Sanmos Microelectronics Corp. is launching some cheap video games emulators, available from $13 with 8bit-only pre-loaded games or for $36 for the MiShark64 with MicroSD card slot and video game emulation support of upwards 10 thousand games (one can “find” on the Internet) from 8bit NES (FC), GB, GBC, 16bit SNES (SFC), Sega MD and up to 32bit GBA games. The MiShark64 also includes a composite TV-output and video playback support of RMVB, DAT, RM, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, FLV, H.263, WMV, AVI, ASF, 3GP, VOB formats and Audio codecs support of MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, APE, FLAC. It comes with an integrated 800mA Li-ion battery good for 2 hours of portable use, but it can also be used on the TV and comes with 2 game controllers for that.
Category: Exclusive videos
Forever Plus Corp Digital Microscope in a panda bear
Posted by – July 14, 2010
Forever Plus Corp is showing new easy to use USB microscopes, they come with drivers for Windows or Mac, a special software to capture pictures video from the microscope or to do stuff like measuring the size of very small thing. I think it is pretty awesome to have cheap digital microscopes to magnify very small things onto the computer monitor or onto a HDTV. I plan to use one of these in my video reviews when it might be relevant to magnify small parts of cool products.
Canonical explains the status of Ubuntu on ARM Powered Laptops
In this video, Jerone Young, Partner Engineer at Canonical explains the status of software optimizations and development to make ARM Powered Laptops and Desktops a reality. He tells about some of the fascinating challenges where Canonical is working together with the their partners at the Linaro group of companies (ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST Ericsson, Texas Instruments…) to realize a full desktop experience on ARM Powered devices, including full and fast web browsing and full access to most of the most useful Ubuntu applications.
It’s about hardware acceleration, about standardization of boot process and other aspects of the ARM platforms, this is about focusing development efforts to solve the most important challenges and provide thus open source and free software tools to be used by all ARM Powered Linux based products. With faster memory bus speeds coming up in the next generation of Desktop-centric ARM Processors, such as support for DDR3 RAM speeds, the implementation of multiple cores as in upcoming ARM Cortex A9 processors, the standardization of how to use graphics and video hardware acceleration to speed up user interfaces, applications and features. Those are the challenges that Canonical and its partners are working very hard on and plan to implement in actual products that can start to be sold to the mass market during these coming months.
As you have been able to see in hundreds of videos here on ARMdevices.net, many, many prototypes of ARM Powered laptops are being shown at trade shows. Huge laptop makers like HP, Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo, Quanta, Compal, Inventec, Pegatron, all of those and many more have shown or have announced ARM Powered laptop projects. Yet to actually launch these to a very large market, the ARM Partners are first collaboratively making sure that those devices provide a user experience that is fast enough for most consumers.
This story as discussed on Slashdot: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/07/06/1256252/Surveying-the-Challenges-of-Linux-On-Cortex-A9-Based-Laptops
30 minutes with Jeff Orr of ABI Research
Posted by – June 30, 2010
ABI Research releases forecasts on ARM Powered laptops, tablets, they correctly predicted the 2009 netbook sales and have many other research papers, reports and forecasts out. In this video, we discuss the growth of Android vs the iOS devices, we discuss the potential of tablets, smartbooks, the possible disruption of Telecom business models. Cheaper ARM Powered smartphones and other devices.
Technology Editor at EETimes offers impressions from the Freescale Technology Forum
Posted by – June 27, 2010
R.Colin Johnson, Technology Editor at http://eetimes.com offers his impressions on the Freescale Technology Forum. The launch of the new Freescale Xtrinsic sensors, Cortex M4 and more. Check more videos he filmed of the first day keynotes at FTF at his blog: http://nextgenlog.tv
Freescale MMA9550L, the new Xtrinsic family of autonomous sensors
Posted by – June 24, 2010
Imagine not needing a power button to turn on your phone, just pick it up. Imagine cheaper warranty as manufacturers will know when devices were damaged because of usage error such as fall or banging. Imagine new user interfaces that are much more relying on sensors as the new Freescale Xtrinsic sensors can measure stuff 2000 times per second (the bandwidth and architecture being better). Imagine also sensors combining their abilities through fusion, again, no need to wake up the main ARM processor of the device to do all kinds of things! Imagine the device knowing exactly how it is touched, how it is moved, how it is held, the touch is not anymore only on the screen! This means better battery usage, months maybe even years of seamless standby. The new Xtrinsic sensor only needs 12 micro amps of power to be turned on all the time!
Windows CE 7
Posted by – June 24, 2010
So this is what Windows Compact Embedded 7 looks like! The unskinned version of WinCE7 looks basically quite a lot like WinCE6, but perhaps this new version of Windows CE has got some new optimizations to use ARM Cortex A8 and the more advanced hardware acceleration fully. And perhaps Windows CE 7 is meant to receive layers of customized user interfaces put on top of it, like Windows Phone 7 Series and like other potential UIs that partners of Microsoft surely are working on. Can this be considered an alternative to Windows 7 for ARM processors? I don’t know. How much can it really do?
