Embedded World: Congatec expands 3.5-inch offering with SMC1 board

Its I/Os are designed for use with the manufacturer’s NXP i.MX8 module portfolio and it comes in 12 different processor configurations.

It describes the 3.5-inch board design as a step further towards commercial-off-the-shelf available standard boards and systems.

OEMs can implement them in their system solutions using the large ecosystems of standard form factors.

Rapid customization of I/Os is possible with a modular design and suitable for small or medium sized projects.

“Our new modular 3.5-inch carrier board makes Arm designs also increasingly attractive for small industrial lot sizes, which until now have been dominated by x86 technology due to a lack of suitable ARM products,” said Martin Danzer, director product management at Congatec.

The SMC1 3.5-inch board not only features a Smarc socket for scalable processor performance, but also allows for the direct connection of MIPI cameras without additional hardware.

Thanks to two MIPI-CSI 2.0 connectors, Congatec says, it is even possible to develop systems that provide three-dimensional vision and can therefore also be used for situational awareness in autonomous vehicles.

Combined with processor-integrated support for artificial intelligence and neural networks, the platform is aimed at applications in smart vision systems.

Software support with precompiled binaries is also provided, along with configured bootloader, appropriately compiled Linux, Yocto and Android images, as well as all required drivers that are available to congatec customers on GitHub.

The board has 12 performance options from the most powerful, i.MX 8QuadMax processors, to the i.MX 8M mini processors in 14nm technology the low-power i.MX 8X processors.

On a footprint measuring 146x102mm, the SMC1 offers dual GbE, 5x USB and USB hub support as well as SATA 3 for external hard drives or SSDs.

For specific expansions, the board offers a miniPCIe slot as well as an M.2 Type E E2230 slot with I2S, PCIe and USB, and an M.2 Type B B2242/2280 with 2x PCIe and 1x USB.

An integrated Micro Sim slot for IoT connection is also provided, next to specific embedded interfaces such as 4x UART, 2x CAN, 8x GPIO, I2C and SPI.

Displays can be connected via HDMI, LVDS/eDP/DP and MIPI-DSI.

I2S sound can be implemented via audio jack.