Diamond Systems ARIES : ARS3845-4GA PC/104-Plus SBC with Intel Atom E3845, Analogue and Digital I/O and -40 to 85 °C

A vehicle or field system that has to read sensors, drive outputs and run the application often ends up as a stack of three boards. The ARS3845-4GA is the full data acquisition build in the Diamond Systems ARIES series: a PC/104-Plus SBC that puts an Intel Atom processor, soldered memory and a 16-bit analogue and digital I/O circuit on one board.

The Intel Atom E3845 is a quad-core Bay Trail processor at 1.91 GHz, paired with 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM soldered on board, which removes the SO-DIMM socket as a failure point under vibration. Two independent displays run from VGA, dual-channel 24-bit LVDS and either HDMI or DisplayPort, one at a time. VGA, LVDS and DisplayPort reach 2560 x 1600 and HDMI reaches 1920 x 1080, with backlight power and control on the board for an LCD panel.

The data acquisition circuit gives 16 single-ended or 8 differential 16-bit analogue inputs at up to 250 kHz with a 2048-sample FIFO, four 16-bit analogue outputs, 22 digital I/O lines, eight counter/timers and four PWMs, with autocalibration through Diamond’s Universal Driver software. Alongside it sit two Gigabit Ethernet ports on Intel I210IT controllers, four RS-232/422/485 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, HD audio and a SATA port. The ARS3845-4GN is the same board with digital I/O only.

Power is +5 V DC, with a typical draw of 8.5 W. The ARS3845-4GA operates from -40 to 85 °C without a fan, cooled by a bottom-mounted heat spreader that conducts heat into the enclosure wall, and a 0.5 inch heat sink accessory is available where the board cannot touch the enclosure. It is MIL-STD-202G shock and vibration compatible and supports Linux, Windows 7, Windows 10 and QNX Neutrino 7.0.