MEN adds BC51M box PC for mobile communications

MEN adds the BC51M box PC to its modular family range. The fanless and maintenance-free device is used in graphics and memory-intensive applications in trains, buses or commercial vehicles. It offers a choice of communications interfaces and is scalable, adds the company.

The BC51M is based on the Intel Atom E3900 series processors, optionally with two or four cores, up to 1.6GHz. With 8Gbyte DDR3 SDRAM, a rear accessible SD card, an integrated eMMC memory and an optional SATA HDD/SSD, the BC51M box PC has sufficient storage capacity for entertainment servers or video surveillance systems.

The BC51M was designed for mobile use in trains, buses or commercial vehicles and manages wireless on-board functions such as internet on board, positioning via GNSS, entertainment or predictive maintenance. The box PC supports up to two DisplayPort interfaces with a maximum resolution of 4K, as well as two Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) interfaces, one USB 2.0, one HD audio and two variable connections for serial I/O, CAN bus, MVB or IBIS.

Two PCI Express Mini Card slots and two micro-SIM slots provide flexibility in implementing mobile service standards up to 4G LTE or WLAN.

The system is designed for fanless operation at temperatures from -40 to +85 degree C. The integrated 30W/24V DC power supply means the box PC complies with the railway standard EN 50155 and ISO 7637-2 for road vehicles.

MEN Mikro Elektronik was founded in 1982. The company has approximately 300 employees worldwide manufacturing embedded COTS boards and devices used in extreme environmental conditions found in mobile, industrial and safety-critical applications.

For individual requirements, starting with development through design-in and beyond, MEN provides its customers with advice and support as well as with system design, configuration and environmental qualification in accordance with industry standards.

The company’s core competencies encompass x86 and RISC processor architectures, development rules for safe applications, analogue I/O design, FPGA technology and Windows, Linux and real-time operating systems (RTOS). Additional expertise includes RAMS and obsolescence management as well as the development of computing hardware for operation in harsh and extreme environmental conditions.

http://www.men.de

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Compact edge AI system supports Nvidia Jetson TX2 module and JetPack 3.2 

An AI embedded system, the eBOX560-900-FL, uses a Nvidia Jetson TX2 module which has a powerful 64-bit ARM A57 processor, a 256 CUDA core with Nvidia Pascal GPU architecture, 8Gbyte of LPDDR4 memory and 802.11ac Wi-Fi with Bluetooth.

The eBOX560-900-FL is suitable for AI computing, machine vision, deep learning and edge computing. The high-efficiency, low-power Nvidia Jetson TX2 module, is provided in a palm-size box, it also supports Nvidia JetPack 3.2 software development kit (SDK) including TensorRT, cuDNN, CUDA Toolkit, VisionWorks, GStreamer, and OpenCV, all built on top of L4T with LTS Linux kernel. The construction is IP40-rated, and has an extended operating temperature range of -10 to +50 degree C and up to 3G vibration endurance.

To meet a variety of AI system requirements, the AI embedded computer has one USB 2.0 port, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one HDMI 2.0 port and four SMA type antenna connectors.

The fanless embedded system has a 32Gbyte eMMC onboard. It is also equipped with a M.2 SSD PCIe 2.0 x4 socket for extensive storage option. The embedded PC also features a PCI Express Mini Card slot for 3G/4G/LTE/GPRS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.

Mounting options include wall mount and DIN-rail mount. The eBOX560-900-FL has passed the strict certification with CE and FCC Class A.

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http://www.axiomtek.com

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Microcontrollers have flexibility to create performance-specific IoT devices

Additions to the STM32 microcontroller family by STMicroelectronics are designed to provide design flexibility to create performance-oriented systems that are affordable and secure.

The STM32F7x0 and H7x0 Value Line microcontrollers can be used. For example, in real-time IoT devices, without compromising features or cyber protection, says STMicro.

The microcontrollers trim embedded flash, while still allowing secure boot, sensitive code and real-time routines to run safely on-chip, leveraging access times over 25 times faster than for external flash (for cache miss). Applications can scale-up as required, either by adding off-chip serial or parallel (up to 32-bit) memories and leveraging the microcontrollers’ external interfaces and eXecute in Place (XiP) capability, or by porting to other pin-to-pin compatible microcontrollers from STMicro, namely the STM32F7 or STM32H7 MCU lines, with up to 2Mbyte flash and up to 1Mbyte RAM, supported by the same ecosystem and tools.

