Boards/Backplanes

A kit that enables a quick start into the development of cost-sensitive, compact Human Machine Interface (HMI) applications is now available at distributor MSC. The Renesas Starter Kit supports the semiconductor company’s RZ/A1 group of microprocessors (MPUs) that were launched in June 2013, featuring on chip SRAM of 3MB, 5MB or 10MB, depending on the version.

element14 has announced global availability of the Gertduino expansion board for the Raspberry Pi computer. Gertduino is an Arduino-Uno like board that was created by Gert van Loo, the inventor of the Gertboard. Gertduino is Arduino compatible and plugs directly onto the Raspberry Pi. 

Kontron has announced the KTQ67/Flex-MED motherboard at Medica 2013. Featuring two EN60601-1 compliant isolated Ethernet ports, the standard Flex-ATX boards provide a long-term availability of 7 years. As well as the isolated LAN ports, the KTQ67/Flex-MED features 2 DVI interfaces which can drive medical imaging tasks on two HD monitors.

WIN Enterprises has today introduced a new a mini-ITX motherboard with a 4th generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3 processor and mobile Intel H81 Express chipset, the MB-73340. Targeted at markets such as kiosk, retail, medical, military, industrial control and security, the motherboard is designed to support a range of solutions that require high performance, low power, excellent graphics and efficient connectivity in a small form factor.

Texas Instruments have created a fully-functional sensorless motor control system with the introduction of the new C2000 InstaSPIN-FOC (field-oriented-control) LaunchPad and DRV8301 motor drive BoosterPack plug-in module.  

The new MSC Q7-SK-IMX6 from MSC is an out-of-the-box Starterkit for the company’s Qseven modules based on the Freescale i.MX6 which contains a Cortex-A9 RISC CPU with one, two or four cores. The kit includes all components for the operation of the Qseven module: a compact Qseven baseboard with power supply, a Qseven Heatspreader, an SD Card with bootable Operating System and a Resource CD with drivers and documentation.

Rutronik is now stocking Fujitsu’s D3231-S, marking the start of a new family of industrial mainboards. The µATX with its Intel Q87 Express chipset supports the latest Intel Core processors i7/i5/i3 with LGA1150 up to 95W and dual-channel DDR3 1600/1333 SDRAM memory up to 32GB.

Mouser Electronics is now taking pre-orders for Intel’s Galileo Development Board, based on the Intel Quark Application Processor. The board is based on the Intel Quark SoC X1000 Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip (SoC). It is the first product in a new family of Arduino certified boards featuring Intel architecture.

SILICA announced that Avnet Electronics Marketing and ROHM Semiconductor have collaborated to design and develop a power supply module board optimised for Xilinx 7 series FPGAs and Zynq-7000 all programmable SoC’s evaluation kits.

National Instruments has announced four new R Series boards (USB-7855R, USB-7856R, USB-7855R OEM and USB-7856R OEM) with USB connectivity, which help engineers add FPGA technology to any PC-based system. The products are based on the LabVIEW RIO architecture.