You may have previously heard about ULP-COM (Ultra Low Power CoM), a standard for systems and computers on module. The standard has been ratified by the Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies (SGET) in February 2013, and renamed to SMARC (Smart Mobility ARChitecture). This standard is specifically designed for low power designed, and is currently only used with ARM SoC. Kontron was involved in the design of this standard, released several ULP-COM, now SMARC, compatible CoM based on TI, Freescale and Nvidia SoC, and yesterday the company just announced SMARC Starterkit will all hardware and software components needed to get started with evaluation and development.
This starter kit comes in a carrying case with the following items:
- SMARC Evaluation Carrier Board
- 7″ Display PM070W4 (WVGA – 800×480)
- Touch USB Kit ETP04USBR
- Mounting Kit
- Adapter and Cables:
- 1x Kontron LVDS Jili30 Adapter incl. cable
- 1x DSUB9
- 1x micro USB USB A
- Storage
- SanDisk MicroSDHC-Card 8GB incl. SD-Card Adapter
- Crucial m4 SSD 32GB, mSATA 6Gb/s
- USB Stick with manual and drivers
- Power Supply – 5V/3A + support for Li-Ion battery 3.6/7.2/10.8V (not included)
A SMARC CoM is not included, but you can optionally ask to have one of the three CoM below installed, configured and shipped with the kit:
- SMARC-sA3874i – SMARC computer-on-module powered by Texas Instruments Sitara AM3874 Cortex A8 SoC
- SMARC-sAMX6i – SMARC compliant CoM based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo, Dual or Quad Cortex A9 SoC
- SMARC-sAT30 – SMARC CoM powered by Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core Cortex A9 processor
The first 2 modules can operate in industrial temperature ranges (-40 °C to +85 °C) and are especially suited for military, transportation and other demanding applications, and the Nvidia modules are better suited to graphic-hungry applications such as points of sales/information, and medical application.
The kit supports the following key features (as defined in SMARC standard):
- Serial ports – RS232
- 2x mini PCIe interface
1x PCIe interface- SDIO 4-bit interface to micro SD connector
- Gibabit Ethernet
- 7 port USB hub supporting multiple I/O options
- CSI – Camera Serial Interface
- Accelerometer
- Can Bus interface
The company provides support for Windows Embedded Compact, Linux & Android operating systems for their modules. BSP (Board Support Package), BIOS images, product change notifications (PCNs), 3D models for CAD, and software development tools are available in the customer section of the site.
You may obtain further details and/or request information on Kontron’s SMARC Starterkit page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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