I had the pleasure of an impromptu chat with Toradex’s CEO (Samuel Imgrueth), COO (Stephan Dubach) and CMO (Daniel Lang) set against a gorgeous locale close to the Toradex headquarters in Switzerland. We talked about Toradex’s history, key focus and offerings and a lot more.
Category: Development Boards
Geniatech IoT TV Box, Zigbee Gateway with OpenWRT, LoRa Gateway, Zigbee Dongle, HDMI Capture
Geniatech shows their new IoT integrations for their TV Box market expertise, adding Smart Home functionality in the TV Box, introducing their Zigbee Gateway, Industrial IoT LoRa Gateway based on their Snapdragon 410 Dragonboard 96Boards Developer Board 4 Hub to do the edge computing, Zigbee Dongle adds IoT Smart Home to any Set-top-box such as the Geniatech ATX598Max and other that supports it in the software. Geniatech HDMI Capture
NXP i.MX 8X, CODESYS, EtherCAT, OPC UA, Android, RIMAC at the Toradex Booth
Toradex’s NXP i.MX 8X based System on Module. The i.MX 8X SoCs comes with up to 4x Cortex-A35 and 1x Cortex-M4. The Cortex-A35 is an extreme power-effective 64bit Arm Core, the M4 is used to offload real-time tasks, check for errors to increase safety, and check for errors to further lower the power consumption.
The RAM and cache on the 8X can be protected with ECC (Error Correction Code) which make these SoMs ideal for critical applications such as Industrial Automation, Medical, Railways, etc.
Toradex shows the Colibri iMX8X running a GPU accelerated Qt application. The Apalis iMX8X with ECC will be available soon The Industrial 4.0 demo shows a Real-time Time Motion Control Application. A Toradex Apalis iMX6 powers the Midi-Eagle Computer from Diamond Systems featuring dual ethernet interfaces A CODESYS Soft PLC Stack is running on top of real-time Linux with a motion controller software. The motors are connected via EtherCAT. The system also utilizes an OPC-UA Server from Matrikon The demo was put together by the experienced Toradex Partner BE.Services.
RIMAC, famous for its insanely fast electric cars, demonstrates how the pin-compatibility of the Toradex SoM allows them to simply upgrade from an Apalis iMX6 to an Apalis iMX8QM.
Kynetics is providing Android support for Toradex modules. They show off Android on the i.MX 8 QuadMax but also on the i.MX 7 utilizing the integrated Cortex-M4 Core.
This allows it to run on the Cortex M4 Core an RTOS such as FreeRTOS and offload tasks.
Kynetics also provides an over-the-air (OTA) solution called Update Factory for IoT applications based on Eclipse hawkBit.
Toradex https://www.toradex.com/
Diamond Systems Midi-Eagle Computers http://www.diamondsystems.com/products/midieagle
Matrikon OPC UA https://www.matrikonopc.com/
BE.services https://www.be-services.net/
RIMAC and Toradex https://www.toradex.com/applications/automotive-infotainment/rimac
Kynetics https://www.kynetics.com/android-bsp/toradex
Microchip Microsemi PolarFire Low Power FPGA Series from 100K to 500K Logic Elements
Microchip PolarFire FPGAs deliver the industry’s lowest power at mid-range densities with security and reliability. The product family spans from 100K logic elements (LEs) to 500K LEs, features 12.7G transceivers and offers up to 50% lower power than competing mid-range FPGAs. The devices are ideal for a wide range of applications within wireline access networks and cellular infrastructure, defense and commercial aviation markets, as well as industrial automation and IoT market
Shiratech 96Boards Sandwich = Dragonboard 410c + LTE Mezzanine + Bosch Sensor + FPGA Mezzanine
Shiratech and Arrow 96boards Mezzanine sandwich features the DragonBoard 410c with 3 mezzanines and an arduino shield with the DragonBoard 410c as the base board, a Shiratech LTE Mezzanine, a Bosch Sensor Mezzanine and a Shiratech FPGA Mezzanine.
