Display unit in a dashboard

A new challenge for our developers recently was the development of a control unit for dash-board installation in an off-road vehicle. 

The system needed to feature an on-board CANbus connection and to be able to meet all the requirements for rugged mobile applications.

The solution was to base the design on the familiar emPC-A400™ with extended temperature range, combined with a 5.7" TFT LCD display. All chosen components had to have a working temperature range from -30°C up to +70°C.
Modifications were also needed in order to achieve the necessary vibration security.
It was necessary to develop a custom-designed IP65 housing to meet these special requirements and dimensions

The required display was readable at daylight as well as at night. Therefore brightness was designed to be auto-adjusted via a CANbus-linked ambient sensor.

Since the control unit uses a conventional operating system, some fixed boot time is inevitable, and is minimized by system optimization down to about a 20s.

By connecting the display unit directly to the vehicle data bus, customer can create different applications for the unit, such as the use as autarkic car control system, as navigation system or for reversing camera.

The emPC-A400 system of the Janz Automationssysteme AG, a Xscale based embedded computing system with 400 MHz, is now also available with a Windows CE operating system and also CoDeSys as Soft PLC engineering tool. Now the emPC-A400 will be a small controlling systems for  IEC 61131-3 applications.

Due to its smallest dimensions of 10 x 10 x 5 cm, the emPC-A400 can be integrated at a lot of different places in all machines. With the standard available communication ports for CAN/CANopen and Ethernet - the system can control a lot of decentralized  tasks into the machines of our customers.

With these possibilities the emPC-A400 (or in combination the emCONTROL-A400) can be used as a stand-alone remote computing system. But this small system can also be offered as a HMI system when customer choose one of the available display solutions of the emVIEW family.

With optionally  12.1” or a 15.0” display incl. touchscreen the emPC-A400 can be used as a low voltage HMI system. In the coming weeks also  6.5” and a 19.0” emVIEW system will be available. So a wide range of different solutions can be controlled.

The emPC-A400 computing system is optionally available for an extend temperature range of -30°C … + 70°C. So mobile or outdoor applications are also very interesting for this system. Corresponding projects in different solutions at our customers show the advantage of the reliability of this small controlling system.

Customer specific applications (e.g. GPS module or GSM modem) make the emPC-A400 very flexible.

Janz starts Co-Operation with french Company

Janz Automationssysteme AG signed a distribution agreement with the French company NeoMore at the embedded World show in Nuremberg.

NeoMore is located in Plaisir, 25 km west of Paris, and is our new contact for our customers in France.

NeoMore was founded in 2003 and is a specialist in embedded and real-time computing systems. NeoMore offers microprocessor and microcontroller software design solutions and products, and has excellent market knowledge in that embedded environment.

According to Michael Rennerich, (Janz Automationssysteme AG management), this opening and co-operation should enhance our local presence in France. “Customer requirements are increasingly complex and more urgent to realise. As part of our strategy to offer a complete automation building block, we need to get even closer to our customers”, explains Rennerich.

(f.l. Arnulf Lockmann (Mangement Janz), Nicolas Stenko (Product Manager NeoMore), Abdel Khessam (Sales Management NeoMore), Michael Rennerich (Management Janz))