Blog | The Key Benefits of ADLINK’s IP-I Industrial Grade Pi

ADLINK I-Pi Blends Raspberry Pi, Rapid Industrial Prototyping with Computer-on-Modules

The ADLINK I-Pi acts as an industrial IoT prototyping platform that provides production-grade components, software portability and Raspberry Pi flexibility.

Commercial-grade hardware costs much more than expected due to customising hardware for a specific end application. 

There is an option for hardware that coexists between production quality and design flexibility: ADLINK’s computer-on-module (COM). COMs utilise a two-board architecture with an application-specific carrier broad consisting of all the I/O a system requires, and also a compute module slotting into the carrier to deliver processing, memory, I/O controllers, included in Fig 1.

The Key Benefits For Commercial Systems 

• Protects companies against hardware obsolescence – as legacy processor modules are able to be replaced with new and improved versions over years or even decades after the initial deployment.
• Forward and backward compatibility – ensured by industry standards such as PICMG COM Express, Qseven, SGET SMARC

What About Prototyping?

This industry IoT prototyping platform supports operating temperatures of -40ºC to +85ºC, with consistent shock and vibration tolerances with IEC 60068-2-27/64 and MIL-STD-202 F. In addition to integrating USB and PCI switches on the processor module, reducing design costs of the carrier board.

There are only high-speed signals on the kit’s carrier board from PCI Express and HDMI. This reduces the platform’s complexity so that engineers are able to easily evaluate different modules without the added-work from having to re-engineer the basic hardware infrastructure. Interfaces can be easily modified, upgraded, downgraded through the optimised application-specific carrier board.

Hardware Modifications and Code Modifications

The transition between an Arm-based compute architecture against an Intel-based processor module through the I-Pi, can result in a complete software redesign.

ADLINK has integrated MRAA hardware abstraction layer (HAL) as a solution to bypass that issue. MRAA allows for software to be ported from one platform to another, as an open-source C/C++ library with Java, JavaScript and Python integrations.

Intel-developed, the MRAA utilises drivers and APIs in a way that allow engineers to substitute modules, sensor HATs, and also port codes written in Raspberry Pi environments or Arduino to the I-Pi without any rework.

MRAA and UPM ARCHITECTURE 

Fig 3: All ADLINK SMARC modules feature the MRAA hardware abstraction layer (HAL) which enables seamless software portability, even with code developed in a programming environment such as Raspberry Pi or Arduino.

Addressing Your Needs

46.8 percent of respondents to a recent Embedded & IoT Technologist survey from professional engineers, claimed that the most challenging aspects of their job was “Aggressive Timelines” and “Staying within Budget”.

ADLINK’s hardware and software approach with the I-Pi addresses both of these issues throughout the prototyping stage with the accessibility of platforms (through Raspberry Pi and Arduino) and robust benefits of an industrial COM. As a result, engineers will save time and capital in the future stages of design.