Altium to preview its extended range of deployment NanoBoards at DesignCon 2008

Altium’s new deployment NanoBoards are standard, off-the-shelf design solutions that offer greater design flexibility for electronics designers. They can customize these cases to their own requirements. And by using Altium’s Innovation Station – Altium Designer combined with the desktop NanoBoard reconfigurable hardware development platform – electronics designers can develop and test device intelligence and transfer that design into the deployment NanoBoards for a complete and marketable product.

The result is a complete, single electronics design environment that puts device intelligence at the center of the design process. This enables designers to create real and sustainable differentiation through continuous design innovation.

Electronics designers can now, regardless of background or expertise, deploy a design into final hardware making the end product immediately available.

The extended range of deployment NanoBoards features the same mother board and choice of daughter and peripheral boards as the Altium Desktop NanoBoard. Designers will have the choice of using a deployment NanoBoard as a final product, or integrating their deployment NanoBoards into larger systems such as mechanical devices. They will also be able to do semi-custom hardware design using the templates included with the Altium Designer software.

The Modular Commercial Enclosure system comprises basic units available in two sizes, a 1.0 and a 0.5 module. They can be configured by designers and come with a range of interchangeable components for an array of installation options.

The system is designed to support the pluggable NanoBoard hardware deployment platform and includes all of the templates, mounting details and graphics specifications required to produce a fully customised application. The standard enclosures accommodate a mother board with a choice of FPGA daughter boards and a 3.5 inch touch screen display. The standard 0.5 module provides for a maximum of two peripheral boards while the 1.0 module supports up to four peripheral boards.

The main cover provides a four point locking system that secures and completes the product.

The Commercial Enclosure’s casing will be available in a choice of colours, allowing engineers to deploy a distinctive and marketable product, different from the traditional grey or beige enclosures.

The Industrial Hand Held Unit is a user-configurable device comprising two 3.5-inch touch screen displays and a user-definable pushbutton interface. The mother board supports an FPGA daughter board and single peripheral board. The completed electronics subassembly can be fully assembled, configured and tested prior to clipping it into the robust enclosure.

An array of industry standard ports is supplied on the mother board and the user-defined peripheral board offers electronics designers the flexibility to create a fully customizable application.

Altium’s range of deployment NanoBoards will be available later in 2008.