DFI AL551-BN-N4200 Intel Pentium N4200 3.5″ SBC with Dual GbE and Triple Display

An interactive kiosk sits idle for minutes, then has to respond quickly when someone touches the screen. The AL551-BN-N4200 is the Intel Pentium N4200 build in the DFI AL551 series of 3.5″ SBCs, with the highest burst clock in the series and a 6 W TDP that suits a fanless kiosk or point-of-sale enclosure.

The Pentium N4200 (Apollo Lake) runs four cores at 1.1 GHz and bursts to 2.5 GHz for page loads and transactions. One DDR3L 1866 MHz SO-DIMM slot takes up to 8 GB, which suits a Windows 10 IoT Enterprise image running a browser-based application. Intel HD Graphics drives three displays at once: DP++ at up to 4096 x 2160 at 60 Hz, VGA at up to 2048 x 1536 and dual-channel 48-bit LVDS at up to 1920 x 1200.

Two GbE ports on Intel I210AT controllers separate payment traffic from content and management. Two RS-232/422/485 COM ports connect receipt printers and card terminals, and an 8-bit DIO handles a cash drawer or door sensor. USB is two USB 3.1 Gen 1 and two USB 2.0 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 on headers. Realtek ALC262 audio drives two 3 W speakers, an M.2 B-key (2242) takes an SSD and a full-size Mini PCIe socket takes Wi-Fi.

The AL551-BN-N4200 runs from 12 V DC on a 4-pin or barrel connector, cooled by a fanless heatsink, and operates from 0 to 60 °C with firmware TPM 2.0 and CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance. For simpler terminals, AL551-BN-N3350 uses the dual-core Celeron N3350, and where an embedded Atom with temperature options suits the project, AL551-BN-E3950 carries the x7-E3950.