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Sony 100 megapixel IMX211 sensor in $50K Phase One XF 100MP

Posted by – March 31, 2017

Sony shows their 100 megapixel front illuminated CMOS image sensor, the Sony imx211 sensor, enables 100MP super high resolution photography, such that they have enabled in the $50’000 Phase One XF 100MP camera as well as in the $33’000 Hasselblad H6D

1cm positioning accuracy using multi-GNSS by Magellan Systems Japan

Posted by – March 31, 2017

Magellan Systems Japan is showing off their next generation high precision multi-frequency multi-GNSS receiver that reduces implementation cost compared to a conventional high precision RTK-PPP receiver. This supports GPS, QZSS and GLONASS, algorithm to output measuring data of carrier phase positioning, RTK-PPP, QZSS L6 signal, PPP-AR this solution can provide down to 1 centimeter accuracy which can be useful for self-driving cars, farm machines, construction machines, drones and more.

Distributors and industry insiders can contact Magellan Systems Japan here:
sales@magellan.jp
http://magellan.jp

Aconno BT5 Module based on nRF52840


Aconno is showing off the world’s first Bluetooth5 module based on the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 ARM Cortex-M4 device which I filmed here and here it features Bluetooth 5, Thread, ANT+, can run for 25 years on a CR23032 coin cell battery, developers can connect through a tag connect interface and it can support USB and NFC.

Distributors can contact Aconno here:
Miroslav Simudvarac, CEO
info@aconno.de

Android Bathroom Smart Mirror by Mues-tec Owatis InnovativTV

Posted by – March 28, 2017

Mues-tec is showing their Android Smart Touch Screen Mirror for the bathroom, IP rated 65, safe for the bathroom, 1080P Full HD Display, fully mirrored. With a built-in 1080p camera that can be used with facial recognition applications to display customized features depending on who is using the bathroom, built-in speakers, microphone for voice activated applications such as “OK Google”, a built-in motion detection sensor activates the Smart Mirror only when entering the room and automatically switches it off when nobody is there. Useful Android Apps can be downloaded from Google Play store such as Weather Apps, Traffic Apps, Weight Monitoring Apps (when connected to a Smart Weight Scale), Baby Monitoring App, Smart Toothbrush App to display tooth brushing statistics for each user.

Distributors can contact Mues-Tec here directly:
v.thur@mues-tec.de
Tel: +49 (0)6648-9167563

Amit Kucheria, 96Boards Technical Lead about 96Boards evolution, IoT, mezzanine and future spec

Posted by – March 28, 2017

Amit Kucheria, 96Boards Technical Lead, Yang Zhang, 96Boards Director and Robert Wolff, 96Boards Community Manager host of the http://96boards.org/openhours talk about the 96Boards adoption process for chip makers and manufacturers. Amit and Robert dive deeper into the 96Boards evolution and specification, compliance and testing, and the OpenHours program. Highlighting many announcements from the previous day’s keynote, taking a look at a table full of 96Boards from Consumer edition to IoT edition and a bunch of community driven Mezzanine products. The 96Boards team takes a look at the different 96Boards footprints and talks about the future.

Jon Maddog Hall and Robert Wolff after the Linaro Opening Keynote

Posted by – March 28, 2017

Robert Wolff and Jon “maddog” Hall talk about the opening keynote from Linaro Connect in Budapest #BUD17. Check out maddog’s reaction to the on stage IoT demo, which used not only Cabon and Nitrogen IoT boards, but also the new Sensor Hub board. Robert and maddog also touched on the various 96Boards announcements around newly available Consumer, IoT and Enterprise edition boards such as the Orange Pi, Oxalis and the MediaTek X20 Professional development board and how it all fits in the 96Boards ecosystem.

SoftBank Robotics Pepper SDK platform for emotional humanoid robot

Posted by – March 27, 2017

SoftBank acquired Aldebaran Robotics in 2013 and has been developing Pepper, inviting developers to develop new ideas for Pepper at http://developer.softbankrobotics.com they sold over 10 thousand of these Humanoid robots making it the world’s most popular advanced humanoid robot. Sold mostly in Japan but also expanding Pepper sales to several different markets in Europe and USA and around the world, some examples being to supermarkets/stores/malls, on cruise ships, to telecom stores, to hospitals, at public information centers, government information/services offices and more. SoftBank Robotics presents some of its software partners who are developing use case software solutions such as for airlines to be used as humanoid conversational check-in kiosk in luxury hotels or at airports, guiding and entertaining people at retail shops/malls and more. You can see my 2013 interview with Bruno Maisonnier founder of Aldebaran Robotics here.

