Category: Favorite companies

Wookey on Telepresence robot at Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017

Posted by Charbax – 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 Charbax – September 28, 2017
Category: Cameras, 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, Linaro Connect

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 Charbax – September 28, 2017
Category: Development Boards, Exclusive videos, Marvell, Linaro Connect

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 Charbax – September 27, 2017
Category: Development Boards, FPGA, Exclusive videos, Linaro Connect

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 Charbax – September 27, 2017
Category: Cameras, 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, Linaro Connect

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 Charbax – September 27, 2017
Category: PCB Design House, Development Boards, Exclusive videos, Linaro Connect

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

HDMI alt mode USB Type-C in a UHD Blu-ray player

Posted by Charbax – September 26, 2017
Category: 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, HDMI

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 Charbax – September 26, 2017
Category: 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, IFA, HDMI

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.

$3 Type-C 4-in-1 Hub Colorii C4 for Smartphone and Laptop

Posted by Charbax – September 19, 2017
Category: Other, Exclusive videos, Colorii

Colorii C4 and C4 Pro is a 4-in-1 USB Type-C Hub adaptors for use with Type-C Smartphones and Laptops, extending one USB Type-C to USB2/USB3, SD card reader, micro SD card reader.

It’s available to buy on ebay.

Distributors can contact Colorii here:
Gennie Peng, Sales Manager
sales@colorii.cc
Mobile/Whatsapp/Wechat: +86 1501 3777080
Skype: apvell091

$379 Meizu Pro 7 dual display, 5.2″ + 1.9″ AMOLED, Mediatek P25

Posted by Charbax – September 5, 2017
Category: Smartphones, Exclusive videos, Reviews, MediaTek, Android, Sparc

The Meizu Pro 7 is available to distributors from around $379 through http://www.sparc.hk (contact details listed below) it comes with 64GB Flash, 4GB RAM, Mediatek MT6757T Helio P25 Octa-core 2.6GHz ARM Cortex-A53 on the 16nm FinFET process node, with ARM Mali-T880 GPU, with a Secondary touchscreen 1.9″ AMOLED Display on the back for quick glancing of information without turning the whole phone up, Dual Rear Camera.

Distributors can contact Sparc here:
SPARC Technology Co., Ltd. (HongKong)
Steven Wong, Deputy Chief Sales Officer
http://www.sparc.hk/phone/meizupro7.html
steven@sparc.hk
Skype: hys8703
Mobile: +86-15975354238 (Whatsapp)
https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/22330594/
https://www.facebook.com/sparchk/

Sparc is an offically authorized distributor for wholesales trading partner/distributor for the Meizu M5c, Meizu Pro 7 and the OnePlus5 Eur Spec also among other among other models, you can contact them.

$79 Meizu M5c, 5″ HD, MediaTek MT6737 Quad-core

Posted by Charbax – September 5, 2017
Category: Smartphones, Exclusive videos, Reviews, MediaTek, Android, Sparc

Meizu M5c is available to distributors from around $80 through http://www.sparc.hk (more contact details listed below) it comes with 16GB Flash, 2GB RAM, Mediatek MT6737 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 with Mali T720 MP GPU, Eur Spec, 8 megapixel camera with dual-color flash.

Distributors can contact Sparc here:
SPARC Technology Co., Ltd. (HongKong)
Steven Wong, Deputy Chief Sales Officer
http://www.sparc.hk/phone/meizum5c.html
steven@sparc.hk
Skype: hys8703
Mobile: +86-15975354238 (Whatsapp)
https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/22330594/
https://www.facebook.com/sparchk/

Sparc is an offically authorized distributor for wholesales trading partner/distributor for the Meizu M5c, Meizu Pro 7 and the OnePlus5 Eur Spec also among other among other models, you can contact them.

