On-board computers bring vehicles to the cloud

Kontron's new vehicle computers are scalable with different low-power processors and offer industry-standard PCI/104-Express or CompactPCI expansion slots for a variety of interface extensions. This provides the a high degree of customisation options to help meet OEM specifications. At the same time, all common on-board vehicle computer interfaces are available off-the-shelf, including GPS, GSM, WLAN and CAN and other serial interfaces. Passenger infotainment and passenger safety systems can be quickly realised as fleet management systems, including connections to the complete commercial vehicle electronics.

Designed as a rugged, in-vehicle computer, the Kontron MICROSPACE MPCX60 Box-PC has the ECE type approval (E1) for use in buses and commercial vehicles, as well as, agricultural and forestry working vehicles. The wide-range power supply is designed for industrial battery voltages from 12-48V. The system design is fanless and shock and vibration-resistant, suitable for the coniditions of the railroad traffic, automotive and mobile machinery sectors.

The new Kontron MICROSPACE MPCX60 vehicle computers are equipped with an Intel Atom D525 processor (2× 1.8GHz) or AMD Embedded G-Series T40E processor (2× 1GHz) and support up to 4GB DDR3 RAM. They offer the choice of a PCI/104-Express slot or a CompactPCI-extension slot, enabling the system for quick adaption to individual extension requirements. A wide selection of standard components of Ethernet switches up to basic digital and analog I/O cards is also available. As an option, the implementation of the FPGA Altera Cyclone IV FPGA processor (EP4CGX30CF) for the free programming of individual interfaces is also possible.

Standard interfaces

The new Kontron MICROSPACE MPCX60 offers a multitude of standard interfaces. For display connection, the rugged Box-PCs have VGA or DVI interfaces at the rear as well as the option for LVDS as a second display. USB 2.0 ports are installed with two at the front and four at the rear. Available at the back of the housing are 1× Gigabit LAN, up to 4 seriel interfaces (RS232C, RS422 or RS485) and 2× CAN-Bus.

For application scenarios in which wireless connectivity is required, there are antenna connectors at the rear for W-LAN, GSM and GPS. The requisite SIM card for GSM communication can simply be inserted via the SIM slot on the front plate. The Kontron MICROSPACE MPCX60 offers in addition to customer-specified I/O configurations, four digital and two analogue inputs and outputs. Application-specific extensions are also available via two PCIe mini card slots, 1× PCI/104-Express or 1× CompactPCI (32Bit PCI, 3HE/4TE). A front panel-installed, easily exchanged CompactFlash module and an internal 2.5" SATA 3Gb/s HDD are used for data storage media. Stereo inputs and outputs and an optional S/PDIF outlet round off the feature set.

The new Kontron MICROSPACE MPCX60 vehicle computers support Windows, Linux and VxWorks. Pre-series models are available from the end of October 2012 and series production commences in December 2012.

Follow the link for more information on the Kontron MICROSPACE MPCX60 vehicle computers.