Via Announces New Board Optimized For Android Digital Signage

February 24, 2014 by Dave Haynes

VAB-1000_starter kit_L_medium

VIA Technologies is showing off a new Pico-ITX (Pico = teeny) board later this week at Embedded World 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany that’s optimized for applications like digital signage.

Via has for years been selling micro PCs with conventional x86 processors, but has started also marketing products based on the ARM reference design. The 1.0GHz dual core VIA Elite E1000 Cortex-A9 SoC, says a release,  has a high-performance graphics and video engine optimized to deliver richer multimedia capabilities and a more immersive user experience in a wide variety of interactive kiosk, digital signage and HMI (Human Machine Interface) applications.

To enable developers to leverage the capabilities of Android for embedded applications, VIA provides a SMART ETK (Embedded Tool Kit) and a full set of software customization services that speeds up time to market and minimizes development costs.  

“As a result of the growing popularity of Android smart phones and tablets, we are seeing a surge in interest among developers for platforms that enable them to create innovative new industrial and touch-based interactive multimedia devices that leverage the familiar user interface and advanced capabilities of the operating system,” said Epan Wu, Head of the VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. “With the launch of the VAB-1000, we offer the most comprehensive portfolio of application-specific ARM platforms for embedded Android systems on the market – backed up by the richest development tool kit and customization services.”

You can geek out and read about all the specs and the embedded tool kit here …

I’m not sure if this is rare or not, but did notice these units have a watchdog timer, which is a safeguard against hardware crashes. that’s been a criticism of some of the early Android devices adopted from the consumer market.

 

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