Premium HDMI Cable Certification Program

Posted by Charbax – August 24, 2017
Category: 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, Computex, HDMI

The Premium HDMI Cable Certification Program is the new program from the creators of HDMI technology that encompasses additional and enhanced cable testing as well as an authentication and verification program. Cables are tested to ensure they support the full 18Gbps bandwidth from the HDMI 2.0b specification plus an EMI test to ensure cables minimize interference with wireless signals. The program is designed to give end users confidence when purchasing new HDMI cables for their 4K/UltraHD products that may include features such as 4K@60Hz, BT.2020 and HDR. Participating HDMI Adopters can promote their ATC-tested High Speed HDMI Cables as Premium High Speed HDMI Cables or Premium High Speed HDMI Cables with Ethernet using a unique anti-counterfeiting authentication label on their products which can be checked and authenticated using the app on any smartphone. Also watch my video about the new HDMI 2.1 spec and my video about HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type-C.

ThiEYE T5 Action Camera

Posted by juliusaugustus – August 24, 2017
Category: Cameras, HKTDC Electronics Fair, ThiEYE, Ambarella

The ThiEYE t5 is a remote controlled action camera with video quality comparable to a GOPRO Hero 5 with 4k/30fps recording. The T5 features a waterproof case and filter ands there are additional cases and filters as well. The price for the T5 is $100 – 150.

faytech at Computex 2017

Posted by Charbax – July 6, 2017
Category: Displays, Exclusive videos, Allwinner, Intel, Computex, faytech, Android, Windows

Latest projects and products at faytech booth at Computex, presented by Serena, Andy and Johanna of faytech. Including the 11.6” Butterfly MX device, one of their projects that focuses on residence management using an app, they have made a video about it working well outdoors in the rain, their 42” Capacitive Touch PC embedded in a mirror designed for retail applications, such as shopping malls, shops, restaurants etc. Right after that, the 84” 4K Capacitive Touch Monitor with optical bonding. Then Serena shows several standard products which earn the reputation for faytech. As well as one of major improvements in this year- capacitive touch panel which is compatible with glove and stylus. At last, Johanna shows me their successful project applied to the Indian public transportation system.

You can find more information about some of the devices showed in the video here:
(0:40) The Butterfly MX and other projects
(2:20) 84” 4K Capacitive Touch Monitor (Optically bonded) and on YouTube
(3:30) 15” IP65 Touch Monitor (used at car wash channel in the US)
(5:06) 10” Resistive touch PC
(8:24) 21.5” Capacitive Touch PC (with stylus and glove) and on YouTube

Onyx Boox E Ink Notepads at Computex 2017

Posted by Charbax – July 3, 2017
Category: E-readers, Exclusive videos, Computex, Onyx, Android

After the previous videos that I recently filmed with Onyx showing their 1-month battery life E Ink ARM Powered laptop and their new upcoming amazing e-readers which you can see here. At Computex 2017, Onyx demonstrates some of their software features to come with their next generations of large E Ink display notepad reader devices, to come with new faster ARM chipsets (maybe the same new 64bit quad-core Marvell IAP140 ARM Processor which is also in the amazing new Sony DPT-RP1, I’m just guessing). Here their software for example can move and reduce the size of handwritten notes to fit more onto a page and nicely put it on lines for note taking. Onyx is aiming to bring their next generation amazing 10.3″, 13.3″ and 9.7″ devices with also their new software. Onyx is trying to bring in some big educational customers trying to optimize the hardware and software of large E Ink notepads for the education market.

What I think Google should do about Google Shopping and about YouTube Donations and YouTube Shopping Monetization

Posted by Charbax – June 29, 2017
Category: Opinions, Google

Here’s an illustration of what I think Google needs to do at the top of Google search for when users search for any item that can be purchased online. I think Google needs to automatically list a bunch of top price comparison sites as well as a list of top e-commerce sites like Amazon and the likes which Google would otherwise anyways list as the top search results below:

It’s important that Google cannot be taking any commission or advertising fees from these competing price comparison sites or these competing online stores like Amazon for them to be listed here. Google must fairly list the top most relevant price comparison sites and online stores which they would list at top of search results anyway. Google must integrate better with competing price comparison sites so they can nicely automatically list the top prices and if possible also grab images, product details to show on mouseover or even if possible integrated in this list if there is enough space.

Google can display Google Shopping as one of the options, let’s say, probably at the bottom of the list of price comparison search engines listed.

