Giada IB2-281 Intel Alder Lake-N Pico-ITX Single Board Computers with 2.5GbE, HDMI and LVDS

Signage players, kiosk controllers and small HMIs share a problem: the board has to fit behind a screen or inside a slim housing, and it has to run without a fan. The Giada IB2-281 series answers with Intel Alder Lake-N processors on a 2.5″ Pico-ITX single board computer measuring 100 x 72 mm, cooled passively and powered from 12 V DC, so the same board can sit in a wall-mounted player, a self-service terminal or the back of an operator panel.

Both IB2-281 boards take one DDR5 SO-DIMM at 4800 MHz, up to 16 GB, and an M.2 M-key 2242 NVMe SSD on PCIe 3.0 x2. Intel UHD Graphics drives HDMI at up to 3840 x 2160 and dual-channel 24-bit LVDS at up to 1920 x 1200 as two independent displays, for example a main screen and a built-in operator panel. Windows 10, Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux are supported, and an optional TPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer are listed for the board.

The IB2-281-N100 uses the Intel Processor N100 with four cores at 6 W, which suits 4K signage playback, browser-based kiosks and HMIs running a full Windows or Linux desktop. The IB2-281-X7211E uses the dual-core Intel Atom x7211E at the same 6 W, from Intel’s Atom x7000E embedded line, for fixed-function controllers and simpler displays where two cores are enough.

The I/O is the same on both boards. One 2.5GbE port on an Intel I226-V controller handles networking, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports sit on the edge with two USB 2.0 ports on an internal header, and an RS-232 header and four inputs and four outputs of GPIO connect a card reader, printer, sensor or relay. An M.2 E-key 2230 socket takes a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module, and the small footprint leaves room in the housing for a power supply and cabling.

Power is 12 V DC through a DC jack or an internal 4-pin header, with auto power-on so a player restarts on its own after a supply interruption. IB2-281 boards operate from 0 to 60 °C with 0.7 m/s of airflow, so the housing should allow some air movement across the heatsink, and they carry CE, FCC and RoHS compliance.