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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!"

20 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. wait a sec by B3ryllium · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does this mean full sized keyboards on laptops, numpad and all?

    Kickass! :)

  2. 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "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?"

      I have yet to see a Ferrari or race car that employs a steer-by-wire system. TROTTLE-by-wire, yes. The only things that I can think of that use steer-by-wire systems are larger ships, most modern military aircraft, and some civilian aircraft like most (all?) Airbus models.

    2. Re:WOW by toddestan · · Score: 3, Funny

      I could see using an AMD Athlon processor in a hot glue gun. Not only would it melt the glue like crazy, you could run Linux on it! Now imagine a beowolf cluster of hot glue guns... oh... maybe not then.

    3. Re:WOW by homer_ca · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Top research prize went to a steer by wire system. This is already employed in race cars and ferrari's alike."

      Not exactly. Many cars have a drive-by-wire throttle, even relatively inexpensive cars like Nissan Maximas. All steering is still done by a direct mechanical linkage. There have been a few experimental research and concept cars with drive-by-wire steering.

    4. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. Some Good Info on PC/104 by Michael's+a+Jerk! · · Score: 5, Informative

    can be found Here Promises to be an interesting standard.

    --

    I'm not Seth.

    1. Re:Some Good Info on PC/104 by Usquebaugh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's been out for years, nothing promising, it already is a great standard.

      Noob.

  5. PC 104 in a nutshell by Silicon_Knight · · Score: 5, Informative

    PC 104 is basically a form factor, just like ATX, mini-ATX, mini-ITX, etc. It is one of the smallest form factor out there, largely used in industrial automation setup.

    The one characteristic that makes PC104 interesting is the "pass through" bus connector. Consisting of 104 pins (hence it's name), you stack modules of extension card on the base board, and build vertically your components. See link:

    PC104 FAQ with pictures

    They tend to be pretty low power consumption, and there are a mind boggling array of PC104 modules out there, from radio modems to GPS receivers to servo controllers and 3 axis accelerometers. For hobby use, I wouldn't really go with them, since they are more expensive than the much cheaper mini-itx boards (which is what I will be using for my next car computer).

    Mini-ITX info link

    Man, reading through the projects - they outfitted a 1997 Corvette with a "fly by wire" steering. My god, I wish my research lab has the amount of cash handy to buy a corvette for a ressearch project...

    -=- Terence

  6. Re:I'm not comfortable by PerlGuru · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They don't state that that particular project utilizes linux, it simply uses the PC/104 standard for *hardware*. PC/104 is a hardware spec not a software spec.

  7. No love for PC/104 by SuperQ · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've never had any kind of interest in PC/104.. it's an old standard, the PC/104 pass-through bus is ISA based. Every time I try and find out prices, it's been $400-500 for a devel board, no one seems to think about selling them in small quantities. You only get a 33mhz 486 for that $400 board..

    I have recently come to enjoy working with Soekris boards.. http://www.soekris.com

    The guy does things right.. Compact flash slots on board for OS, no over-priced Disk-On-Chip stuff. PCI or mini-pci slots, 133mhz AMD Elan chips, PCMCIA slots on some models.. serial port and simple network bootable flash. and 2-3 PCI 10/100 ethernet chips.. a similar PC/104 board would be stacked 4cm tall with adapter boards, all stuck on a ISA bus.

    1. Re:No love for PC/104 by apharov · · Score: 3, Informative

      No wonder you have no love for PC/104 if you're so prejudiced that you don't even bother reading the specs of PC/104+, which has a PCI bus.

      For example the system you are talking about can be achieved using only 2 PC/104 boards (+1 board for power), with standard 2,5" HDD if you don't like SSDs. I know because I was just testing such a system yesterday, and you'll find the boards too by browsing the web a bit. And oh wait, you'll also get an 300Mhz processor with that system.

  8. 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.

    1. Re:Maybe you are by SN74S181 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've heard that the origin of PLC's being called that was because they got some sort of an exception from the Union by not being called a computer. Unions have traditionally been anti-Automation, and anything that says 'computer' on it is bound to be viewed with hostility.

      Maybe somebody can confirm or contradict this. I found it interesting when a friend who's done a lot of industrial control systems told me.

  9. 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!"
  10. 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!
  11. Good Stuff. by ZenShadow · · Score: 2, Informative

    A while ago I got the bug to design an MP3 player for my car, and needed some embedded hardware for it (unfortunately this happened right before I moved back accross the US, and I lost interest after that, what with work an' all). I ended up picking up a buscuit PC board from www.advantech.com. It was like $500 at the time, but had everything on it -- audio, ethernet, IDE, floppy, VGA, LCD, a bunch of serial ports, and a PC/104 port that I intended to use for a PCMCIA adapter (wireless support).

    These things are cool. You could literally build one into a 5.25" disk enclosure, and it would fit perfectly (even uses the right power connector). If you want something that doesn't have the mess of an ATX power supply and slots that make the cards stick out, PC/104-based solutions are ideal -- it's a nice, clean stack.

    Advantech also now manufactures a StrongARM-based solution, which I'm thinking about picking up for a revived version of the project. I think they've also got XScale-based boards.

    --ZS

    --
    -- sigs cause cancer.
  12. Re:But does it run Linux? by Helmholtz+Coil · · Score: 2, Informative
    Yep, they sure do. I've got two PC/104 projects going right now, another two potentials, and they all depend on Linux.

    Check out EMAC's page for more info on running Linux. You know with a name like that they must support Linux! ;)

  13. It's a standard by wiredog · · Score: 3, Informative
    And industrial automation is a very conservative field. Conservative meaning "why use something new and untried when we have something old that is known to work?" Conservative meaning that MS-DOS was still being used into the late 90's for non-real time embedded apps. It may not have been stable, but it's faults, and how to avoid them, were well understood, making it a fairly robust OS.

    Similarly, while PC/104 is not new, fast, or high powered, it is stable, robust, and everyone knows it.

    Oh, and one of the reasons that 33mhz 486s are used is because they can handle hot environments without melting down. What would happen if you put an Athlon or P4 in an unventilated cabinet in a plating shop in Oklahoma in August? 100 degrees F on the outside of the cabinet.

    Another reason for high cost of PC/104 is robustness. How well does the Soekris board handle vibration? Will the CF chip wiggle its way out of the slot? These are used in systems that have to have near-mainframe reliability. If the system crashes (sometimes literally, if it's an automated multiple-hoist line) due to a hardware failure, with a millionm dollars worth of product in the line, there will be a technician on an airplane that day. A stable, robust, PC/104 board is a hell of a lot cheaper than that!

    --

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