Baseboard is ready for M2M communications

An Eurotech product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team May 2, 2005

Arcom has released a versatile PC/104 baseboard suitable for adding cellular wireless communications to any embedded machine-to-machine (M2M) system.

Arcom has released a versatile PC/104 baseboard suitable for adding cellular wireless communications to any embedded machine-to-machine (M2M) system.

The WEB-Telemetry (wireless-embedded-baseboard for telemetry) includes sites to locate several leading iDEN and GPRS/GSM cellular modems from Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Siemens.

The board also serves as a wide input (10-30V) regulated power supply for a PC/104 processor board, as well as providing an integrated Trimble GPS receiver module and digital inputs for status signals.

The challenge for many system designers is to reduce sise and cost by integrating more functionality onto fewer boards.

Today, most PC/104 system builders use a separate PSU, a modem carrier and sometimes an extra GPS receiver card.

These features have been combined into a single 155 x 100mm board with I/O connectors conveniently located along one edge of the board.

The onboard power supply can supply up to 2.5A at 5V, 2.5A at 3.6V and optionally, 250mA at +/-12V.

Also, designers no longer have to sacrifice two serial ports from their systems to support the cellular modem and GPS connections because the WEB-Telemetry already includes two onboard UARTs.

The WEB-Telemetry can be fitted with GPRS/GSM modems from Sony Ericsson (GM47/48) and Siemens (MC35i), as well as the Motorola iO200 and iO1500 modems used for the Nextel iDEN network.

The WEB-Telemetry is the first commercially available embedded carrier board for the iO200 - the very latest iDEN modem released this month by Motorola.

The iO200 has been designed with integrated GPS functionality and offers a low cost solution for M2M applications using the Nextel data network.

The WEB-Telemetry provides the matching connectors, power supplies and where appropriate, the SIM card (subscriber identity module) carrier for plug-and-go operation.

The board can be fitted with a low power Trimble LassenSQ GPS receiver to provide positional data and an accurate 1Hz pulse synchronised to an atomic clock (UTC).