Box computers simplify industrial applications

Advantech's new ARK Series is a complete line of box computers designed to give developers fast, convenient and simplified solutions for their industrial and embedded applications.

Advantech's new ARK Series is a complete line of box computers designed to give developers fast, convenient and simplified solutions for their industrial and embedded applications.

Ranging in sise from ultracompact, all-in-one solutions to full sise CPU card systems, the ARK Series provides developers with high performance computing platforms so they can focus on developing leading applications.

The ARK Series matches customer computing needs by offering a range of form factors, CPUs, storage, connectivity, chassis, I/O configurations, OS support, and customisation support.

From application-specific to all-in-one functionality, RISC X-Scale to X86 Intel Pentium 4, Microsoft Embedded CE.NET or Linux to Windows XP, turnkey application ready to full customisation using Advantech's build to order (BTOS)/design to order (DTOS), the ARK Series can accelerate development of the most dynamic applications.

The ARK Series consists of the ARK-1000 Series, an ultracompact, application specific, ultra-low-power, RISC-based line, the ARK-3380 Series of compact, fanless solutions, the ARK-5000 Series with up to Pentium 4 processing power and strong slot expansion, the ARK-7000 Series for applications needing an all-in-one solution for the highest computing and multimedia performance, and the ARK-9000 Series for full-size card support along with maximum expansion and performance capability.

The ARK-3380 Series, the first ARK Series released by Advantech, are compact embedded controllers designed for space critical embedded applications requiring powerful computing capability, fanless operation, low power use, extreme reliability and ruggedness, scalability, flexible I/O configuration and long product life support.

This product line offers fanless CPUs featuring low voltage Intel ULV Celeron M 600MHz, LV Pentium M 1.1GHz, or LV Pentium M 1.4GHz CPUs (uFCBGA package).

The series comes housed in an extremely compact cast aluminium chassis that not only provides great protection from shock, vibration, dust, cold and heat, but also acts as a functional heatsink to ensure lower temperature operation.

With a foot print of only 240 x 130 x 70mm and protected housing, the rugged ARK-3380 series can be mounted inside machinery or other equipment/housing, or stand-alone by wall mount, DIN rail mount and operated wirelessly.

The series accepts a wide range of power supplies and offers a standard CFC SSD drive or optional 2.5in HDD.

The ARK-3380 Series includes application ready platforms designed for specific vertical market applications.

The ARK-3380 offers comprehensive multimedia I/O support featuring dual display, TV-out, DVI, LVDS and AC97 stereo audio.

This series targets applications like POS/POI, intelligent traffic monitoring, and machine vision systems.

The ARK-3381 comes with multiple I/O support featuring five RS232/422/484 ports, one full RS232 interface and one with Rx/Tx only without handshaking.

The ARK-3381supports applications like environment and facilities monitoring, kiosks, tolling and ticketing, and entrance controls as well as medical devices with multiple device connectivity.

The ARK-3382 supports intensive networking capability by offering four 10/100Base-T Ethernet ports or one 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet and three 10/100Base-T Ethernet, plus LAN bypass function support.

This makes the ARK-3382 ideal for industrial and security gateway applications which require intensive LAN communication, such as firewall or VPN.

Advantech's customisation services offer customers the fastest time to market for their application-specific solution needs.

The ARK-3380 Series was designed with flexibility in mind to expedite development time and reduce associated business risks.

Advantech's ARK-BTOS works by offering customers a base ARK-3389 platform combined with a choice of preconfigured I/O (MIO) bus application modules (ARK-MIO assembly kit), customised front/rear I/O faceplates and choice of memory, storage and OS.

Customers simply choose from a feature set to get the exact configuration they need.

A Windows CE or Embedded OS image can be ported as well.

BTOS reduces platform overhead by reducing unnecessary components and greatly streamlines platform development time.

For ARK-DTOS, Advantech can help design the customer's MIO application module and customised front/rear I/O faceplate (including logo printing and ID) to match their specific needs.

The ability to offer customers essentially a custom designed ARK-3380 unit in 40-days or less is designed to speed a customer's time-to-market response.

The ARK-3380 Series benefit application developers by featuring optimised integration with few moving parts, flexible mounting choices, flexible I/O expansion, easy maintenance, extreme reliability and the ability to operate in harsh conditions subject to vibration, dust, temperature extremes.

With anti-vibration protection during operation up to 5g, anti-shock protection during operation up to 50g and extended operating temperatures from -20 to +60C, the ARK-3000 Series are tough performers.

The scalable onboard BGA CPUs offer increased reliability, and easy storage swap (HDD, CFC) simplifies in field integration and maintenance.

The ARK-3380 units are offered as standard products, or can be customised by flexible MIO expansion featuring Advantech's dedicated ARK BTOS/DTOS services.

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