New products

Six-module, multifunction, Compact PCI card

North Atlantic Industries (NAI) in Bohemia, N.Y., is offering a six-module, multifunction, single-slot, compact PCI (cPCI) card that eliminates the complexity and size constraints of using several independent, single-function cards. The 78C1 cPCI card can include the functions of A-D (10 channels), D-A (10 channels), discrete I/O (16 channels), TTL I/O (16 channels), RTD (6 channels), synchro/resolver (4 channels), LVDT/RVDT (4 channels), and signal generator (4 channels). The 78C1 provides diagnostics and is available in commercial temperature range and severe environment, military temperature range. For more information contact NAI online at www.naii.com.

Upgraded dual-processor PowerPC card

Radstone Technology in Towcester, England is upgrading the processor in the company’s PPCM1 dual processor PowerPC card to include two Motorola 7457 PowerPC processors operating at 1 GHz, enabling the board to deliver twice the performance of the previous version in compute-intensive applications. The PPCM1. Software available for the PPCM1 includes a VxWorks board support package and enhanced support package, boot firmware and the deployed test products built-in test and background condition screening. The PPCM1 is available in five air- and conduction-cooled ruggedization levels. For more information contact Radstone online at www.radstone.com.

Command-and-control system monitoring and management units

Elma Electronic Inc. in Fremont, Calif., is offering system monitoring and management units for military and aerospace applications, as well as for communications and general industrial applications. The Sentry I system monitor for VME/64x, VXI, CompactPCI or other chassis can monitor as many as eight voltages. The Sentry III diagnostic monitor is a microprocessor-based instrument for monitoring and controlling the power supplies, fans, etc., in an Elma chassis. It monitors and displays current values for AC and DC voltages, inlet and outlet air temperatures. The unit can compare voltages and temperatures against preset limits and raise an alarm if these limits are exceeded. If safe operating, limits are exceeded, system power is shut down. In addition, the warning and fatal failure limits are user programmable to meet system requirements. For more information contact Elma online at www.elma.com.

Toggle switches for harsh and military environments

APEM Components Inc. in Haverhill, Mass., is offering its 12000X778 Series of professional-grade toggle switches for harsh environments such as the military, aerospace, and other high specification environments. The switch has a Diallyl Phthalate case with epoxy sealing, gold and silver/nickel alloy solid rivet contacts and uniform matte black finish for nonreflection. The series of switches has double shell case for strength and electrical insulation, pinned operating lever for actuator strength and resistance against rough handling or accidental knocks, an IP67-compliant front panel sealing and rear sealing with epoxy. For more information contact APEM online at www.apem.com/gr.

Rugged telephony development platform for military applications

Crystal Group Inc. in Hiawatha, Iowa, is offering the ITK100 IP Telephony Developer Platform for military and government applications. The ITK100 is a development platform that functions as a digital VOIP gateway and as an application server in a rugged 1U form-factor. Applications such as call conferencing, IVR, unified communications, voice portal, voice recording, VoIP access gateway, IP-PBX and more can be developed on the ITK100. The platform is based on Crystal’s MIL-STD 810F-certified CS100 1U rackmount server containing a 2.4 GHZ P4 processor, 512MB SDRAM, 40-gigabyte hard drive, CD-ROM and AudioCodes’ IPM-260 telephony developer kit. The developer kit comes with the 4-span, 120-port IPM-260 board, AudioCodes API, coders, documentation and standard developer support. The Crystal CS100 offers two PCI slots. With the inclusion of the AudioCodes IPM-260 telephony board, one slot remains available for application-specific cards. The ITK100 can also be loaded with the TP-260 board from AudioCodes, making it ready for a SIP application. For more information contact Crystal online at www.crystalpc.com.

High-current rating in a low-profile SMT socket

Zierick Manufacturing Corp. in Mount Kisco, N.Y., is offering the SMT Bottom Entry Through Board Socket. Designed to handle high-current ratings up to seven amps depending on the application-the SMT Socket cam accommodate either a power or signal connection, and is for high-density applications and demanding environments. The SMT Socket is available in tape and reel in a standard tape pocket format. Mating pin sizes include 0.025 square inches and 0.027-inch to 0.032inch diameter round pins. The material is 0.0005-inch-thick beryllium copper with a bright tin finish over copper. For more information contact Zierick online at www.zierick.com.

