DFI AL253-BN-20N00 Intel Pentium N4200 4″ Embedded Board with 9 to 36 V DC Input and Quad GbE

Kiosks, signage players and front-of-house terminals spend much of their time idle, then need a quick burst to render a page or process a transaction. The AL253-BN-20N00 is the Intel Pentium N4200 build in the DFI AL253 series of 4″ embedded boards, with the highest burst clock in the range and four GbE ports on a 165 x 115 mm board.

The Pentium N4200 (Apollo Lake) runs four cores at 1.1 GHz, bursting to 2.5 GHz, within a 6 W TDP. This build has 2 GB of DDR3L soldered on the board, with one DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMM slot to take the total to 8 GB for a Windows 10 IoT Enterprise image. Intel HD Graphics drives a DP++ output at up to 4096 x 2160 at 60 Hz and a VGA output at up to 1920 x 1200, so a customer screen and a staff screen can run from one board.

Four GbE ports on Intel I211AT or I210IT controllers keep payment, content and management traffic on separate networks. Four RS-232/422/485 COM ports connect receipt printers, card readers and scales, and an 8-bit DIO handles door sensors or lighting. USB is two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports plus two USB 2.0 on headers, with an M.2 E-key (2230) for Wi-Fi, a full-size Mini PCIe socket with SIM for cellular and one SATA port for an SSD. Firmware TPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer are on board.

The AL253-BN-20N00 runs from 9 to 36 V DC on a barrel connector, cooled by a fanless heatsink, operates from 0 to 60 °C and carries CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance. Where a higher TDP and 4 GB of memory down suit the workload better, AL253-BN-40E50 carries the Atom x7-E3950, and AL253-BN-20E30 is the dual-core Atom option.