New Single-Board RIO Embedded Devices from NI

By DE Editors

National Instruments (NI; Austin, TX) recently announced four new NI Single-Board RIO board-level embedded devices that provide a real-time processor, a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA (field-programmable gate array), analog and digital I/O, and built-in peripherals for custom embedded control and monitoring applications. The boards, according to NI, alleviate the effort of designing an entire embedded system from scratch, enabling designers to focus on the custom parts of their applications.

With the new NI Single-Board RIO devices, reports NI, engineers can achieve the shorter time to market of an off-the-shelf system along with the I/O customization offered by in-house designs, providing the best of both worlds. The NI Single-Board RIO boards come with off-the-shelf FPGA and real-time processor technology through NI LabVIEW yet, says NI, they maintain the customizable I/O often required for high-volume deployments through the option of a RIO Mezzanine Card connector (see below). The connector provides direct access to FPGA digital input/output (DIO) lines and certain processor-specific functions for mating custom daughter cards.

The devices also feature built-in analog I/O, which enables engineers to leverage the company’s analog offerings. Built-in peripherals include two RS232 serial ports, an RS485 port, Ethernet, and options for a CAN port, USB port, and SDHC (secure digital high capacity) card slot.

The individual models and product features are as follows:

• NI sbRIO-9623: 256MB of memory, 128MB RAM, 16 channels of 12-bit analog input, four channels of 12-bit analog output, four DIO lines, 96 RMC (RIO Mezzanine Card) DIO lines
• NI sbRIO-9626: 512MB of memory, 256MB RAM, 16 channels of 16-bit analog input, four channels of 16-bit analog output, four DIO lines, 96 RMC DIO lines
• NI sbRIO-9633: 256MB of memory, 128MB RAM, 16 channels of 12-bit analog input, four channels of 12-bit analog output, 28 DIO lines
• NI sbRIO-9636: 512MB of memory, 256MB RAM, 16 channels of 16-bit analog input, four channels of 16-bit analog output, 28 DIO lines

The new NI Single-Board RIO devices, which are sold only in OEM quantities, ship in June 2012. Contact NI for pricing. For more information, visit National Instruments.

Watch an introductory video on NI Single-Board RIO.

Click here for details on NI RIO platform evaluation options.

See the Single-Board RIO selection guide.

Sign-up for an online NI LabVIEW and NI hardware demo.

Go here for more on the RIO Mezzanine Card connector.

More details on the Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA are here.

See why DE's Editors selected the new NI Single-Board RIO devices as their Pick of the Week.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.