Diamond Systems HELIOS Low-Power PC/104 SBCs with Vortex86DX Processors and Data Acquisition

Compact control and logging systems often run simple software for years, so they need a board that boots reliably, draws little power and copes with temperature extremes. The Diamond Systems HELIOS series is built for that: a family of low-power PC/104 SBCs that combine a single-chip Vortex86DX processor with Diamond’s analogue and digital I/O circuitry on one board, which reduces size and cost. Diamond describes the analogue circuit as similar to its own PC/104 analogue I/O boards.

Every HELIOS has 256 MB of DRAM soldered on board, a CRT (VGA) output and an LVDS LCD interface, four USB 2.0 ports, two RS-232 and two RS-232/422/485 ports, a 10/100Base-T Ethernet port and PS/2 keyboard and mouse. Storage covers an IDE UDMA-100 port, a flashdisk socket for up to 4 GB and an on-board 2 MB bootable flash drive with FreeDOS installed, so a board can boot without extra storage. Expansion is through the PC/104 ISA bus, and a watchdog timer is built in.

The series offers two clock speeds and two I/O builds. The HLV1000-256AV and HLV800-256AV carry full data acquisition at 1 GHz and 800 MHz: 16 analogue inputs with 16-bit resolution at up to 250 kHz, four 12-bit analogue outputs, 40 digital I/O lines and two counter/timers, with autocalibration. The HLV1000-256DV and HLV800-256DV are the digital I/O builds at the same two speeds, for systems that switch and monitor signals without analogue measurement. On the AV models, input ranges run from ±10 V down to 0 to 1.25 V, the FIFO holds 2048 samples with a programmable threshold, and the analogue outputs support simultaneous update.

HELIOS runs fanless from -40 to 85 °C under a heat sink in the standard PC/104 form factor. Hardwired jumpers, latching connectors and conformal coating are available as options for extra resistance to shock, vibration and moisture. FreeDOS comes installed on the flash drive, and Diamond offers a Linux software development kit and a development kit built on the HLV800-256AV. Diamond Systems highlights the FreeDOS flash drive as a cost saving for DOS applications, since no additional storage medium is needed. The data acquisition logic is field-upgradeable for performance upgrades or custom designs.