96Boards MediaTek X20 Pro development board by ArcherMind

Posted by – March 25, 2017

ArcherMind presents the MediaTek X20 Pro 96Boards development board featuring the MediaTek X20 10-core heterogeneous processor, Tri-Cluster dual ARM Cortex-A72, octa ARM Cortex-A53 with Mali-T880 GPU and MediaTek’s multimedia support. The MediaTek X20 Pro development board also features 3G/4G LTE support, 2k LCM or two 1080P LCM,13M+13M dual camera you can read more about it here. This video also features ArcherMind’s Mstar Altra enterprise edition 96Boards based on Mstar MSD6A838 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 featuring Mstar 4K M-Genuine Video Engine which supports MEMC, HDR, De-noise, color enhance and etc.

Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards and Robert Wolff, Host of 96Boards Open Hours


Yang Zhang is the Director of Linaro’s http://96boards.org with Robert Wolff host of http://96boards.org/openhours talk about the status of the 40+ 96Boards that are in development, the 96Boards standard and latest news, IoT boards, extended boards, Enterprise boards and what may happen in the future.

Rakuten Institute of Technology Computer Vision and Human Computer Interaction R&D

Posted by – March 24, 2017

Rakuten Institute of Technology is the R&D organization of Rakuten Inc. in Japan. It is not a subsidiary company of Rakuten Group, but one department in charge of research and development for Rakuten Inc. Areas of research include Natural Language Processing, Multimedia Processing, Data Mining, and Massive and Distributed Computing. Rakuten is the largest e-commerce site in Japan, they have signed a 4-year $200M deal for global sponsorship with Spanish Club FC Barcelona until 2020.

SCEWO stairclimbing wheelchair from ETH Zurich using Toradex at Embedded World 2017

Posted by – March 23, 2017

SCEWO is a stairclimbing wheelchair equipped with a Toradex Apalis iMX6 SoM – born from a master’s degree thesis from Zurich University (ETH), which demonstrates what can be done using Toradex Computer on Modules (CoMs)/System on Modules(SoMs) in safety-critical applications. Other engaging demos included TAQ, the balancing robot, featuring Toradex’s Colibri iMX7 SoM with NXP i.MX 7 processor, a rover using the Apalis TK1 SoM with the NVIDIA TK1 to recognize street signs, and many more at Toradex’s booth at Embedded World 2017. Toradex also mentioned its launch of two new SoMs based on NXP i.MX 8QuadMax and NXP i.MX 6ULL: Apalis iMX8 and Colibri iMX6ULL respectively. The Colibri iMX6ULL offers a low-cost and power efficient platform, along with integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, targeting the emerging IoT and connected market; and the Apalis iMX8 offers high-performance and powerful graphics for Computer Vision applications.

Project developers and industry insiders can contact Toradex here:
lakshmi.naidu@toradex.com
https://www.toradex.com

David Rusling, Linaro CTO, status and roadmap of Linaro

Posted by – March 20, 2017

David Rusling talks about the latest things that are happening and going to happen at Linaro at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017. You can watch my interview with him from nearly 5 years ago here.

Qualcomm Snapdragon at Embedded World 2017


The Qualcomm Snapdragon platform is originally designed for mobile, but now can be embedded into Interactive kiosks, Digital signage, Robotics, High-tech toys, in flight entertainment, medical imaging and all kinds of ideas for any advanced IoT. Qualcomm positions their Snapdragon processors for Embedded to provide a superior performance, low power consumption and integrated connectivity to make devices more aware, connected, intelligent and interactive. The Snapdragon platform offers development kits, single-board computers and scaling up to customer solutions, integration services and production-ready, customizable System-on-Modules (SOMs). At Embedded World 2017, Qualcomm talks about Snapdragon 410E, Snapdragon 600E and also talks about the upcoming 820 series for embedded all with long term support (at least until 2025) to provide their maximum performance. With many projects to be born out of the Dragonboard 410c and showing off other solutions such as the Geniatech Developer Board 4, the small Geniatech DB4x 410 based module, the Altierre Systems powered embedded vision real-time synchronized multi-camera 130-degree panorama 4K system that is in the Panacast 2, eInfoChips eragon 820, Inforce, Kiteboard Snapdragon 410 board with a LTE sim card slot and more. All these Qualcomm Snapdragon based Embedded products can support multiple operating systems Android, Linux thanks to the availability of the open source Freedreno GPU driver and Windows 10 support also.

Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 at Embedded World 2017


Nordic Semiconductor is showing various demos showcasing their nRF52 series microcontrollers, showcasing the nRF52840 specifically, which supports all the new features introduced in Bluetooth 5.0, while also adding 802.15.4 and Thread support to the Nordic platform.

World’s first ARM Cortex-M23 in Nuvoton M2351


Nuvoton M2351 is a secure microcontroller platform powered by ARM Cortex-M23 core with ARMv8-M architecture, TrustZone technology, security technologies, peripherals and tools. The ultra-low-power 32-bit microcontroller works in low voltage range from 1.62V to 3.6V and can operate at up to 48 MHz frequency, with up to 512 Kbytes embedded Flash memory in dual bank mode supporting OTA firmware update and up to 96 Kbytes embedded SRAM. It is suitable for applications such as IoT secure connections, fingerprint authentication, EMV card reader, security alarm system, smart home appliance, wireless sensor node device (WSND), auto meter reading (AMR) and portable wireless data collector.

The M2351 series is equipped with 32 Kbytes Secure Boot ROM as root of trust, multiple firmware programming tools by In-System Programming (ISP), In-Circuit Programming (ICP) and In-Application Programming (IAP). In addition to TrustZone software protection mechanism, it also supports eXecution Only Memory (XOM), LDROM (user program loader) and multiple cryptographic hardware accelerators which are used to protect the core software and data assets on a microcontroller system. The M2351 series also integrates a 8 COM x 40 SEG controller with internal charge pump for segment LCD panel and provides high performance connectivity peripheral interfaces such as UART, SPI, I²C, GPIOs, USB and ISO 7816-3 for smart card reader.

As to Power efficiency, the M2351 series supports Brown-out detector, Power-down mode with RTC turn on, RAM retention less than 2.0 uA, deep power-down mode with RAM retention less than 1 uA and fast wake-up via multiple peripheral interfaces.

Security Features:
ARM Cortex-M23 TrustZone Technology
8 Memory Protection Units (MPU)
8 Security Attribution Units (SAU)
Implementation Defined Attribution Unit (IDAU)
2 KB OTP ROM with additional 1KB lock bits
Hardware Crypto Accelerators
CRC calculation unit
Up to 6 tamper detection pins
96-bit Unique ID (UID), 128-bit Unique Customer ID (UCID)

Zephyr Project, open source OS for IoT

Posted by – March 20, 2017

Matt Locke, Director of the Linaro IoT and Embedded Group (LITE) and Maureen Helm of NXP, one of the maintainers of the Zephyr Project which is a Linux Foundation hosted open source collaboration project, uniting leaders from across the industry to build a best-in-breed small, scalable, real-time operating system (RTOS) optimized for resource constrained devices, across multiple architectures. The Zephyr Project’s goal is to establish a neutral project where silicon vendors, OEMs, ODMs, ISVs, and OSVs can contribute technology to reduce the cost and accelerate time to market for developing the billions of devices that will make up the majority of the Internet of Things of the future.

The Zephyr Project is perfect for building simple connected sensors, LED wearables, up to modems and small IoT wireless gateways. Because the Zephyr OS is modular and supports multiple architectures, developers are able to easily tailor an optimal solution to meet their needs. As a true open source project, the community can evolve the project to support new hardware, developer tools, sensor and device drivers. Enhancements in security, device management capabilities, connectivity stacks and file systems can be easily implemented.

3of3 4K60p Panasonic GH5 handheld sample footage, testing 5-axis, autofocus in manual mode

Posted by – March 20, 2017

Here’s my third attempt at making a sample footage at 4K 60p using the new Panasonic GH5, with the help of one Panasonic staff, he used what he thought could be the optimal settings in manual mode to try to demonstrate the 5-axis stabilization, the auto-focus always following and tracking my eyes and face automatically, focusing on devices that I hold. You can download the original 4K 60p 150mbit/s MP4 camera file here on Google Drive.

1of3 4K60p Panasonic GH5 handheld sample footage, testing 5-axis, autofocus in Program mode

Posted by – March 20, 2017

Please try to ignore my big mistake in not controlling the Shutter speed in this video to prevent to the terrible flickering of the indoor LED lights once we enter the building. I am very sorry I didn’t try to adjust the shutter speed while shooting or before hand. I also tried but I couldn’t find any easy and fast Anti-flicker post processing options in a video-editor. So here it is, I publish this video as I filmed it anyway. You can still see the GH5’s performance in its 5-axis stabilization, auto-focus, color quality in 4K 60p mode. This video features Interview with Kevin Walker of Panasonic UK and Nick Driftwood a photographer who has been testing out pre-production GH5’s over the past 3 months and you can see some of his GH5 samples at https://youtube.com/driftwoodtv and https://vimeo.com/user2930807 I’m sorry I didn’t ask Kevin or Nick to help me adjust the Shutter speed while shooting this video when I should have better noticed the flickering in the viewfinder.

