- Get-Console: "world's smallest device server", very inexpensive as well
- OpenGear: a bit more sophisticated, higher in price as well
Friday, August 24. 2018
Multi Port Serial Consoles
Sunday, August 19. 2018
Monitor Colour Management
I found that pictures I captured and edited were printing somewhat dark. Time to investigate how to get a consistent photographic workflow. I use darktable for photo management and preliminary colour management. So, some links I have to come back to:
- DisplayCAL - Open Source Display Calibration and Characterization powered by ArgyllCMS
- Loading/Applying profiles in Xfce in the displaycal forums.
- Display color management in darktable
- My Free and Open Source Photography Workflow - darktable, gimp, Geeqie, ArgyllCMS
- X-Rite i1Display Pro and ColorChecker Passport Bundle at B&H Photo Video
Interesting Networking Boards
- SAMA5D3 Xplained is a fast prototyping and evaluation platform for microprocessor-based design based upon the SAMA5D36 processor. It has a 100mbps and a 1gbps interface. Linux4SAM supplies the tooling to support the card. Linux mainline 4.9 with specific contributions. Features KSZ9031 and KSZ8081 PHYs with connectors. Could maybe replace with something like KSZ9893R 3 port Gigabit Switch or KSZ9896 6 port Gigabit Switch or KSZ9897S 7 port Gigabit Switch? A 100 <-> 1000 Software Bridge will use 95% cpu.
- Cyclone V SoC Multi-Port Ethernet Aggregator Board - NetLeap - NovTech's NetLeap, an Industry 4.0 Multi-Protocol Ethernet Ports Aggregator Platform, allows the development and integration of a variety of Ethernet protocols including PROFINET, EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP, Ethernet Powerlink, Modbus TCP, SERCOS III and more. This solution is preproduction ready. A total of six 1G/100/10 Ethernet ports are present. Two are connected to the HPS (The ARM* Cortes-A9 core of the Cyclone® V SoC) and four are connected to the FPGA fabric. With its six ports, the NetLeapâ„¢ allows different protocols to reside on the same platform and can be used as a protocol bridge, a switch, or a router. The kit comes with a templated project example that allows the board to boot to Linux and have all six ports work as a standard Ethernet.
- Networking Products - SG-1000 microFirewall Security Appliance
- Newport GW6400 - High Performance Single Board Computers for Networking with 4x Mini-PCIe Sockets, 5x Gigabit Ethernet Ports, and USB 2.0/3.0
- NFV PicoPod s a Cluster of Six MACCHIATOBin Networking Boards for OPNFV, ODP, DPDK and OPF
- SolidRun ClearFog Base is a $90 Router/Networking Board with USB 3.0, M.2, mSATA, and Gigabit Ethernet Support
- Orange Pi R1 - dual 10/100 ports for $14
- EspressoBin offers Marvell’s dual-core, Cortex-A53 Armada 3720 SoC, plus 2x GbE, 1x WAN, SATA, and mini-PCIe. GlobalScale shopping cart. Hack-A-Day leads to Building my ideal router for $50 (which talks about wireless, netflow, and security). ArchLinux|ARM has an install page. reddit says " 4.17 in particular ? It has hardware offload for the Topaz switch and the nic chip in the Espressobin which might reduce cpu usage", using a four drive setup as an example in the article. armbian has various add-on cards for mPCI and USB. arch linux ARM setup.
- Sinovoip’s “Banana Pi BPI-R2” router SBC gives you 5x GbE, WiFi, BT, 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC, SATA, and mini-PCIe, plus a quad-core -A7 MediaTek MT7623N. More info on the gitbooks and the wiki and forum. Among other sites, can be ordered from AliExpress. Other info at armbian. Lots of links at end of BPI-R2. aluminum cases. BPI-4G LTE module.
- SolidRun’s “Marvell MacchiatoBIN” is a $349, Mini-ITX networking SBC that runs Linux 4.4 on Marvell’s quad -A72 Armada 8040, and supports ODP, OFP, and NFV. Main Site. I just wish Marvell would be more forthcoming on documentation on their chipsets rather than hiding behind NDA all the time. Pico MacchiatoBIN - with case, power supply, fan. Provided link to Marvell Prestar DX Switches which have VxLAN support. Suggests it works with OpenFlow 1.4 (open vswitch enabled?). arch linux ARM setup.
- EPIC-KBS9 from Aaeon is an SBC with 6th or 7th Gen Core S-series chips, 4x GbE ports, up to 32GB DDR3, and mini-PCIe and PCIe x4 expansion.
- minnowboard two port boards in the $200 range.
- PC Engines - APU2 board with four ports and wifi/lte. And in the $100 - $200 price range.
Other boards:
- BeagleBone Blue - mucho I/O: Motor control: 8 6V servo out, 4 bidirectional DC motor out, 4 quadrature encoder in; Sensors: 9 axis IMU (accels, gyros, magnetometer), barometer, thermometer
- FireFly - interesting add-ons like cameras, ASTRA Pro Structured Light Camera, binocular camera, capacitive touch screens, remote controls, ..
