New low-cost CraneBoard offered by Mistral Solutions simplifies design on TI's AM35x Sitara™ ARM® microprocessors

ARM Cortex™-A8-based open source development board supports broad range of differentiated peripherals, large software ecosystem and offers collaboration with BeagleBoard.org community

News provided by

Mistral Solutions

Dec 15, 2010, 10:00 ET

DALLAS, Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Mistral Solutions announced CraneBoard, a new low-cost ARM®-based development board, offers designers a fully open source printed circuit board (PCB) and design to reduce development costs. CraneBoard provides a cost-effective, alternative development option to Texas Instruments' (TI) AM35x Sitara™ ARM® Cortex™-A8 microprocessors (MPUs) evaluation module (EVM). It also utilizes community support and resources from the popular, open source BeagleBoard community. The CraneBoard is available today from Mistral and a number of distributors, including DigiKey, starting at $199.

Based on TI's AM35x Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 MPU, the CraneBoard provides new features not available on existing open source, low-cost development boards, including Power over Ethernet (PoE) and Controller Area Network (CAN) bus interfaces. Both the PoE and CAN interfaces can be used in industrial applications such as human machine interface (HMI), and CAN is also suitable for automotive applications.

The CraneBoard offers numerous integrated peripherals and provides users with flexible power options, such as a power-over-DC wall adapter, PoE enabled by TI's TPS23750 PoE controller, and USB, which allows for portability. An expansion port allows the ability to easily add functionality such as an LCD panel, along with wireless and audio capabilities and is compatible with other ARM Cortex-A8 open source boards. A complete open source board support package (BSP) for Linux is available from CraneBoard.org.

By leveraging BeagleBoard.org , TI Sitara ARM MPU and ARM communities, CraneBoard users can share ideas, projects, and engage in discussions with fellow developers to utilize knowledge and resources for design and development. The CraneBoard also provides a reference platform for hardware and software developers to easily duplicate these designs, allowing them to go to market faster. By utilizing AM3517 Sitara ARM MPU advanced packaging, designers can implement low-cost, four-layer PCB designs. Additionally, the CraneBoard is code compatible with other TI ARM Cortex-A8-based devices, allowing designers to add varying functionalities and utilize previous code investments, while designing with confidence for future devices. For more information on the CraneBoard, please visit CraneBoard.org.

CraneBoard features and benefits:


Features	Benefits
600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8	Provides users with full featured operating systems and faster user interface transitions
256MB DDR2 SDRAM and 256MB NAND Flash memory	Allows developers to utilize low cost memories
Open source PCB	Takes advantage of TI's Via Channel™ package technology to allow a simple 4-layer PCB design that users can easily reference to reduce PCB costs
Robust peripherals Three power sources (wall adapter, USB and POE) 3.3V I/O CAN Bus On-chip Ethernet USB Phy Integrated OTG Phy JTAG	Enables communication with numerous devices and customization for proprietary interface
Vast library of Operating system (OS)/real-time operating system (RTOS), codec libraries and demos available	Broad software ecosystem to make designing fast and simple
Code compatibility with TI ARM Cortex-A8 devices	Developers can easily migrate from the CraneBoard to other platforms with maximum code reuse.

Pricing and availability

The CraneBoard is available starting at $199 from Mistral and a number of distributors, including DigiKey. For community information, support and updates on CraneBoard development, please visit www.craneboard.org.

About Mistral Solutions

Mistral Solutions is a technology design and systems engineering company providing end-to-end solutions for product design and application deployment. Mistral is focused in three business domains: Product Engineering Services, Defense Solutions and Homeland Security. Mistral provides total solutions for a given requirement, which may include hardware board design, embedded software development, FPGA design, systems integration and customized turnkey solutions. Mistral's strategic partnerships with leading technology companies help provide customers with a comprehensive package of end-to-end solutions.

Mistral Solutions is a broad market OMAP Technology Center (OTC) offering services in the area of software and hardware design, development and consulting on the OMAP™ platform.

Trademarks

Sitara is a trademark of Texas Instruments. ARM and Cortex are trademarks of ARM Limited. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Mistral Solutions