network processor that runs the whole Wi-Fi, TCP/IP and TLS stack so the main chipset doesn’t have to do any of the networking or security freeing up the whole ARM Cortex-M4 for the IoT application use. At Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017 they are showing it running TI RTOS and Zephyr. This board also features the LiPo battery connector. Adding also IPv6 support and TLS suite, an ARM Cortex-M4 with 1MB Flash, 256KB RAM running at 80Mhz. It’s very low power it can run for years off 2 AAA battery cells with the right duty cycle.
v4l2 in ffmpeg for Kodi with Mesa freedreno GPU hardware acceleration on Dragonboard 410c
Posted by – October 2, 2017
Open Source video decoding with V4L2 (Video4Linux2) hardware accelerated video playback in ffmpeg with latest Kodi 18 from master branch. Video4Linux2 support for FFMPEG means fully open source video acceleration can be available for open source distributions on ARM, here shown off decoding video with v4l2m2m (Video4Linux 2 with Memory to Memory) on the Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c, for H264 decode. Other boards with other chipsets that have video decode engines that can support other codecs such as H265, VP9 etc at 4K and etc will then also be able to support that. It means you can upgrade the kernel when you want to what you want, giving you more freedom being less locked to vendor support and if you find a bug you can actually fix it. Filmed at Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017.
Qualcomm Dragonboard 820c with 4K Debian UI
Posted by – October 2, 2017
This is the Qualcomm Dragonboard 820c running at 4K the Debian user interface, configured in the 96Boards Extended edition with full sized Ethernet port and more.
Qualcomm Dragonboard 600c
Posted by – October 2, 2017
The Qualcomm DragonBoard 600c features the APQ8064 quad-core Qualcomm Krait chipset, with Adreno A320 GPU, it’s in the 96Boards Extended edition form factor with space for Gigabit Ethernet.
96Boards: $99 ROCK960 Rockchip RK3399 development board
Posted by – September 30, 2017
Yang Zhang, Director of http://96boards.org presents the ROCK960 featuring Rockchip RK3399 Dual-core ARM Cortex-A72, Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, Mali-T860MP4, USB 3.0, HDMI 2.0, USB Type-C with DisplayPort 1.2, 4-lane PCIe 2.1 for high speed communication to FPGA or external GPU is possible. Rock960 will be used by open AI efforts, with ARM Computing Library available for openCL acceleration. ROCK960 supports Android 7.1, Debian Stretch and Yocto officially, other distributions can be supported by the open source community. Rockchip provides multimedia Linux support for ROCK960. The likely price for the board is going to be $99 for 2GB RAM with 16GB emmc and $139 for 4GB RAM with 32GB emmc.
Specs:
* SoC – Rochchip RK3399 hexa-core big.LITTLE processor with two ARM Cortex A72 cores up to 1.8/2.0 GHz, four Cortex A53 cores @1.4GHz and ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU with OpenGL ES 1.1 to 3.2 support,
OpenVG1.1, OpenCL 1.2 and DX 11 support
* System Memory – 2 or 4GB RAM
* Storage – 16 or 32GB eMMC flash + micro SD card
* Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4K@60 Hz with CEC and HDCP
* Connectivity – WiFi 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO up to 867 Mbps, and Bluetooth
4.1 LE (AP6356S module) with two on-board antennas, two u.FL antenna
connectors
* USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port, 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 3.0 type C port
with DP 1.2 support
Expansion
* 1x 40 pin low speed expansion connector – UART, SPI, I2C, GPIO, I2S
* 1x 60 pin high speed expansion connector – MIPI DSI, USB, MIPI CSI, HSIC, SDIO
* 1x M.2 key M PCIe connector with support for up to 4-lane PCIe 2.1
(max bandwidth: 2.0 GB)
* Misc – Power & u-boot buttons. 6 LEDS (4x user, 1x Wifi, 1x Bluetooth)
* Power Supply – 8 to 18V DC input (12V typical) as per 96Boards CE
specs; Battery header
Dimensions – 85 x 54 mm (96Boards CE form factor)
The team behind the ROCK960 is Vamrs Limited, a startup based on Shenzhen, China, with eight employees with average more than 10 years electronics and embedded experience. Vamrs is a 96boards contract Manufacturing Partner. (https://www.linaro.org/company/vamrs/)
Distributors and interested parties can contact Vamrs at support@vamrs.com
Qualcomm ARM Server Centriq 2400 at Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017
Posted by – September 30, 2017
This is the Qualcomm 48-core (custom Qualcomm Falkor cores) Centriq 2400 ARM Server reference evaluation board. Featuring 48-cores with 12 DIMM slots of DDR4 RAM memory, dual PCI riser boards for fully customizable setup. At Linaro Connect SFO17, the ARM team is demonstrating an ELK big data demo with ElasticSEarch, Logstash and Kibana for graphic visualization running on Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processor. The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processor is designed for cloud computing running these microservices in containers seamlessly. There is a 2nd demo of Linuxkit with NGINX running in a container. Both demos use Docker containers running on Ubuntu 16.04.