- ODroid
- ZedBoard: community-based site is dedicated to helping you jump-start your design with the Xilinx Zynq®-7000 All Programmable SoCs and UltraScale+ MPSoCs
Canada vendors:
- Mouser Electronics
- Newark element14
- Digi-Key
- Lees Electronic - Vancouver - electronic and mechanical
- Buy a PI - various SBC's
- CorpShadow BizStore - selling PCEngines network boards, among other things.
Embedded systems reviews:
- Linux Gizmos
- CNXSoft – Embedded Systems News
search engines for electronic parts
Evolution to 'build your own"
- mikroETH 100
- Microchip's Ethernet Portfolio
- KSZ9031 Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver with Power Saving Feature
- AN1120: Ethernet Theory of Operation
- Segger physical connectivity example
- Microchip High Throughput Ethernet Interface Solutions
- 32 bit ARM with 2xGE
- 1G Ethernet PHYs by Microsemi (some have MacSec capability
Other linux SoC
AVB
- Audio Visual Bridging - AKA IEEE 1588 / 802.1AS Time Stamping
- KSZ9567 7-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch with AVB, IEEE 1588, SGMII/RGMII/MII/RMII
- KSZ9477 7-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch with Ring Redundancy, AVB, IEEE1588, SGMII/RGMII/MII/RMII
- Awesome Electronics - github curated links
2018/10/20
- PC Engines - an international dealer network, boards with 1, 2, 3, 4 ethernet ports
- board db - SoC search engine
2018/12/24 - not networking, but clustering - need to find a multiport switch
2019/03/18 - switch chips (but looking for openflow or xdp hardware off-loading)
- MicroChip Ethernet Switches - KSZ series with IEEE 1588v2 PTP
- Silicon Labs PoE+ Devices
- Micro Semi Ethernet Solutions as well as PoE
2019/06/25 - Protection Systems
- OPNsense - 'BSD solution, fork of pfsense - A good firewall for a small network - installation notes.
2020/01/10 - HoneyComb LX2K - is a robust embedded Mini ITX platform designed for the COM Express type 7 form factor, features an array of 4 x 10GbE SFP+ connectors and 1 x 1GbE RJ45 port, based on NXP’s outstanding 16 core LX2160A Arm Cortex A72 (2GHz) offering up to 64GB DDR4 (dual channel) and up to 40GbE. Debian bug #948576: linux: please enable support for the layerscape SoCs and the Honeycomb workstation board
Wednesday, August 8. 2018
100% CPU with Konsole in KDE / PlasmaShell
In running a bastardized combination of Debian Stretch/Sid/Buster/Experimental on my Intel NUC NUC8i7HVK with kernel 4.18.0-rc4-amd64 to successfully work with the in-kernel AMD screen drivers, with some recent updates, I started experiencing some of my windows were freezing (going to 100% cpu in top). Konsole was the most repeatable offender. Others included picture preview, VLC, etc. Konsole would 'reliably' freeze (100% cpu) after moving the window.
One approach at a solution was to (from forum.kde.org):
renaming a couple files in the ~/.config directory: * plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc * plasmashellrc then run 'killall plasmashell && plasmashell &'
This helped a bit, but not much. I ended up installing the LXDE window manager. As an aside, I needed to install parcellite to manage the clipboard. There are some caveats:
- Don't install LXDE from with in a Konsole session in Plasmashell. The window may freeze, which interrupts the install, and generates an incomplete install. It is better to exit the window manager (or ssh in to a console), and install LXDE that way.
- When installing LXDE, there was a prompt on whether to use clipit (it was asking about copying and pasting passwords and such). I said no. Not realizing this just kills the clipit password manager. Hence the requirement to install parcellite after the fact.
Possible debugging steps in the future:
- strace Konsole
- (gdb) thread apply all backtrace [as seen at bugs.launchpad.net]
As a word of note, the current plasma is from Sid:
$ dpkg -l |grep plasma-desk ii plasma-desktop 4:5.13.1.1-1 amd64 Tools and widgets for the desktop ii plasma-desktop-data 4:5.13.1.1-1 all Tools and widgets for the desktop data files $ dpkg -l |grep plasma-work ii plasma-workspace 4:5.13.2-1 amd64 Plasma Workspace for KF5
In summary, my Konsole is now stable. And in changing window/display managers, rather than sddm/plasma, I am using lightdm/lxde. I will switch back and try once more plasma updates arrive.
There is a an old Debian Bug logged: background konsole processing using 100% cpu after login in the konsole package. It may or may not be related.
Notes:
- LXSession contains information for customizing and automating LXDE sessions
- based upon the list at 10 Best Clipboard Managers for Linux, copyq is a good candidate as a clipboard manager.