Users can customize how these lists are generated, users can choose to show by cheapest price. Users can select one or several favorite sites to always use each time they come back. Just as one can choose a default search engine on Chrome, one must be able to choose one or several favorite price comparison search engines, or for example choose to always only display Amazon Prime results on each search if Amazon Prime is the user’s favorite way to buy.

A click on a price can lead directly to shopping site, bringing a commission only to the price comparison engine on the sale, not taking any commission to Google on the sale. Unless the clicks are from the area of Google Shopping.

This UI and comparison or top price comparison sites and of top shopping sites must be adapted for mobile.

As for YouTube:

New Monetization should be implemented in two ways:
– Same as above Comparison and integration of top Price Comparison engines and of top user favorite stores such as Amazon must be integrated as the Instant Buy Now and Price Comparison overlay on top of every YouTube video. YouTuber must be paid as close to a 4% commission on each sale as possible, regardless the shopping site. YouTuber can choose if limit to any specific e-commerce site such as Amazon or let Google figure out the best comparison sites or shopping sites to show. YouTube may take a fair commission on the sales revenue on YouTube Shopping because the YouTuber choses to link only to sites that give a 4% commission back on each sale. A feature I have been asking YouTube to implement for nearly a decade.
– Viewers must be able to Donate and support their favorite YouTubers directly, see my illustrations below:

To easily allow viewers to one-click to donate any amount to support the YouTube content creator, the YouTuber must be able to enable a Dollar sign to be displayed on the left side of every Thumbs up icon on all monetized videos of the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Dollar sign in USA or if viewer prefers to donate in USD currency, this currency icon can also be €, £, ₹, ¥ or whichever based on viewer location (donations must work for any viewer worldwide) and converted in list of top donators to be displayed in the local currency of the viewer who is looking at that list.

Scroll down on the video page:

Below the video area, below description, but above comments, it should show the list of the top donators for that video. Viewer can switch to view top donators on whole channel in the last week, month, year or lifetime. YouTuber can limit if these week/month/year/lifetime lists should be shown or not throughout the whole channel of the YouTuber.

Donators can decide to display nickname (any amount of text up to short limit), realname, or display their @socialmedia/+googleplus/facebook-link or to display their blog/website/company URL as the donator. Google can be slightly smart and make sure an anonymous $0.49 donation cannot link as mcdonalds.com as the YouTube/Google account holder may have to verify ownership/control over advertised website.

When donating, the user can easily choose other ways to regularly support the YouTuber by recurring weekly, monthly, yearly or by payment for each new video posted, or for each 5/10/any number of videos posted.

A donator can have his comments highlighted and automatically pushed to the top of comments displayed below. Top donators can highlight comments more based on how much they have donated. There may be some settings that the YouTuber can control as to how much of a highlight the comment can get based on how much the donation amount is set for.

This system can thus turn some of the donations into advertising, as people can then show their appreciation for the YouTube content by showing off their blog, website, company as the top donator. As the top donator just for that video or the good idea could be to have companies and patrons/philantropists compete to be the overall top donators/sponsors not just for supporting under that one video, but supporting the whole channel over the past week/month/year/lifetime.

A donator can hide their contribution(s), turn those into anonymous and back into public name/company/socialmedia/website at any time.

Eventually YouTube can automatically add top donators/sponsors as end of clip “Thanks for the support of:” or any other text customizable. And top donators can even have their logos displayed automatically as end of show credits clip that YouTube can automatically add to specific videos or to the whole channel and to customize over time. A $20 sponsor may not have his logo in the end of show credits, YouTuber can specify certain thresholds that may or may not unlock that end of show credits placement. A very large donator/sponsor can even be inserted as a brief “Supported by” clip at the beginning of each video, but it must not be permanently inserted in the video, that dynamic credits system should be inserted by YouTube at beginning/end and can just be temporarily.

YouTube must not take a commission on the top donations system on YouTube, YouTube may only keep the approximate 2.6% credit card processing fee. This Top Donators system must be considered a system for fans and companies to become Producers/supporters of the content that is created. YouTube can still monetize every video as they usually do with ads, with YouTube Red subscriptions, and with the Buy Now one-click Shopping and customizable Price Comparison system that I specified above.

