It’s been a tough year for
industrial computing manufacturers. The global IC shortage has impacted lead times for established product lines and has caused significant challenges for new product development. Nevertheless our
manufacturing partners have been busy releasing a steady flow of innovative and exciting new
products. It hardly seems like five minutes have passed since we last canvassed opinion amongst our staff about their favourite
products of 2020, but here is the list of standout
products that caught their eye in 2021.
#1 : ECX-2000-2G – 10th Gen Rugged Embedded Computer
Manufacturer: Vecow
The
ECX-2000-2G from innovative manufacturer Vecow is a high-performance and rugged
embedded computer supporting
Intel Core i9 processing with a plethora of high-speed I/O to boot. Collectively the staff at Impulse have been super impressed with a whole host of products in Vecows’s portfolio, however, the ECX-2000 place in the top 5 was assured thanks to sheer units sold; which we believe is down to the modern chipset, it's feature rich I/O set and versatility which is more important than ever.
The ability to install a 10-core, 20-thread processor into an
embedded system affords an incredible amount of processing power right at the network edge. The
ECX-2000-2G can be connected to the host network via 5G or Gigabit Ethernet and is packaged in a fanless solid state housing, with a wide DC input voltage and supporting extended temperature operation.
View the ECX-2000-2G #2 : NRU-110V Jetson AGX Xavier Edge AI Platform
Manufacturer: NeousysAI (
Artificial Intelligence) has been a blossoming market for Impulse in 2021 offering steady growth with interesting application uses in both traditional and emerging industries. You would be forgiven for thinking it is difficult to choose a favourite as the rugged industrial
NVIDIA Jetson product offerings from our partners is comprehensive.
That being said, the
NRU-110V from
Neousys is a standout product, placing the
NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier engine into a sleek racing green fanless
embedded computer housing. It certainly looks the part, but the show piece is the GMSL (Gigabit Multimedia Serial Link) camera support. It has eight industry standard Fakra Z connectors to connect GMSL cameras, with
Neousys taking the time to code drivers for a range of GMSL cameras saving our customers time and money in development. Combine that with the NVIDIA Jetpack software development kit (SDK), and we can install the neural network and test it ready for installation straight out of the box.
View the NRU-110V #3 : OPS520 – Axiomtek’s 11th Gen Open Pluggable Specification digital signage player
Manufacturer: AxiomtekAxiomtek’s
OPS520 slot computer comfortably offers one of the best cost to performance ratios in our portfolio. The established
Intel OPS standard allows the flexibility to turn large format screens into all in one computer systems, keeping cost sensible, and installation neat, simple, and cable free. Perfect for lighter industrial applications, such as digital signage, wayfinding and interactive whiteboards, the
OPS520 is certianly one platform to look at.
The 11th Gen
Intel Core processors, and the ultra quiet design, made it an easy choice for this top 5 list but also for our own in- house interactive meeting room suites here at our HQ!
View the OPS520 #4 : ICR-4453 – A 5G Gateway Device Looking to the Future
Manufacturer: AdvantechWith 5G signal improving across the nation throughout 2021, 5G routers are set to become ever more popular as industries realise the benefits of this high bandwidth low latency technology.The impressive
ICR-4453 from
Advantech is our standout networking device, powered by the super powerful quad-core Cortex A72 RISC processor. This 5G gateway can serve a range of devices across a site with four PoE (Power Over Ethernet) ports, 5G, wireless and 10G fibre options. It does not stop there either, the device is e-marked, comes with CANbus,
DIO and serial comms as standard.
Advantech add further value with their own Linux operating system adding enhanced specific networking features along with a free SDK enabling customers to create their own App whilst running familiar applications such as NodeRed or Docker. Impulse Account Managers have registered significant interest in this technology, and expect to see continued demand in areas such as
surveillance,
AI, mobile internet access and many other high data demand applications.
View the ICR-4453 #5 : GENE-TGU6 – Tiger Lake Powered 3.5” SBC for AIoT
Manufacturer: AaeonThe Tiger Lake CPU family from
Intel was announced late in 2020 but given the stresses and strains placed on component supply it wasn't a surprise that our vendor partners have taken longer than usual to release boards with these latest impressive processors included.
Our long standing partner
Aaeon are often ahead of the curve in terms of
single board computer (
SBC) development, and the
GENE-TGU6 built on the ever popular 3.5" form factor offers the most flexibility to support a wide range of applications. With four configurable RS-232/422/485 serial ports, five display outputs supporting up to four simultaneous displays, 2.5Gigabit Ethernet for time sensitive networking, 10Gbps and plenty of USB3.2 Gen2 ports.
The cherry on the cake is that the Core i7/i5 models include
Intel’s new Iris Xe integrated graphics which is capable of inferencing for small neural networks like smart digital displays or object identification and tracking.
View the GENE-TGU6