The Value Lines retain the STM32F7 and H7 features, such as peripherals, hardware accelerators, and the real-time architecture with fast internal buses, short interrupt latency, and fast boot-up, of around one millisecond. The microcontrollers are energy efficient, with flexible power modes, gated power domains, and on-chip power management that simplify design and reduce bill of materials cost.

At the heart of the secure, power-efficient architecture is execution performance of up to 2020 CoreMark, making the Value Line devices a suitable entry point to IoT design in medical, industrial, and consumer applications. With up to 125 degree C as the maximum junction temperature, developers can leverage the full core and peripherals performance even when ambient temperature increases.

The entry-level STM32F730 delivers 1082 CoreMark performance running at 216MHz aided by ST’s ART Accelerator for zero-wait-state execution from flash. Features include cryptographic hardware acceleration, a USB 2.0 high speed port with PHY, and a CAN interface. There is a 64kbyte flash, eight-kbyte instruction and data caches for high-performance execution from internal or external memories, 256kbyte of system RAM and 16kbyte+64kbyte of tightly coupled memory (TCM) for the most critical routines and data.

The STM32F750 adds a TFT-LCD controller with ST’s proprietary Chrom-ART graphics accelerator. It has hardware acceleration for hash algorithms, two CAN interfaces, an Ethernet MAC, camera interface, and two USB 2.0 interfaces with full speed PHY. There are 64kbytes of flash, four-kbyte instruction and four-kbyte data caches, 320kbyte of system RAM, and 16kbyte+64kbyte TCM.

The STM32H750 delivers 2020 CoreMark performance at 400MHz and adds a hardware JPEG coder/decoder to the TFT controller and Chrom-ART Accelerator for even faster graphic user interface (GUI) performance boasts ST. There is also a CAN-FD port and additional CAN-FD with time-trigger capability and what are claimed to be best-in-class operational amplifiers and 16-bit ADCs running at up to 3.6Msample per second. The 128kbyte flash, 16kbyte instruction and data caches, 864kbyte system RAM and the 64kbyte+128kbyte of TCM all feature error correction code (ECC) for safe execution from internal or external memory.

The STM32F730, STM32F750, and STM32H750 Value Line microcontrollers are in production, in LQFP and BGA package options from 64-pin to 240-pin.

http://www.st.com

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Sensor interface IC enables next-gen intelligent electrochemical sensors

Believed to be the only IC that incorporates potentiostat and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) functionality on a single chip, the ADuCM355 has been released by Analog Devices.

The precision analogue microcontroller with bio-sensor and chemical sensor is designed for applications such as industrial gas sensing, instrumentation, vital signs monitoring and disease management. According to the company, it features the industry’s most advanced sensor diagnostics, best-in-class low noise and low power performance, and smallest form factor. Unlike traditional discrete solutions, it does not need multiple ICs to achieve similar performance, for increased reliability and cost savings.

It combines the high performance, low power, small form factor and feature set needed to enable next generation portable gas detectors and to set new benchmarks in reliable gas detection while minimising the cost of ownership, said Jacob Spector, global marketing manager, Portable Gas Detection for Honeywell Industrial Safety.

It has been used by PalmSens for mobile gas detection: “PalmSens is committed to make electrochemistry easier, more portable and more accessible,” said Niels van Velzen, CTO at PalmSens. “ADI’s ADuCM355 is at the heart of the new EmStat Pico, the world’s smallest general purpose electrochemical interface module. EmStat Pico is a hardware and software design platform that allows measurement in minutes and is ideal for the development of portable, wearable and space constrained sensor applications,” he added.

The ADuCM355 low power precision analogue microcontroller is based on the ARM Cortex M3 processor, with 26MHz core, 128kbyte Flash and 64kbyte SRAM. Designed to control and measure chemical and biosensors, it supports dual potentiostat (8.5-micro A, 1.6-microV RMS) and three or more sensor electrodes.  It has a flexible, 16-bit, 400ksamples per second measurement channel.

There are advanced sensor diagnostics and integrated analogue hardware accelerators, integrated into the 72-pin LGA package, measuring 6.0 x 5.0mm.•

The ADuCM355 is sampling now, with production quantities available.

http://www.analog.com

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