Allwinner A10 the new wunderchip of the tablet wars
The Chinese made Cortex-A8 SoC is poised to take over the low cost tablet world as the Wondermedia ARM9 based chips fade away.
Rhombus-Tech is working on a $15 (rumored price, seems too low considering that A10 chip alone is $7 and up) Open source EOMA-68 card based on Open Modular Architecture/PCMCIA web page link
"Allwinner A10 EOMA-68-compliant CPU Card
Features
The Allwinner EOMA-68-compliant module will have the following features:
- Approximately Credit-card size format (56mm x 90mm)
- An Allwinner A10, 1.5ghz ARM Cortex A8
- 1gb of RAM
- at least 1gb of NAND Flash (possibly up to 16gb)
- Operation as a stand-alone computer (USB-OTG powered)
- 2160p (double 1080p) Video playback
- MALI 400MP 3D Graphics, OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant.
- HDMI, Micro-SD, Headphones Socket,
- EOMA-68-compliant interfaces (RGB/TTL, I2C, USB2, SATA-II, 10/100 Eth)
- Expansion Header (similar to Beagleboard, IMX53QSB, Origen etc.)
The 44-pin Expansion Header's interfaces are yet to be finalised, but will include at least:
- 2pins: 1x USB-2
- 8pins: 5-pin AC97 shared with 8-pin I2S Signals.
- 2pins: PWM0 (PB2) and PWM1 (PI13)
- 2pins: IR_TX and IR_RX (also GPIOs, one of which is EINT16)
- 4pins: TV-Out
- 4pins: 4-wire Resistive Touchscreen
- 20pins: 2x LVDS"
For comparison here is an A10 Android 4.0 dev board from Wits-Tech, no word on pricing.
'Pro A10 development board is designed for full blog A10 chip technology designed, compact, full-featured, flexible. Facilitate the business, the Institute for Tablet PC users quickly, home court smart HD network player, car multimedia controller, network security monitoring, and a variety of low-end products such as industrial and medical electronics hardware and software development, debugging platform, or product design reference.
Pro A10开发板是专为全志科技A10芯片而设计，结构紧凑，功能全面，使用灵活。方便企业、研究所用户快速地进行平板电脑、家
庭智能高清网络播放器、汽车多媒体控制器、安防监控网络、以及各种低端工控及医疗电子等产品软硬件开发、调试平台、或产品设计
参考。"
Web page link
Xilinx makes MicroBlaze available in free WebPack ISE
It is the simplified version of the Xilinx MicroBlaze MCS soft-core processor with some limitations and fixed peripheral configuration that is made available but it is interesting to see it as Xilinx pushes ARM based Zynq-7000.
"New in ISE® 13.4, Xilinx introduces MicroBlaze™ Micro Controller System (MCS). MicroBlaze MCS is a complete standalone processor system that is delivered through ISE CORE Generator, intended for lighter-weight controller applications. MicroBlaze MCS delivers a self-contained soft-processor microcontroller with no need for the Embedded Design Kit (EDK), IDS Embedded Edition, or Xilinx Processor Design System (XPS). Now IDS Logic Edition users can configure and utilize a standalone processor-based system."
Web page link
DESCANSO Book Series
With winter taking hold on northern hemisphere there is nothing better then a good book to read over the wekend(s). Here is a hard core engineering series covering all aspects of deep space communication from NASA's JPL Deep Space Communications and Navigation Systems lab.
The whole series (11 volumes) can be downloaded as PDF files from the web page below.
Personal favourites:
Volume 3 "Bandwidth-Efficient Digital Modulation with Application to Deep-Space Communications" and
Volume 9 "Autonomous Software-Defined Radio Receivers for Deep Space Applications"
Recommended!
"The Deep Space Communications and Navigation Series, authored by scientists and engineers with many years of experience in their respective fields, lays a foundation for innovation by communicating state-of-the-art knowledge in key technologies. The series also captures fundamental principles and practices developed during decades of deep-space exploration at JPL. In addition, it celebrates successes and imparts lessons learned. Finally, the series will serve to guide a new generation of scientists and engineers."
Web page link
UPDATE: Looking For a 'FireSheep' Moment, Researchers Lay Bare Woeful SCADA Security
"A no-holds barred presentation at the S4 Conference laid bare the woeful state of security for many industrial control systems that power the world's critical infrastructure. Organizers have also cooperated with security scanning firms Rapid7 and Tenable to release modules for the Metasploit and Nessus products that can test for the discovered security holes.
The talk presented the findings of "Project Basecamp," a volunteer-led security audit of leading programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The audit found that decrepit hardware, buggy software and pitiful or nonexistent security features make thousands of PLCs vulnerable to trivial attacks by external hackers that could cause PLC devices to crash or run malicious code."
Web page link
Project Basecamp at S4
Web page link
TinyFeather TMS320C6745 based UAV
UAV desing from Japan based on fixed/floating point DSP and FPGA.
"下の緑の基板が 周辺機器を集めた基板 で、GPSや加速度計、ジャイロ、磁気コンパスといったセンサ類、そして受信機、サーボ用のPWMキャプチャ、ジェネレータが入っています。"
" ... with accelerometers and GPS, gyro and magnetic compass and sensors, and receivers, PWM servo capturing, contains a generator."
Eagle files can be found on this page link
Web page link
CMSIS Version 3.0 Preview
ARM has released preview of the CMSIS 3.0 which can be downloaded from this web page link
In addition to the updated DSP library there are 2 new componnents RTOS API and SVD XML schema for device description.
No actual devices are included in this preview there are only generic templates for Cortex-Mx and ARM SC000 and SC300 MCUs.