2of3 4K60p Panasonic GH5 handheld sample footage, testing 5-axis, autofocus in shutter priority mode

Posted by – March 19, 2017

Filmed on Panasonic GH5 with manual settings (in shutter priority mode, 400-iso then trying to change the iso setting) filmed with Kevin Walker of Panasonic UK at The Photography Show in Birmingham UK. As this is my second time trying to use the camera, I have probably not set all the settings just right, and this was shot on a pre-production model with possibly a non-final firmware for now, please check back later as I will post other samples that I shot with the GH5 today using other settings as I was trying to achieve perfect auto-focus, perfect 5-axis dual image stabilization, perfect anti-flicker, perfect brightness, perfect colors and etc with the types of handheld always moving camera movements that I usually do in my video-blogging. Check back a bit later tonight as I will attempt to de-flicker the first 25-minute video that I shot with the GH5 in its more default P mode but where my shutter speed was set incompatible with the indoor lights flickering too much at the show. I will also try to upload a couple more samples that I shot on the GH5 in 4K 60p. You can download the original 4K 60p 150mbit/s MP4 camera file here on Google Drive.

ST booth tour: STM32L4, STM32H7, startups, students at Embedded World 2017


ST shows their best-in-class ultra-low-power STM32L4 microcontroller which delivers 100 DMIPS based on its ARM Cortex-M4 core with FPU and ST ART Accelerator at 80 MHz offering dynamic voltage scaling to balance power consumption with processing demand, low-power peripherals (LP UART, LP timers) available in Stop mode, safety and security features, smart and numerous peripherals, advanced and low-power analog peripherals such as op amps, comparators, LCD, 12-bit DACs and 16-bit ADCs (hardware oversampling). STM32L4 is available in these skews: STM32L4x1 (Access line), STM32L4x2 (USB Device), STM32L4x3 (USB Device, LCD), STM32L4x5 (USB OTG) and STM32L4x6 (USB OTG, LCD).

ST also shows their new STM32H7 platform, taking advantage of an L1 cache, STM32H7 can deliver the maximum theoretical performance of the ARM Cortex-M7 core, regardless if code is executed from embedded Flash or external memory: 2010 CoreMark /856 DMIPS at 400 MHz fCPU. STM32H7 supports AXI and multi-AHB bus matrixes for interconnecting core, peripherals and memories, 16 Kbytes +16 Kbytes of I-cache and D-cache, Up to 2 Mbytes of embedded dual-bank Flash memory, with ECC and Read-While-Write capability, high-speed master direct memory access (MDMA) controller, two dual-port DMAs with FIFO and request router capabilities for optimal peripheral management, and one additional DMA, Chrom-ART acceleration for efficient 2D image copy and double-precision FPU are also part of the acceleration features available in the device, peripheral speed independent from CPU speed (dual-clock support) allowing system clock changes without any impact on peripheral operations, even more peripherals, such as four serial audio interfaces (SAI) with SPDIF output support, three full-duplex I²S interfaces, a SPDIF input interface supporting four inputs, two USB OTG with dedicated power supply and Dual-mode Quad-SPI interface, two FD-CAN controllers, a high-resolution timer, a TFT-LCD controller, a JPEG codec, two SDIO interfaces and many other analog peripherals including three fast 14-bit ADCs, two comparators and two operational amplifiers. STM32H7 has 1 Mbyte of SRAM with a scattered architecture: 192 Kbytes of TCM RAM (including 64 Kbytes of ITCM RAM and 128 Kbytes of DTCM RAM for time-critical routines and data), 512 Kbytes, 288 Kbytes and 64 Kbytes of user SRAM, and 4 Kbytes of SRAM in backup domain to keep data in the lowest power modes, Security Authenticate and protect software IP while performing initial programming in production or firmware upgrades in the field.

This ST booth tour video at Embedded World 2017 in Nuremberg also features several demos from the STM32 Fan Zone area at Embedded World 2017 featuring demos including a Gameboy emulator and a color LED light display system from students from the Thomas More college, Seavus smart Shopping cart, Bixi gesture controls in the car, Xped IoT systems and ST is giving away more than 5000 development boards at the Embedded World.