sub-$1000 Socionext 24-core ARM Desktop Developer Box
Posted by – September 30, 2017
Daniel Thompson of Linaro talks about the upcoming new ARM Developerbox that was announced at Linaro Connect SFO17. The box is a 24-core ARM Cortex-A53 low-power workstation allowing software development for ARM to be done on ARM. The board is a collaboration between Socionext, Gigabyte and Linaro and is the first 96Boards Enterprise Edition platform to exploit microATX form-factor and feels like a normal PC motherboard, right up to the row of three PCIe slots that are available.
Socionext CEO Yasuo Nishiguchi at Linaro Connect San Francisco 201
Posted by – September 30, 2017
Following his keynote to introduce Socionext and the recently announced multi-core desktop Arm developer platform Socionext Chairman and CEO Yasuo Nishiguchi PhD talks about servers, SoCs and the company’s new CPU-to-CPU communication technology DDT (Direct Data Transaction), and looks forward to the launch of the new desktop developer platform in the December-January time frame.
Purism Librem Debian phone, fully open source, Librem 11, 13, 15 Laptops
Posted by – September 29, 2017
Purism Phone is crowdfunding at https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ ($847’454 raised thus far) runs PureOS based on Debian Free/Libre and Open Source software and a GNU+Linux Operating System, it can run most GNU+Linux distributions, it’s runs many other upstream projects, it’s world’s first ever IP-native mobile handset with end-to-end decentralized communications via Matrix, with a 5″ display, Security focused by design, Privacy protection by default, works with 2G/3G/4G, GSM, UMTS, and LTE networks with an i.MX8 or i.MX6 CPU separate from Baseband with open-source GPU drivers, Hardware Kill Switches for Camera, Microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and Baseband. Purism also has a track record of delivering fully open source Intel powered laptops the Librem 11 2-in-1, the Librem 13 and the Librem 15.
Secure96 Security ICs and TPM Mezzanine for 96Boards
Posted by – September 28, 2017
Joakim Bech presents the Secure96 mezzannine security board, daughter board for engineers to work with symmetric, asymmetric IC’s as well as a TPM chip. You can see Joakim Bech’s presentation and slides on this product here.
Wookey on Telepresence robot at Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017
Posted by – September 28, 2017
Category: Exclusive videos, Linaro Connect
Wookey (who I also previously interviewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdgQ7AmWX0) has been bootstrapping ILP32 in Debian, the 32-bit ABI that will run on aarch64 core with no 32-bit instruction set support. He has been doing this using Helmut Grohne’s excellent ‘rebootstrap’, which uses the work Debian has done over the last few years to make it self-bootstrapping (multiarch, dependency-loop removal, build profiles, cross-building support, ‘botch’ dependency analysis tools) to automate the process of a bootstrap. This lets people doing bootstraps of new architectures concentrate on just the stuff that has actually changed due to the new arch, and allows repeatable builds.