I have been wanting and asking to see a perfect Top Donators systems since 11 years ago when I paid a programmer $350 to get a WordPress top donators plugin made: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/paypal-donations-realtime-meter-top-6-donators/ but I didn’t follow up with it much, other than using it on my previous blogs for a few years and collecting something like $1000 in donations through the plugin in total I think.

HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type-C

Posted by Charbax – June 29, 2017
Category: Laptops, Smartphones, Displays, 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, Computex, HDMI

The HDMI Alt Mode for USB Type-C connector will allow HDMI-enabled source devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and camcorders to utilize a USB Type-C connector to directly connect to the Billions of HDMI-enabled displays (which is included with 100% of flat panel TVs), and deliver native HDMI signals over a simple cable without the need for protocol and connector adapters or dongles. HDMI Alt Mode will support the full range of HDMI 1.4b features such as 4K, surround, ARC, 3D, HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC), Consumer Electronic Control (CEC), Deep Color, x.v.Color and content types, HDCP 2.2. HDMI Alt Mode follows all necessary Alt Mode USB Type-C specification requirements which auto-detects HDMI Alt Mode source devices and HDMI-enabled displays, requires no adapters to connect from an HDMI source to an HDMI display, source output is AC coupled for HDMI Clock and Data lanes and other.

Google fined €2.42 billion by EU, Press conference and Q&A by Margrethe Vestager

Posted by Charbax – June 29, 2017
Category: Google

EU Commission fines Google €2.42 billion for abusing dominance as search engine by giving illegal advantage to own comparison shopping service. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy gives this statement and Q&A with the media. 9 years ago, I video-blogged for Margrethe Vestager’s political party in Denmark: http://youtube.com/radikaletv

Press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-1784_en.htm
Source for the video: http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/focus/index.cfm?sitelang=en&focusid=2480

TechNexion Factory Tour

Posted by Charbax – June 16, 2017
Category: Tablets, Factory Tours, PCB Design House, Robots, Internet of Things, Development Boards, Exclusive videos, Qualcomm, NXP, TechNexion, Android, Ubuntu

TechNexion is a design and manufacturing company showing in this video its engineering team, that designs IoT smart devices, development boards for the needs of projects like the ARM powered Android Things ecosystem by Google or Amazon Alexa Voice-Recognition development platform and its advanced manufacturing capabilities. In the video, we get a direct glimpse of how ARM modules and systems are designed and how much automation is being utilized in a smart SMT factory. The video tour takes you through all production stages from the module design to SMT manufacturing to post production functional testing. The factory churns out up to 250K PCBA per month. Filmed on location at the TechNexion factory in Taipei, Taiwan in June 2017.

Google Keynote at SID Display Week 2017, Clay Bavor, VP of Google VR/AR

Posted by Charbax – June 9, 2017
Category: Displays, Wearables, VR, Smart Glass, 4K UHD, Exclusive videos, Qualcomm, SID Display Week, Google, Android

Google is Enabling rich and immersive experiences in virtual and augmented reality, presented by Clay Bavor (at Google since 2005), Google Vice President of Virtual Reality where Google works to create an efficient and scalable software platform for rich VR and AR services to be powered by high performance, power-efficient ARM CPUs, GPUs, sensors, and where Google is also working with the Display insutry to bring amazing new ultra high resolution VR and AR displays to the market. As you can see in this video of the keynote, at the SID Display Week, Google announced they are working with Sharp to create ultra-high resolution LCD displays for VR optimized for very low lag time. Google also works to create 20megapixel per eye prototype VR and AR displays, amounting to 2.5x 4K resolution per eye. And Google is working with ARM and other companies to bring foveated rendering technology to not require the 100-150Gbit/s bandwith for VR and AR content once the microdisplays have such high resolution, this method involves using a camera to track where the eye is focusing and render a very high resolution of exactly what you’re looking at while keeping the resolution and detail lower for where you are not looking at directly, and doing all that accurately with minimal lag time.