DFI AL253-TN-20E30 Intel Atom x5-E3930 4″ Embedded Board with 9 to 36 V DC Input and -40 to 85 °C

A remote telemetry unit in a sealed box on a pole or pipeline faces two problems an office computer never meets: wide temperature swings and a limited power budget. The AL253-TN-20E30 is the dual-core extended temperature build in the DFI AL253 series of 4″ embedded boards, rated for -40 to 85 °C.

The Intel Atom x5-E3930 (Apollo Lake) runs two cores at 1.3 GHz, bursting to 1.8 GHz, and is the lowest-power Atom option in the series, which keeps heat inside a sealed enclosure down. This build has 2 GB of DDR3L soldered on the board, with one DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMM slot for up to 8 GB total. 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, enough for a service display.

A full-size Mini PCIe socket with SIM takes a cellular modem for backhaul, and an M.2 E-key (2230) takes Wi-Fi. Four GbE ports on Intel I211AT or I210IT controllers, four RS-232/422/485 COM ports and an 8-bit DIO connect sensors, flow meters and local controllers. USB is two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 on headers, and one SATA port takes an SSD. Firmware TPM 2.0 and a watchdog timer, programmable from 1 to 255 seconds, help unattended sites recover.

The AL253-TN-20E30 runs from 9 to 36 V DC on a barrel connector and carries CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance. If the site needs more processing at the same temperature range, AL253-TN-40E40 offers four cores at 9.5 W and AL253-TN-40E50 the Atom x7-E3950, both with 4 GB of memory down.