He is attending Linaro connect in San Francisco this year using a Beam telepresence robot, in order to avoid the hefty couple of tonnes of emissions that flying across the Atlantic generates. That’s slightly more than one’s person’s annual sustainable allowance for _everything_: food, transport, heating, stuff, and he reckons eating is more important than geek conferences given that we really do have to choose…
Autofocus test on Firmware 2.0 Panasonic GH5
Posted by – September 28, 2017
I am doing my first handheld autofocus test using the Panasonic GH5 and its new Firmware 2.0 update. I’m hoping that the auto-focus may be good enough for my style of handheld, always moving, constantly re-framing, focusing on faces and things people show off. What do you think about this Autofocus performance? This was filmed with Serge Broslavsky at Linaro Connect 2017, see his GH5 setup here. This video was filmed at 4K60p at 150mbit/s H264. Thus far the Panasonic GH5 firmware can’t film 4K60 in HLG HDR mode and they don’t yet offer an H265 option at 4K60 to save on bitrate at same quality for faster YouTube uploading.
Bero builds ARM Desktop PC Quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 Marvell MACCHIATObin
Posted by – September 28, 2017
Bero (Bernhard Rosenkränzer) from Linaro is building his own 64bit ARMv8 quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 Desktop PC with Nvidia GPU (possibly with a Radon GPU card support later), 16GB RAM, today is Wednesday, he hopes to have it running by Friday then I can film a new video. Bero and his colleagues have also worked on many other things such as AOSP TV, Trebble related unifying builds adapting a new partition layout enabling automatic updates among kernel builds to work properly.
OpenGPU on Altera Cyclone V FPGA at Linaro Connect 2017
Posted by – September 27, 2017
Fabrício Ribeiro Toloczko, Systems engineer of The Technological Integrated Systems Laboratory (LSI-tec) and CITI-USP (Interdisciplinary Center in Interactive Technologies from University of São Paulo) presents the OpenGPU, a real GPU implementation that proposes a methodology to progressively develop hardware from a software implementation, making the process for producing hardware more easy and fast. Today, it runs on an Altera Cyclone V SoC FPGA with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9. This processor is used to keep running a Linux distribution, while sending and receiving data through the memory mapped communication with the FPGA. Mesa3D and Gallium’s softpipe driver are used for creating most of the graphic pipeline. The FPGA holds one rasterizer, which is a fixed function in graphic pipeline. With that, it’s possible to run any OpenGL application, doing the hardware and software changes in real time.
Serge Broslavsky’s GH5 setup with Zoom H5, monopod, light, some DIY, some from Aliexpress
Posted by – September 27, 2017
Serge Broslavsky is a software engineer at Linaro, he is filming a documentary about Upstreaming. Here he shows his Panasonic GH5 camera equipment which features the Panasonic 12-35 f/2.8 markII lens, Zoom H5 audio recorder, Zoom SSH-6 MS (stereo shotgun) capsule, Polsen OLM-20 Dual Omnidirectional Lavalier Microphone, DIY female TRS to dual male XLR cable. And from Aliexpress the Innorel H60 video head, Innorel RM80 video monopod with F-01 mini-tripod base for monopod, Long arca swiss style plate with dual flexible flash holders (both removed), QR-50 QR Plate Adapters (arca swiss style), 11″ Magic Arm, 7″ Magic Arm, Yongnuo YN300 video light, BB-6 fake NP-F battery (uses 6xAA), Boya BY-C10 shoe shockmount for audio recorder, Acoustic foam screen for shotgun microphone and more.
96Boards RoboMezzi, LoFive, PocketBeagle, PocketBone KiCAD, BeagleWire by Michael Welling of QWERTY
Posted by – September 27, 2017
Michael Welling of QWERTY Embedded Design at Linaro Connect 2017, showing off some of his custom PCB Designs including the 96boards mezzanine boards such as the RoboMezzi, RISC-V based LoFive development board (crowdfunding here), PocketBeagle, PocketBone KiCAD, BeagleWire and how he designs them in KiCAD and more.
