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PC/104 Embedded Consortium Design Winners

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the best-of-the-best dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The PC/104 Embedded Consortium announced the winners of its first PC/104 Design Contest, at the Embedded Systems Conference today in San Francisco. The awards recognize engineers designing innovative systems and devices based on the consortium's PC/104 and PC/104-Plus standards. Winners were announced in three categories: Commercial for industrial/medical/transportation/other; Commercial for military/aerospace/COTS; and Research Project. Read the full story at Linuxdevices.com. Lots of images!"

6 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. WOW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Top prize went to a PC which... controls glue guns? Why does this not seem like a high caliber of utility that you should be able to provide with that much computing power.

    Top research prize went to a steer by wire system. This is already employed in race cars and ferrari's alike. How is something already in production considered research?

    Maybe I am out of touch with the embedded niche, but this seems totally anti-clamictic and a little lame

    1. Re:WOW by evanbd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OK, let's see. 16 glue guns at 900 meters per minutes, with 0.5 millimeter accuracy. 16 micro (not mili) second timings on 16 different devices is hard, especially if you're computing on the fly where you want them. Sounds impressive to me. Granted, it's only an incremental improvement over 16 different boxes, each somewhat larger, and computing the paths in advance, but those incremental improvements are important, and some of them pose nasty technical challenges.

  2. Re:I'm not comfortable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Deal with it. A large portion of Comp. Sci research that leads to such great products such as: GPS, WiFi and Ethernet all were supported by DARPA and other defense releated government research organizations.

  3. Maybe you are by Chazmati · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you work in industry? I don't mean the IT industry, but some branch of manufacturing?

    Modern manufacturing plants are extensively automated. Logic control 30 years ago was all done with hardwired relays and timers, then 20 years ago with programmable logic controllers (PLC's), and now there are virtual PLC's running in x86-based PC's with extensive networking between controllers. There are DSP's in sensors, web guides, vision systems, and even glue gun controls. Technology has driven production speeds higher and higher, and now we need more sophisticated control systems on all sorts of equipment.

  4. Re:Stupid PC/104 by JesseL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For industrial environments with any vibration, normal ISA and PCI slots are a total nightmare, PC/104 connectors are very rugged due to large contact areas and very strong retention. For hobbiests, PC/104 isn't ideal because the volumes are so low compared to commodity PC hardware, making it seem unreasonably expensive. For the people who really need PC/104 it makes perfect sense.

    --
    "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
  5. Re:Gimmee a hammer, sailor!! by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wouldn't water be a bigger hazard on a sub than hammers?

    Condensation, yes. But actual flowing water? By the time the pc-104 device gets wet you probably have bigger problems anyhow...

    Submarines get torpedoed and depth charged. This tends to rattle the boat. Hard. Can't have your navigation system blink out just because someone is tossing bombs at you.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!