Single Board Computing Platform for Industrial Design

The increasing need for greater breadth of functionality and enhanced energy efficiency in electronic systems serving the industrial sector is driving ongoing innovation. New, more sophisticated, but user-friendly embedded computing hardware is thus being called for.

Among the key attributes being expected are:

• That is should be supplied in a compact form factor.
• That it is PC compatible.
• That it has high degrees of operational robustness.
• That is offers engineers maximum design flexibility.
• That it is simple for engineers to work with regardless of their level of experience.
• That it has minimal power budget demands.

The Ginsbury Genie from Solid State Supplies is a bespoke, high reliability single board computer (SBC) solution that incorporates a dual core 1.46GHz Intel Atom E38xx 64-bit processor IC and a TFT display. It enables the implementation of the sort of low power, fan-less embedded computing designs that are currently desired by the electronic engineering community.

Measuring just 199mm x 112mm x 35mm, the Ginsbury Genie is a low power system that offers flexibility, ease of use and PC compatibility combined with the robustness and operational longevity that is necessary in many industrial and embedded applications. It will typically draw less than 10W.

Up to 2GB of system memory is available, with an on-board SATA SDD providing storage capacity starting at 32GB. A broad array of connectivity options are also included – such as a Mini PCI-Express card slot, a USB 3.0 port, 3 interface ports for USB 2.0, an RS-232 serial port, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a Micro SD card slot.

Engineers can chose from a variety of TFT display formats – including 7.0” WVGA (800 x 480), 10.4” SVGA (800 x 600), 12.1” XGA (1024 x 768), 15” XGA (1024 x 768) and 17.3” Full HD (1920 x 1080). An integrated touch controller supports the use of 4-wire and 5-wire resistive touch screens. Support for other display sizes, resolutions and touch screen technologies (including P-Cap) can be provided on request.

The Genie product offering supports Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, Linux and Android Lollipop operating systems. The built-in (EUFI) BIOS enables basic configuration and furnishes engineers with the ability to boot from SD card, USB or SATA drives. It has an operating temperature range that spans from 0° to +70°C.