Freescale automotive concept car
Posted by – June 24, 2010
Freescale is one of the leaders in putting processors and technology into cars. Freescale has put as much technology as they can on this concept car to showcase what we might see in the future out of the automotive industry.
Freescale Automotive: 3 levels of instrument cluster solutions
Posted by – June 24, 2010
Freescale shows what they think future car dashboards will look like. They will be fully LCD based with for example a wide 12.3″ Sharp LCD screen running Linux features on the Freescale i.MX51.
Freescale Power Management and Audio controls through USB
Posted by – June 24, 2010
Micro/Mini USB switch which controls routing of the audio, usb and uart to the processor and also controls the battery charging. Basically this means all kinds of things can be done just using the Mini or Micro USB connector.
Flexible and unbreakable plastic E Ink screens
Posted by – June 24, 2010
Sriram Peruvemba, Vice president of marketing at E-ink, presents the new flexible plastic based E-ink display. That new plastic e-ink screen technology will make it more usable for school children to use E-ink based devices to read all their textbooks and for all to access all books and texts ever written in the whole world.
E-ink is for full readability, outdoors, with reading lights indoors, it basically provides near paper quality, perfect for reading hundreds of pages. Something that is not possible on the current LCD based iPad.
SurfaceInk designs a 12.1″ capacitive Linux tablet
Posted by – June 23, 2010
Here’s the prototype of a 12.1″ Tablet designed by SurfaceInk based on the Freescale i.MX51.
Freescale touch sensors on a guitar
Posted by – June 23, 2010
As a demo, Freescale has put some capacitive sensors and combine them with resistive stings to thus combine the effect of a keyboard and of a guitar into an instrument.
Acceleglove by AnthroTronix
Posted by – June 23, 2010
The AcceleGlove™ instrumented gesture recognition glove (“designated iGlove for DoD/NIH applications”) has been developed under SBIR grants from the U.S. Army and Department of Education. Find more informations at: http://www.acceleglove.com
$15 Android Computer presented by AllGo systems
AllGo is presenting what may be one of the lowest cost ARM9 i.MX233 based Android device solution. For Tablets, PMPs, intelligent screens. AllGo provides Android software integration on the Freescale processors. The full Tablet with a 7″ WVGA screen and a battery could have a Bill Of Material cost of as low as $35.
Microsoft Word on ARM Powered Laptop using Genesi and Citrix solutions
Genesi Americas is presenting this awesome looking ARM Cortex A8 based Smartbook design, presented by Genesi who designed the hardware in collaboration with Pegatron of this latest generation of this Freescale Powered Smartbook design. For fun, we are running Microsoft Office through a high resolution version of Citrix viewer on the latest version of Ubuntu 10.4 for ARM processors. This could provide a one click online based software as a service solution. Want to run any X86 application on your ARM Laptop? Just click through the Citrix virtualization stuff and you can have it all running and smoothly. In theory, the apps could be processed by a grid and delivered much faster than on a single x86 processor based device.
Genesi are providing the hardware and software integration solution, in combination with Future Electronics, they can provide the whole solution to carriers, distributors, with the full bill of material, setting up the manufacturing and making the whole thing work and be sold to the market.
Genesi’s main IP is their Aura firmware solution:
Aura, the Genesi Firmware offering, implements a run-time, re-entrant hardware abstraction layer supporting the industry standard IEEE 1275 (OpenFirmware) and UEFI firmware specifications, with significant added functionality.
These additional features provide cost reduction of systems and faster time-to-market of hardware. Genesi provides board bring-up services and firmware for other Power Architecture and ARM hardware suppliers, up to and including a Linux desktop, based on our firmware.
Genesi is an active Open Source supporter, having donated a lot of hardware over the years to Debian, OpenSuSe, Gentoo, Crux and many other Linux distributions.
Genesi are very active in optimizing software specifically for ARM Cortex by porting libraries to the NEON unit in these devices resulting in large speedups.
Genesi has a developer forum: http://www.powerdeveloper.org
Hugh Herr keynote at the Freescale Technology Forum in Orlando
Posted by – June 23, 2010
Hugh Herr directs the Biomechatronics group at The MIT Media Lab.
Liquavista screen demonstrated outdoors
Posted by – June 23, 2010
On a bright sunny day at the Freescale headquarters in Toulouse, Kurt Petersdorff of Liquavista shows us the Liquavista screen and describes some of how it works. Liquavista thus supports color outdoor readability and claims that this screen can be manufactured with little changes to the existing huge LCD manufacturing process.
Freescale QNX Energy Management Systems
Posted by – June 23, 2010
Freescale and QNX Software Systems are showing their new smart energy reference, a pre-integrated software stack that makes it easier to design, deploy, and extend smart-home energy management systems based on the Freescale i.MX25, i.MX35 and i.MX51.
VGO active presence robot
Posted by – June 22, 2010
Imagine a robot that represents you in a distant location – one that represents you in healthcare facilities, in manufacturing sites – even at conferences. With a remote control software, the robot is controlled with a mouse, a video camera and screen to enable videoconferencing that can take you where you need to go to get your job done more efficiently.
