Vecow VIG-100 NXP i.MX 6UL IoT Gateways with M12 or RJ45 LAN, Up to Four COM Ports and CAN Bus Options

Serial devices are still everywhere in access control, retail and automation, and the job of getting them onto a network usually falls to a small gateway with a cellular link. The Vecow VIG-100 series is a family of fanless IoT gateways on the NXP i.MX 6UL that does that job in six versions, with two levels of serial, GPIO and CAN I/O and a choice of RJ45 or M12 LAN.

Every VIG-100 model shares one design. The i.MX 6UL is a single Arm Cortex-A7 core with 512 MB of DDR3L and 512 MB of NAND flash, running Debian Stretch R01 on Linux kernel 4.9, with micro SD up to 128 GB and eMMC up to 32 GB as a Vecow option. Each gateway has two 10/100 Ethernet ports, one USB 2.0 port with OTG support and software-configurable RS-232/422/485 ports with 8 kV ESD protection. A full-size mini PCIe socket with an external SIM slot takes an optional 4G LTE and GPS or Wi-Fi module, with four antenna positions and eight user-programmable LEDs, and a watchdog timer restarts the gateway if the software stops responding.

The VIG-100 has two serial ports on RJ45 and RJ45 LAN, and the VIG-100M moves that LAN to screw-locking M12 connectors for vibration. The VIG-110 adds two DB9 serial ports, for four in total, and eight 3.3 V GPIO lines, with the VIG-110M as its M12 version. The VIG-120 adds two CAN 2.0 A/B ports to that I/O, and the VIG-120M combines the full I/O set with M12 LAN for machines and fleet equipment.

In practice the VIG-100 series suits access control panels, smart retail, fleet management and factory automation cells. Every model runs fanless from -25 °C to 70 °C on 6 to 40 V DC, with shock tested to IEC 60068-2-27 at 50 G and vibration to IEC 60068-2-64 at 5 Grms, CE and FCC marks, and a design to EN 50155 and EN 50121-3-2 requirements. Vecow supplies a wall-mount bracket, with a DIN rail kit as an option, and lists a 12 V power adapter, an RJ45-to-DB9 serial cable and a 4G and GPS module as accessories.