Open Source Android Kernels with Todd Kjos of Google and Bero
Todd Kjos of the Android Kernel team at Google, and Bero of the Linaro Mobile Group, talk at Linaro Connect Vancouver, they talk about running Android on the mainline kernel, trying to get closer to mainline, enabling test boards and devices to run mainline Linux. Getting some of the Android specific things that were kept out of the tree into the Linux tree.
$100 Lapdock on Indiegogo
Now crowdfunding the Lapdock project on Indiegogo at http://igg.me/at/lapdock starting at $100. The future of Laptops will not have a powerful CPU in them but will be modular when you buy them, they can be powered by your phone, or you can buy a small compact ARM Powered internal or external Type-C Stick to run them off of. Laptops are all about getting a great keyboard, mouse and display, but the CPU, Memory, Connectivity, those things can be swapped according to progress in the industry. I will be posting updates on this project at http://Lapdock.net and on the Updates tab at http://igg.me/at/lapdock if this project gets funded by at least $100 thousand, then the suppliers in Shenzhen China will be able to deliver the Lapdock at this price. If Lapdocks can become a larger success with a lot of demand then prices will be able to reach sub-$100 for high quality components, high quality keyboard, mouse pad, display and batteries also that last at least 20 hours on a charge. With a lot of support, this concept will also bring high performance and affordable USB Type-C Sticks to run all sorts of productivity user interfaces based on Android (such as the OXI UI) or Linux OSes or even Microsoft can bring Windows support to the Lapdock. This form factor could also bring the developers who use development boards closer to the mass market consumers, as all work done around the development boards of the future (very compact and affordable USB Type-C Sticks) will directly be able to impact also how end consumers can use devices for actual real work and productivity. The Lapdock will also move Smartphone market more towards their “PC Mode” as Samsung and Huawei already support each their PC Modes, and that is great because Samsung and Huawei are the two biggest Smartphone manufacturers in the world, yet most consumers don’t even know that the PC Mode is there. With Lapdocks, the performance of latest 7nm ARM Processors in phones will be tuned further for multi-window, multi-tasking and for running more advanced productivity apps on Android. 2019 will hopefully be the year where ARM Powered productivity finally reaches mass adoption and the mass market and I think that the Lapdock will be at the center point of that major electronics industry upgrade.
Chromium OS on Snapdragon 845
At Linaro Connect Vancouver 2018, some engineers are showing the Open Source Chromium OS running on the 10nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. With some talk on the status of using Freedreno for hardware accelerated GPU support in that Chromium OS demo. Over the past few months this solution has been upstreamed into the mainline kernel, display driver, audio driver, wifi driver, all the connectivity and periferal storage drivers, all to make Chromium OS work on that chipset. Running the 4.18 kernel with very few additional patches, it has hardware accelerated video playback using the open source freedreno driver. This could be a clue towards what I think could be an ultimate ARM Powered Laptop, a Snapdragon 845 Powered Chromebook would be so awesome, with Gigabit LTE, with good ARM single thread and multi-thread performance, with smooth Android and Linux apps supported, perhaps even it would be nice if Microsoft could contribute full x86 and ARM compiled Windows 10 apps support directly on this device.
Ultra96 Xilinx FPGA Development Board with Avnet
Ultra96 is an ARM-based, Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC development board based on the Linaro 96Boards Consumer Edition specification. The processor is a Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MP ZU3EG A484 and the RAM is a Micron LPDDR4 memory provides 2GB of RAM in a 512M x 32 configuration. The Ultra96 includes 40-pin 1x 96Boards Low-speed expansion header and 1x 60-pin 96Boards High speed expansion header. The 96Boards’ specifications are open and define a standard board layout for development platforms that can be used by software application, hardware device, kernel, and other system software developers. Ultra96 represents a unique position in the 96Boards community with a wide range of potential peripherals and acceleration engines in the programmable logic that is not available from other offerings.