Switchless VXS backplane for early development

Elma Bustronic in Fremont, Calif., is offering a development VXS switched serial backplane that complies with the VITA 41.0 specification. The 5-slot VXS solution does not require a switch card to run the fabric, and enables the direct connection of as many as three node cards without a switch card. This arrangement could help develop and test communications between end-point cards, support small system needs, and allow the demonstration of VXS node cards prior to the availability of switch silicon. This backplane can be used to test multiple data-transport-protocol end-point designs without the need to invest in multiple switch card types. For more information contact Elma Bustronic online at www.Bustronic.com.

Family of data-recording systems

TEK Microsystems Inc. in Chelmsford, Mass., is offering the JazzStore family of data-recording solutions with real-time FAT32 file systems for demanding high-speed sensor applications such as radar, signals intelligence, imaging, and surveillance. The JazzStore architecture supports a wide range of card- and system-level solutions, and can be as small as one 6U card either using a Tekmicro PowerRACE carrier card with two PMC sites and RACE++ fabric, or a JazzStream IO carrier card with two dual-mode PMC/XMC sites using PCI Express and VXS. The I/O interface can come from the fabric or use a PMC/XMC site to support one of more than 30 supported Tekmicro and third-party I/O modules. Larger systems can use up to 12 cards to scale to multiple I/O and storage channels while maintaining a common architecture, file format and control/status interface. For more information contact TEK Microsystems online at www.tekmicro.com.

SCSI flash disk solid-statedata storage

BiTMICRO Networks in Fremont, Calif., is offering the E-Disk 3S320D Ultra320 SCSI solid state flash disk drive for embedded and applied computing applications that require high reliability, performance, data security, and ruggedness, such as telecom infrastructure network elements, pipeline monitoring, digital mapping, financial on-line transactions, and homeland defense security. The E-Disk 3S320D conforms to the ANSI SCSI-3SPI-4 standards, is operating system independent, and features access time as fast as 42 microseconds. Sustained read/write rate is as fast as 68 megabytes per second, and the unit can withstand operating shock of as strong as 1500 Gs and temperatures from -40 to 85 degrees Celsius. The mean time between failures is 2 million hours. Available in a 3.5-inch form factor, maximum capacity for the E-Disk Ultra320 SCSI is 155 gigabytes. For more information contact BiTMICRO Networks online at www.bitmicro.com.

Space-qualified quick-turn FPGA replacements

Honeywell Inc. in Phoenix is offering a conversion model for replacing field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in commercial, military, and aerospace equipment with application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). To help space-system producers avoid schedule slips in their programs, the integrated-circuit packages are the same design and pin-for-pin compatible with standard FPGAs, eliminating any need to redesign boards. After validating the ASIC design with FPGAs, the system designer simply provides Honeywell with the FPGA design code, which is rapidly translated into a metal programmed ASIC, including full verification testing, military specification screening, and packaging. Honeywell’s current FPGA replacement model is based on 135 nanometer (nm) and 70-nm gate arrays, with 440K usable gates and 91k usable gates, respectively. For more information contact Honeywell at www.honeywell.com.

X-windows system to capture and display real-time video

The Titan Corp. in San Diego is offering VigraX, an X-windows system that works with Titan’s VigraVision video- and image-processing boards to capture, enhance, and display real-time video with graphics in the VxWorks real-time operating system. VigraX is an X-windows system environment for VxWorks that supports Titan’s Vigra hardware out of the box. VigraX improves software development efforts by including client libraries, support for standard file systems of VxWorks, X Extensions, demonstration client programs, and standard utility client programs. For more information contact Titan online at www.titan.com.

