How many manufacturers of single-board computers are there that sell in the U.S.A.? I’m going to venture a guess at 120. I have a list of about 80, and it is definitely not complete. And it sometime seems like there may be that many SBC formats as well.
So, let’s just say that for your new design you need a small, straightforward, low-current way to get some processing power and a connection to the Internet of Things. There are a lot of choices. There are many ways to go. But, recently there have been some new small, low-cost, low-power SBCs with all-important design tools that are ready-to-go.
Understand that there is a mix here of boards you can buy in quantity and reference designs that you need to get someone to produce. The latter is usually not a problem. Now, take care that the product’s temperature range, reliability and long-term availability fit your needs. Let’s look at seven ways you could go—all of which cost less than $250—and some a lot less.
OM13063 LPC4088 QuickStart Board: ARM Enabled
The OM13063 LPC4088 QuickStart board from NXP is an easy-to-use ARM Cortex-M4 rapid prototyping board and is mbed-enabled to take full advantage of those ARM platform tools. It has 8 Mbytes of quad SPI flash along with the CPU’s 512 Kbytes of program flash, 32 Mbytes of SDRAM, 96 kB CPU SRAM and 4 Kbytes of CPU E²PROM. The board has an RTC, 10/100 Ethernet (RJ45), USB Host (A type) and Device (micro-B) interfaces, mbed HDG debug interface, a 61-pin display expansion connector, a 20-pin XBee compatible connector for RF module add-on and CMSIS-DAP interface (debug interface functions). It is an ISO9001 product built by Embedded Artists.
Figure 1: The OM13063 QuickStart from NXP. (Source: NXP Semiconductors)
AAEON Technology AIOT-X1000 Uses Intel Processor
The AIOT-X1000 card from AAEON targets IoT and features an Intel Quark X1000 processor SoC plus 1 Gbyte of 800 MHz DDR3, a Micro SD slot, four USB 2.0 and two 10/100 Base-TX (RJ-45) ports. The card is a bit larger than most at 5.75 x 4 inches. It has 16 digital I/O, eight analog inputs with a 12-bit A/D converter and two RS-232 ports. It can be equipped with optional Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee or 3G cellular I/O. The board uses Wind River Linux with McAfee for Moon Island security support or Yocto Linux and has two Mini-Card expansion connectors. Operation over -40° to 85° C is optional. I have not found any benchmarks on Quark SoCs, but all versions of the processor take just a little over 2 W.
Figure 2: The AIOT-X1000 card uses an Intel Quark X1000. (Source: AAEON)
Supermicro A1SQN: Another Intel-Powered Card Option
The A1SQN embedded, long-life cycle IoT gateway board from Supermicro uses a 2.2 W Intel Quark SoC X1021 with 512 Mbytes of DDR3 ECC, and has two Mini-PCI-E slots, plus a ZigBee module socket. The E100 (4.1 x 4.0 inch) form-factor board also has RS-232 and RS-485 ports, two 10/100 Ethernet ports, 8-channel 12-bit A/D conversion and an 8 Mbyte BIOS EEPROM. Quark processors are based on a single Pentium core, but have 512 Kbytes of on-chip SRAM for faster memory access, an SIMD unit, a single-channel DDR3 memory controller and PCIe 2.0, Ethernet and USB 2.0 interfaces. All Quark chips run at 400 MHz, and have 16 Kbytes of unified L1 cache. The card works over 0° to 60° C.
Variscite DART-MX6 System-on-Module: Single Board Computer with Gigabit Ethernet
Measuring only 20 x 50 mm, the DART-MX6 system-on-module from Variscite uses an 800 MHz Freescale i.MX6 processor with quad- or dual-Cortex-A9 cores. The card offers up to 1 Gbyte of LPDDR2, up to 64 Gbytes of eMMC storage, 2-D/3-D graphics acceleration, a 24-bit LCD interface, two LVDS display interfaces, HDMI V1.4, MIPI DSI, and parallel- and serial-camera interfaces. It also has Gigabit Ethernet, dual USB 2.0, PCIe and CAN Bus interfaces.
The board has dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE, with optional MIMO and A/V interfaces. It supports 0° to 70° C or full -40° to 85° C industrial operating temperatures and uses a 3.3 to 4.5 V supply taking 220 mA in idle and 650 mA maximum without GbE operation (GbE adds another ~410 mA). The board supports Linux BSP, Windows Embedded Compact 7 or Android OS.
Figure 3: The DART-MX6 uses a Freescale processor. (Source: Variscite)
Beaglebone Black: A Simple Solution SBC
The $53 BeagleBone Black development board runs an AM3358 Cortex-A8 processor and can boot Linux in under 10 seconds. The 3.4 x 2.1 inch board includes 512 Mbytes of DDR3, 4 Gbytes of eMMC flash that’s pre-loaded with a Linux distribution, a 3-D graphics accelerator, a NEON floating-point accelerator, an HDMI port, two USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet port. The card uses a 5 V 1 A power supply and has a microSD port.
Related: The BeagleBoard Lineup
Figure 4: The BeagleBone Black uses a GHz AM335x processor. (Source: Texas Instruments)
Intel Galileo Gen 2: Arduino Open-Source Board
Certified as an Arduino open-source development board, the Intel Galileo Gen 2 is based on the Quark SoC X1000. The card is priced at about $70. It can be programmed using the Arduino IDE via Mac OS, Windows or Linux. Galileo Gen 2 runs Linux.
Figure 5: The Intel Galileo Gen 2 is an Arduino open-source development board. (Source: Intel)
The 4.87 x 2.84-inch card has a mini-PCIe slot, a 10/100 Ethernet RJ45 port with PoE support, a micro-SD slot, a UART 6-pin header, USB 2.0 host and client, 20 digital I/O, six analog inputs and six PWMs with 12-bit resolution. It runs from a 7 to 18 V supply.
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B: Enhanced Graphics & Connectivity
The very popular Raspberry Pi 2 card has a lot to say for itself. First off, it’s only $35. And the new Pi 2 has a 900 MHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU from Broadcom (BCM2836), plus 1 Gbyte of LPDDR2 RAM and a 10/100 Ethernet port. Also on board are four USB 2.0 ports.
Figure 6: The fast new Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. (Source: The PiHut)
It features an HDMI video port and a dual-core VideoCore IV multimedia co-processor providing Open GL ES 2.0 support, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode. It also has a serial-display interface. The 3.35 x 2.20 x 0.67-inch card is powered from a 5 V, 2 A connection to the Micro USB socket. It has a 40-pin expansion header with 27 GPIO lines. The card will boot from a Micro SD card, and can run the full range of ARM GNU/Linux distributions, including Snappy Ubuntu Core, as well as Microsoft Windows 10.
I’ve described seven prime examples of SBC boards out of the heaven knows how many hundreds available. In our industry everyone is always taking about standardization and no one can do anything about it, apparently. So you have a lot of great choices. Again, just make sure you get long-term availability in writing—and from a company that can back it up.