Category: BeagleBone Black

Adding Text to Speech to OSD335x Products is Easy

With the introduction of Siri, Cortana, Alexa and other voice based personal assistants; communicating with computers using voice has become the order of the day. Voice communication also makes things more intuitive and definitely cooler. People have been using various versions of electronic speech synthesis since the 1950’s and it has come a long way since our Founder,  Gene Frantz helped develop the Speak & Spell, utilizing the first single-chip voice synthesizer.  However, the most famous Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesizer was used by the great scientist, Stephen Hawking, starting in the late 1980’s as a result of degradation of his natural abilities from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Dr Hawking’s synthesizer went silent this month, and the scientific community for speech synthesis and many other areas are grateful for his tremendous contributions.

Since TTS technology has matured, many resources are available including open source libraries like eSpeak and Flite that can be easily incorporated into projects. This article helps you install and use TTS synthesizers for any board using the OSD335x family.

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Industrial Control Exemplified: An OSD335x Powered Rubik’s Cube Solving Robot

 

Small scale puzzle, big scale understanding

Applications requiring machine vision and the ability to make decisions without human interference are becoming more widespread.  The OSD335x System-in-Package is a perfect starting point for these types of applications.  Its Texas Instruments ARM Cortex-A8 processor has the power and the peripherals required for them.  The below block diagram illustrates how the OSD335x would fit into a generalized industrial control system.

Industrial Control Robotics System Block Diagram

 

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BeagleLogic Standalone – Featuring the OSD3358-SM

 

This article was guest written by Kumar Abhishek about his award winning BeagleLogic project.  Kumar is an engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India. His journey into electronics began at a very young age and since then he has worked on projects using a variety of embedded platforms. He is a Google Summer of Code alumnus with BeagleBoard.org and has also served as a mentor for BeagleBoard.org in the Google Summer of Code program.

All of us at Octavo Systems would like to congratulate Kumar on his award and exciting future! 

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PocketBeagle® Featuring The OSD335x-SM

PocketBeagle® is here!  BeagleBoard.org® has released its newest board based on the OSD3358-512M-BSM System-In-Package (SiP).  PocketBeagle® is the smallest and lowest cost solution in the popular BeagleBoard family.  At only $25 and about 1.4in X 2.17in (35mm X 55mm), PocketBeagle® is a powerful Linux computer in a small, low cost footprint. (Read More…)

PocketBone: The Linux Computer that Fits in a Mini-Altoids Tin – Designed in KiCad – Featuring the OSD3358

This article was guest written by Michael Welling, the developer of the KiCad PocketBone Design.  Michael is an Embedded Design Engineer with over 10 years of experience.  He owns an electronic design consulting firm, QWERTY Embedded Design, LLC.  He has an MS in Electrical Engineering, was an instructor at SIUC and a 12-year member of IEEE.  He is also a mentor for Beagleboard.org Google Summer of Code.

Motivation

As an embedded systems design engineer, I am always on the lookout for the latest technology. When the Octavo Systems OSD3358 was announced I was very excited to see something mainstream using System-In-Package (SiP) technology. (Read More…)

New OSD3358 Development Platforms from GHI Electronics

 

It has been a busy couple of weeks around here lately with a lot of exciting news.  First we had the announcement of the BeagleBone® Black Wireless which features the OSD3358-512M-BAS instead of the discrete TI AM3358.  Then we went to World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science.  Now we have a couple more announcements.

We are happy to let everybody know that GHI Electronics has released two development platforms for the OSD3358.  Both boards utilize the OSD3358-512M-BAS which integrates the TI Sitara™ AM3358 ARM® Cortex® A8 processor running at 1GHz, 512MB of DDR3, 2 power supplies, and passives into a single IC package.  The boards are available to order today from the GHI Electronics website.  Their status is listed as preview.  This means there are some things that haven’t been completely tested yet (all of which are outlined).  It also means there could be some minor changes when the production versions are released. (Read More…)

The BeagleBone® Black Wireless and BeagleBoard Compatibility

 

Today is a very exciting day!  After months of hard work, we are finally ready to make two big announcements.  First, is the release of the BeagleBone® Black Wireless, which features the Octavo OSD3358-512M-BAS System-In-Package.  Second, the OSD3358 is now officially BeagleBoard Compatible!  These developments strengthen our relationship with BealgeBoard.org and make the OSD335x family of devices even easier to use. (Read More…)