Out in the Field with the Aaronia Rugged Tablet

When measurements are taken under demanding environmental conditions, robust and reliable systems are essential. Rugged tablets protect their built-in electronics from impacts and environmental influences with durable housings. However, standard devices often fail to meet all the requirements of specialized applications.

With its rugged tablet series, AARONIA now offers a flexible platform that can be specifically adapted to individual use cases. The concept is aimed in particular at system integrators and providers of custom solutions who wish to integrate additional hardware directly into a compact, field-ready complete system.

The Hardware Foundation

The system is powered by the high-end notebook processor from the Hawk Point series, the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, featuring 8 cores and Hyper-Threading (SMT). The CPU utilizes the new Zen 4 architecture and operates at clock speeds ranging from 3.8 GHz (base clock) up to 5.1 GHz (single-core boost). The CPU is supported by an integrated AMD Radeon™ 780M GPU with 12 CUs and up to 2.7 GHz, including an AV1 video engine. This makes the rugged tablets suitable for graphics-intensive applications or parallel processing tasks. Equipped with 64 GB of LPDDR5x RAM, there is ample memory available for data-intensive processes, virtualization, or AI inference.

External and Internal Interfaces

The rugged tablets from AARONIA feature an exceptionally wide range of interfaces. These include two USB-C ports at 40 Gbit/s, three USB-C PD ports at 10 Gbit/s with 15 W output power each, three USB-A 3.0 ports at 5 Gbit/s, and two USB-A 2.0 ports. For network connectivity, there are two RJ45 ports at 2.5 Gbit/s and one SFP+ port at 10 Gbit/s for optical signal transmission. Additionally, there is an SD card reader, a serial RS232 interface, and an audio jack.

Internally, two M.2 2280 M-key slots accommodate NVMe SSDs with a capacity of up to 8 terabytes each. The two M.2 2242 M-key slots are suitable for NVMe SSDs with a capacity of up to 2 terabytes each. The M.2 2252 B-key and M.2 2230 E-key slots are reserved for other modules.

Expansion slot for custom modules and sensors

At the heart of the platform is an integrated expansion slot measuring 100 × 189 × 25 mm. It is specifically designed to securely accommodate additional sensors and offers integrators a wide range of options for customer-specific applications. For example, sensors for measuring particulate matter, environmental parameters, or radiation exposure can be integrated directly into the tablet.

This makes the AARONIA Rugged Tablet the foundation for a wide variety of mobile measurement, testing, and data acquisition systems. Integrators can incorporate their own hardware directly into the platform and use it to develop a tailor-made solution for their customers’ specific requirements.

One possible application example is the integration of the SEN55 environmental sensor module from Sensirion. This enables the creation of a powerful mobile environmental measurement solution that records, among other things, fine particulate matter, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), oxidizing gases such as NOx, as well as temperature and humidity. The result is a compact, all-in-one sensor solution for mobile field use that requires no additional individual devices, external cables, or separate chargers.

Reliable

The 15.6-inch touchscreen display, with a brightness of 1,500 nits, ensures optimal visibility even in sunny weather. The rugged tablets feature two batteries, one of which is hot-swappable and can be replaced while the device is in operation. When both batteries are fully charged, the system is ready for four hours of operation. If multiple hot-swap batteries are available, the operating time can be extended almost indefinitely. The tablets are available with Windows 11 or Linux as the operating system. HEREyou can find AARONIA’s B2B solutions.

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