Web page link
Understand The Tradeoffs Of Increasing Resolution By Averaging
"Ideally, a fixed dc input to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) should result in the same output code for every conversion. But especially with a very precise ADC, you should expect to see a range of output codes for a given input voltage. This is a result of circuit noise within the ADC, as well as whatever noise might be present in the input signal."
"The Allan Variance
If it takes a long time to acquire the necessary number of samples, the data might drift during that time. For a specific type of data and drift, there is a maximum number of samples to average, which is beneficial. Using a statistical analysis tool called the Allan Variance, you can determine the maximum number of samples to average."
Web page link
A DIY microcontroller-based functional tester
"A typical PC-based test system may include analog and digital I/O cards and one or more communications buses that let you control external instruments. Budget restrictions, however, may force you to design your own functional tester based on a low-cost microcontroller.
If you go the microcontroller route, you can apply such a system in engineering evaluation, production test, or quality assurance for testing components, semiconductors, PCB's, hybrid modules, cable assembles, and other devices. You can integrate the tester into a custom instrument enclosure, a mechanical test fixture, or larger ATE system."
Web page link
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CERN Open Hardware Repository
"Open hardware for open science
Inspired by the open source software movement, the Open Hardware Repository was created to enable hardware developers to share the results of their R&D activities. The recently published CERN Open Hardware Licence offers the legal framework to support this knowledge and technology exchange."
Introduction web page link
CERN Open Hardware Licence wiki page link
ARMadillo module - project web page link
Infineon launches XMC4000 Cortex-M4 based MCU family
Press release web page link
"XMC stands for "Cross-Market Microcontroller" and means that, due to its configurability, the XMC4000 family is suitable for a wide range of industrial applications. Infineon is using this product to close the performance gap between the 16-bit XE166 family and the 32-bit TriCore™ family. The XMC4000 family is designed to enable scalable, compatible solutions with a high degree of software reusability. The XMC4000 portfolio consists of five series: XMC4100, XMC4200, XMC4400, XMC4500 and XMC4700. These series mainly differ in terms of core frequency, memory capacity and peripheral functions and number of I/O's.
The XMC4000 family has a powerful CPU subsystem, DSP functionality, a floating point unit, a fast Flash memory with only 22ns read time and error correction code (ECC), large SRAM and extended peripheral functions. The extensive range of peripherals includes new timer modules, up to four parallel 12-bit A/D converters with a sampling rate of 70ns and a conversion time of 500ns, up to two 12-bit D/A converters, up to four high-resolution PWM channels (150 ps), integrated delta-sigma demodulator modules and touch button modules. Powerful communication is provided by an IEEE 1588-compatible Ethernet MAC (Media Access Control for Ethernet with time stamp), USB 2.0, CAN and SD/MMC interfaces and up to six serial communication channels which can be individually configured as UART, SPI, Quad SPI, IIC, IIS or LIN using software. In addition, the XMC4000 family offers a fast external bus interface that supports synchronous standards such as SDRAM or Burst Flash, and asynchronous standards such as SRAM, NAND Flash and NOR Flash. "
Web page link
OsmoSDR
"OsmoSDR is a 100% Free Software based small form-factor inexpensive SDR (Software Defined Radio) project."
"The OsmoSDR hardware consists of an oscillator, Zero-IF silicon tuner, ADC, FPGA and a USB-capable microcontroller."
SAM3U, Si570
Web page link
HW-SW Implementation of a Decoupled FPU for ARM-based Cortex-M1 SoCs in FPGAs
Academic paper PDF document link
"Abstract
Nowadays industrial monoprocessor and multiprocessor systems make use of hardware floating-point units (FPUs) to provide software acceleration and better precision due to the necessity to compute complex software applications.
This paper presents the design of an IEEE-754 compliant FPU, targeted to be used with ARM Cortex-M1 processor on FPGA SoCs. We face the design of an AMBA-based decoupled FPU in order to avoid changing of the Cortex-M1 ARMv6-M architecture and the ARM compiler, but as well to eventually share it among
different processors in our Cortex-M1 MPSoC design. Our HW- SW implementation can be easily integrated to enable hardware- assisted floating-point operations transparently from the software application.
This work reports synthesis results of our Cortex-M1 SoC architecture, as well as our FPU in Altera and Xilinx FPGAs, which exhibit competitive numbers compared to the equivalent Xilinx FPU IP core. Additionally, single and double precision tests have been performed under different scenarios showing best case speedups between 8.8x and 53.2x depending on the FP operation when are compared to FP software emulation libraries."
Build See Through Radio with Dressed up Arc Welder
Feeling uninspired today? You need to head to AfriGadget link for some creative inspiration!
 
Hacking NFC and NDEF: why I go and look at it again
Collin Mulliner's NFC secuirty presentation with good overview of NFC and RFID technologies.
PDF document link
"Now 2010/2011:
- – VISA has NFC-based payment
- – Android phones with NFC: Nexus S
- Soon other (Samsung) Android phones
- – Google Wallet (NFC-based payment)
"Near Field Communication (NFC)
Bidirectional proximity coupling technology
– Based on ISO 14443
NFC device modes
– RFID Reader/Writer
• Proximity Coupling Device (PCD)
– Card Emulation
• Proximity Inductive Coupling Card (PICC)
– NFCIP the Peer-to-Peer mode (ISO 18092)
• Bidirectional communication between NFC devices
RFID in your phone"
Web page link
Particle-free silver ink prints small, high-performance electronics
'University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates."
"Electronics printed on low-cost, flexible materials hold promise for antennas, batteries, sensors, solar energy, wearable devices and more. Most conductive inks rely on tiny metal particles suspended in the ink. The new ink is a transparent solution of silver acetate and ammonia. The silver remains dissolved in the solution until it is printed, and the liquid evaporates, yielding conductive features."
Web page link
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