Friday, June 13, 2014

IoT: $45 BeagleBone mini-computer

$45 BeagleBone Black is a more powerful Raspberry Pi alternative | Digital Trends:

BeagleBoneBlack01_small

it’s essentially a Linux computer with a powerful 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Texas Instrument (SitaraTM AM335x), 512MB RAM, and 2GB of on-board storage.

Unlike the Raspberry Pi which relies on its SD Card slot to load software (including its operating system), Linux and Cloud9 IDE are preloaded onto this BeagleBoard so it frees up its microSD Card slot for whatever you need. 

It even offers an upgraded Web interface for Arduino-like controls. The mini-computer also supports other flavors of Linux like Ubuntu and Fedora, as well as Android for users who need a development device for the mobile platform.

IoT: Tessel, JavaScript microcontroller

Technical Machine:

"Tessel is a microcontroller that runs JavaScript. 
It's Node-compatible and ships with Wifi built in. 
Use it to easily make physical devices that connect to the web."


Tessel

  • 180mhz ARM Cortex-M3 LPC1830
  • 32mb SDRAM
  • 32mb Flash
Compared to RaspberryPi ($35) it is much less powerful and much more expensive ($99). In fact node.js can run on RaspberryPi, too, along many other things. 


Mozilla's $25 Firefox OS phones

Mozilla's $25 Firefox OS phones look to score in India - CNET


Firefox OS, Mozilla's ambitious attempt to establish a more open mobile operating system than Google's Android or Apple's iOS, is about to hit one of its biggest potential markets: India.

Two Indian companies, Intex and Spice, will build a super-cheap $25 Firefox OS phone based on aprocessor from Chinese company Spreadtrum and start selling them in the next few months.

tools: Is WebRTC ready yet?

Is WebRTC ready yet?:
"WebRTC is one of the most transformative additions to the web platform, but it's still early days. 

There's a big difference between technology that makes for an interesting demo and what's needed for something that could work on par with existing video chat products."
Chrome CanaryChromeFirefox NightlyFirefoxInternet ExplorerSafariOpera

The idea is to have a open platform for (video and other) communication, 
equivalent to simplicity of using phone. 

Currently, Microsoft Skype, Apple Facetime, Google Hangout and Talk
are nice, but work only with equivalent tool, can not inter-operate. 
Imagine time of BBS, AOL and CompuServe private networks...
Web was a logical solution, just took some time...

One interesting part of WebRTC are dataChannels that could be used for any purpose, not only video.

WebRTC.org