Technical Articles
Gateworks' technical articles cover software and hardware topics related to Gateworks rugged and industrial SBCs. For the latest Gateworks news, please also view our News Page for product press releases, hot topics and announcements.
Configuring wireless in Linux can be complex. A very common question is how does one configure an IEEE802.11 radio as an Access Point (AP) from the command line interface (CLI). This question is difficult to answer due to evolving wireless technologies. Several tools have been created to aid in configuring these devices, but are generally not user friendly or portable across operating systems (OS). For example, in the OpenWrt OS, the UCI System allows users to configure their wireless devices easily through the CLI. But because this tool is tightly integrated into OpenWrt, it is not easily portable to other …
Linux Wireless AP Configuration Read More »
Read MoreGateworks’ SBCs are widely used for streaming audio and video over the network via Ethernet, 802.11 WiFi, or 4G LTE Cellular.Networks are dynamic, whether from network load, RF interference or signal strength thus throughput will vary requiring intelligent and flexible applications to adjust as necessary. Adaptive Bitrate Streaming is the concept of adjusting the quality of video and/or audio depending on the quality of the network connection or server load. This type of technology is widely implemented throughout technology today, evident in streaming services like Netflix and YouTube. Gateworks created an example GStreamer application named gst-variable-rtsp-server. This application includes a …
Adaptive Bitrate Streaming using GStreamer Read More »
Read MoreGateworks would like to introduce software support for the AVC8000nano Mini-PCIe card on the Ventana Single Board Computers. Figure 1: Screen capture of 8 analog cameras displayed on a monitor using the Gateworks Ventana SBC Many applications, such as surveillance, require multipleanalog video inputs from cameras for monitoring. These cameras can then be displayed on an HDMI monitor or streamed over the network. Figure 2: Eightanalog video cameras mounted in a circular fashion for a panoramic capture Gateworks has added driver support for the AVC8000nano in it’s Yocto Linux board support package. This driver support will reveal 8 video interfaces …
Capturing 8 Video Inputs on Gateworks Ventana SBCs Read More »
Read MoreGateworks would like to announce the support of the GStreamer-imx plugins starting with Yocto 1.8 on the Ventana family of Single Board Computers. Gateworks, the leading supplier of Powerful ARM based Single Board Computer solutions using the Freescale i.MX6, has invested countless engineering hours researching and mastering GStreamer for the i.MX series of processors. Gateworks would like to share this GStreamer research with the rest of the i.MX community of developers! There are two main versions of GStreamer used on the i.MX6 processor:0.10 and 1.0. Version 1.0 is now the latest standard. The i.MX6 processor has hardware blocks such as …
i.MX6 GStreamer-imx Plugins – Tutorial & Example Pipelines Read More »
Read MoreGateworks would like to announcethe release & support of Yocto 1.8 on the Ventana Family of Single Board Computers that feature the Freescale i.MX6 processor. Yocto 1.8 is under the code name Fido. Yocto is a Linux operating system that Gateworks uses for video input and output, networking, GUI, IoT and more. Gateworks recommends all customers and engineers update from Yocto 1.7 to Yocto 1.8. Yocto 1.8 Updates and Highlights: Updated Linux Kernel. The kernel has been updated to the Gateworks downstream 3.14 vendor kernel. Updated the gstreamer video framework to gstreamer-imx and gstreamer-1.0 Updated to the gstreamer-imx community based …
Yocto 1.8 Linux BSP – Gateworks i.MX6 SBCs Read More »
Read MoreEveryone desires computers that boot very fast! The software that is shipped bydefault on Gateworks boards is tuned to be very ‘developer friendly’ for getting started in the development cycle.Common questions like: ‘How can I make my software boot quicker?’ are asked frequently and Gateworks hasdevoted time into documenting various methods of increasing boot speed or boot speed perception (see http://trac.gateworks.com/wiki/boot_speed). Gateworks has additionallyimprovedboot speeds by implementing U-Boot’s Falcon mode in the Ventana bootloader. Gateworks Ventana is the first IMX6 based board in mainline U-Boot to get this support. What is U-Boot Falcon mode? Falcon mode is named after the …
Speeding Up Boot Times with Falcon Mode Read More »
Read MoreGateworks is proud to announce the release of Android KitKat for it’s family of Ventana SBCs. The source and pre-built images for Android 4.4.3 (KitKat) have been released. To find out what is new in KitKat 4.4 compared to the prior Android JellyBean release, please see the Android documentation: http://www.android.com/versions/kit-kat-4-4/ Notable changes include: Update to the Android Open Source Project’s 4.4.3 code base Added NAND flash support (for Ventana boards that have 2GB NAND) Added support for new products such as the GW551x and GW552x Freescale has added manyIMX6 performance and stability improvements. Newer 3.10.53 based Linux kernel which has …
Android KitKat Software Release for Ventana SBCs Read More »
Read MoreGateworks would like to announce the availability of OpenEmbedded Yocto 1.7 ‘Dizzy’ for the Ventana Family of SBCs. Yocto is the Linux distro that Gateworks supports for Video and Audio applications. Yocto 1.7 is an update ofYocto 1.6 with many smaller changes to note, primarily in the form of package and buildtool updates.To stay inline with Freescale’s Yocto BSP, the proven 3.10.17 kernel is being used. To see the full release notes and build Yocto 1.7 from source or to download pre-compiled binaries, please visit the Gateworks Wiki site here: http://trac.gateworks.com/wiki/Yocto/Building To view Gateworks’ changes to the Yocto BSP, please visit our …
Yocto 1.7 Dizzy BSP Update for Ventana SBCs Read More »
Read MoreGateworks has posted before about their very valuable Gateworks System Controller (GSC) here. A new feature that has recentlybeen added is a GSC watchdog. A watchdog timer is a functionality that forces a reset of the system in response to a problem in the software. Watchdog timers are very important in embedded systems that are installed in remote, rugged, and hard to reach installations and environments. CPU’s typically have a watchdog timer but the GSC watchdog will completely power cycle the board removing any software dependencies in the shutdown process. The GSC watchdog isa more robust and reliable watchdogthan the …
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