You can read more about his projects below:
LoFive
Groupgetspage: https://groupgets.com/campaigns/353-lofive-risc-v
Hackaday.io page: https://hackaday.io/project/26909-lofive
Hackster.io page: https://www.hackster.io/mwelling/lofive-ab6d8a
SourceGithubRepository: https://github.com/mwelling/lofive
Mentions:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/08/31/lofive-is-a-tiny-open-source-hardware-board-based-on-sifive-fe310-risc-v-open-soc/
https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/09/23/lofive-risc-v-groupgetscom-sifiveinc/
https://hackaday.com/2017/09/18/a-smaller-cheaper-risc-v-board/
PocketBeagle
Homepage: https://beagleboard.org/pocket
SourceGithubRepository: https://github.com/beagleboard/pocketbeagle
PocketBoneKiCAD
Hackaday.io page: https://hackaday.io/project/19495-pocketbone-kicad
Hackster.io page: https://www.hackster.io/mwelling/pocketbone-kicad-4fba09
SourceGithubRepository: https://github.com/mwelling/pocketbone-kicad
Blogsandvideo:
https://hackaday.com/2017/04/15/an-even-smaller-beaglebone/
https://octavosystems.com/2017/07/25/hand-assembly-of-pocketbone-using-the-osd3358/
https://octavosystems.com/2017/04/20/pocketbone-kicad-design/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYUbEIdKWXg
BeagleWire
Hackaday.io page: https://hackaday.io/project/20989-beaglewire
Hackster.io page: https://www.hackster.io/46021/beaglewire-566292
GithubRepos:
https://github.com/mwelling/beagle-wire
https://github.com/pmezydlo/BeagleWire
GSoCProjectPage:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/GSoC/BeagleWire_software_support
96boardscommunityinitiative
https://github.com/96boards/mezzanine-community
4K60 HDR on ALi M3755 quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 Set-top-box SoC
Posted by – September 26, 2017
http://alitech.com has shipped over 600 Million SoCs for Set-top-boxes thus far, they are aiming to soon have shipped over 1 Billion Set-top-box SoC chipsets, here showing their new ALi M3755 quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 SoC with Mali400MP2 with 4K60 UHD support with HDR-10 and HLG support with ALi’s HDR2SDR technology, 1080p30 H264 encoding, PiP UHG+FHD or 4xFHD, supporting Linux and Android.
Ali M3733 is an ARM Cortex-A9 SmartHybrid HD DVB-C SoC with advanced security with a 5000DMIPS performance 1080p60 support, 720p60 video encoding support. This chipset is for example used by a Fiber to the home provider in Russia.
M3529 is an entry level MIPS based chipset with a 2000DMIPS performance which ALi has shipped in large quantities to the Indian market already.
HDMI alt mode USB Type-C in a UHD Blu-ray player
Posted by – September 26, 2017
HDMI Licensing Administrator shows 4K60 Premium Certified HDMI alt mode over USB Type-C Connector on a modified UHD Blu-ray player, by just re-routing the HDMI signal instead of going to an HDMI connector can transfer the same HDMI signal through the USB Type-C connector. For now devices like smartphones, tablets and PCs who want to be able to output HDMI signal over USB Type-C need to have a small chip to transfer the HDMI signal but later some SoCs might be adding this functionality directly onto the SoC.
Premium HDMI Cable Certification Program at IFA 2017
Posted by – September 26, 2017
HDMI Licensing Administrator shows some examples of the HDMI cables that get to be part of the Premium HDMI Cable Certification Program from such brands as Hama and Avinity brands which are popular in Europe, Rocketfish which is Best Buy’s HDMI cable brand, blackweb and GE which are Walmart’s HDMI cable brands and the affordable monoprice brand too.