Resolver-to-digital converter for rugged mobile applications

Data Device Corp. (DDC) in Bohemia, N.Y., is releasing a low-cost resolver-to-digital (R/D) converter to meet rugged automotive requirements. The RD-19240LS is a 14-bit R/D converter with an accuracy of 8 arc minutes plus 1 LSB designed for high-volume automotive applications. Resolvers are being designed into new automotive applications such as hybrid drives and steering systems due to their ability to withstand harsh environments. Resolvers can withstand high levels of heat, vibration, and dust. An R/D converter translates the sine and cosine signals fom a resolver into a digital signal that is easily processed by a DSP or microprocessor. The prices for Resolvers and R/D converters have dropped significantly in 2004, making these solutions both economical and rugged. The RD-19240LS incorporates a charge pump so that it may be powered with only a 5-volt supply. The resolution, tracking rate, and bandwidth are programmable, allowing high tracking rates at lower resolution, and a switch-on-the-fly feature for higher resolution at lower tracking rates. For more information contact DDC online at www.ddc-web.com.

Standard off-the-shelf power supplies

Martek Power in Los Angeles released a family of standard, off-the-shelf, AC power supplies for industrial and medical applications. The PS2333, PS2340 and PS2341 are power factor corrected, 90-264 volts AC input, single output 600 watt AC front ends available in 12-, 24-, and 48-volts DC outputs. These compact, 1U high, power supplies are available as medical and non-medical grades and offer up to 6.7 watts per cubic inch power density. Standard features include current sharing, N+1 redundancy, power good and AC fail signals. I2C Interface also available. For more information contact Martek Power at www.martekpower.com.

High-speed MMIC switches for rugged applications

K&L Microwave in Salisbury, Md., is offering the 4FSB-00021. Designed specifically for the rugged requirements of a military ground transportable communications system, the 4SFB-00021 utilizes proven technologies and a hermetically sealed housing to deliver performance over a wide variety of environments. The filtering uses proven lumped component designs that can be potted/staked to survive the mechanical shock expected of a vehicle traversing rough terrain. MMIC switches are utilized in the design providing good isolation and fast switching speeds at a reasonable cost; pin-diode switches can be substituted for even faster switching speeds. These same technologies can be utilized to support high-reliability custom switch filter bank requirements. For more information contact K&L Microwave online at www.klmicrowave.com.

JTAG system for testing high-speed networks

Asset InterTech Inc. in Richardson, Texas, is offering an enhanced ScanWorks JTAG test system with the ability to test 1-to-10-gibabit-per-second serial data buses on printed circuit boards. ScanWorks supports the IEEE 1149.6 specification for boundary scan of advanced digital networks. The 1149.6 standards define test methodologies for buses that feature serial AC-coupled chip-to-chip interconnects or differential signaling such as Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel. For more information contact Asset InterTech online at www.asset-intertech.com.

MEMS accelerometer with built-in temperature sensor

Colibrys SA in Neuchatel, Switzerland, is offering a range of high-stability microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) capacitive accelerometers with built-in temperature sensors, called the SMD MS8000 series. These devices meet the standards of MIL-STD-883E, and are available in 2g, 10g, 30g, and 100g models. The temperature sensor gives the option of improved stability through external compensation. These devices are for gun-hard munitions, underground drilling, and precision guidance systems. For more information contact Colibrys online at www.colibrys.com.

Security-system extension for blending old and new software

Green Hills Software in Santa Barbara, Calif., is offering Integrity PC, an extension to the company’s Integrity operating system that helps users incorporate relatively old applications and traditional operating systems such as Linux into high-security and high-reliability applications. Integrity PC partitions a system into several “virtual computers,” each of which can host its own guest operating system. An impenetrable wall around each virtual computer ensures that errant, insecure, or malicious code cannot compromise the security or reliability of the rest of the system. For more information contact Green Hills online at www.ghs.com.

Video-content analysis algorithms for video surveillance

Texas Instruments (TI) Inc. in Dallas is working with ObjectVideo Inc. in Reston, Va., to launch video-content analysis algorithms to run on TI’s digital-media processors. The new technology will make intelligent video surveillance more accessible to the mass market, and can speed development of security applications. Porting ObjectVideo’s video surveillance algorithms with TI’s DM64x digital media processor will enable analytical capabilities to reside on devices such as video cameras, digital video recorders, or network encoders, company officials say. For more information contact TI online at www.ti.com.