A Visit from Dave

July is nearly upon us, and with it comes a visit from our newest addition to the product line.

Manuele Papais from Dave S.R.L

Manuele Papais from Dave will be joining the sales team next week to visit some new and existing customers, and to meet with the Sarsen Team for a spot of product training.

Dave designs and manufactures rugged embedded CPU modules, Computer-On-Modules and systems based on ARM and PowerPC architectures, on very small form factors. DAVE modules are suitable for applications in the industrial, transportation, home automation, medical, networking, smart grid and telecom markets.

DAVE provides complete products, including both software and hardware, in order to help customers save development time and engineering costs. Each DAVE CPU module has its own development kit, so customers can evaluate all the features offered by the product.

The latest board from Dave is the Bora, a top-class Dual Cortex-A9 + FPGA CPU module based on the recent Xilinx "Zynq" XC7Z010 / XC7Z020 application processor. Bora offers great computational power, thanks to the extensive set of peripherals, the Dual Cortex-A9 and the Artix7 FPGA. It is available for both commercial and industrial temperature operation, and provides multiple interfaces on a very small form factor.

For more information please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us!

Trenton Systems - Matrox Validated Video Wall Controllers

Trenton Systems has designed a series of Matrox-validated video wall controllers, optimised to take advantage of Matrox Mura™ MPX graphics cards. Matrox Graphics is a leading manufacturer of specialised graphics solutions for applications such as video display walls, medical imaging and military control rooms.

The Matrox-validated video wall controller solutions feature a precise hardware combination built and tested by Trenton Systems, and certified by Matrox Graphics, to deliver optimum video display wall performance. Matrox-validated video wall controllers are supported by Trenton’s expert embedded computing hardware engineers. They offer maximum system flexibility to meet both current and future video display wall requirements, and are designed and manufactured in the United States.

Configuring these kinds of video display walls used to be a complex process, but with the MuraControl for iPad app from Matrox Graphics, it has never been easier. The iPad app is the perfect companion for setting up and configuring any of Trenton’s Matrox-validated video wall controllers, including the TVC4403, which supports up to six Mura MPX Series cards, providing up to 24 hi-definition video inputs and 24 hi-definition outputs.

Trenton Systems TVC4403 Matrox validated video wall controller is a CE-compliant and UL recognised video wall controller, validated for use with up to nine Matrox Mura MPX Series video controller boards. The TVC4403 features a Trenton JXTS6966 single board computer and BPG7087 PCI Express 2.0 backplane, up to eight front access / hot swap storage drives and flexible power options, ideal for use in command and control centers, process control, network operations centers and traffic management video display wall applications.

For more information please contact the Sarsen sales team on +44 1672 511166, or email them at sales@sarsen.net

Good Things Come In Flat Packages....

Following the huge success of their RACK and Cube chassis, United Electronic Industries has introduced another rugged and compact data acquisition and I/O measurement and control platform.

Enter.... the FLATRACK™

The DNF-4-1G FLATRACK™ is an Ethernet-based DAQ and control platform in a 1U rackmount chassis. It provides two Gigabit Ethernet (100/10 Base-T compatible) interfaces and four front-loading I/O slots that allow I/O boards to be quickly and easily installed, retrofitted or removed.

The four available slots can be populated from a selection of over 50 I/O layers, including CAN bus, ARINC-429, analog input boards, analog output boards, digital I/O interfaces for logic and real-world signal levels, counters and timers and quadrature encoder inputs. The list goes on….

You can also choose AC or DC powered versions of the DNF-4-1G. The DC version requires a DC power source between 9 and 36 Volts. The AC unit operates from 100 to 240 VAC, from 50 to 60 Hz.

And of course, no system is complete without software. The DNF-4-1G FLATRACK is supported by all popular Windows, Linux, Vista, and real-time operating systems (RTOS), and the UEIDAQ Framework (included with the rack) provides a simple and universal API layer to support all common programming languages.


The DNF-4-1G is also fully supported by an array of application packages including LabVIEW, MATLAB, DASYLab and more.

For more information please contact the sales team at Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or send us an email.

Automated Blood Collections Systems - VersaLogic Helps Make Giving Blood Today Even Easier!

The 14th June, (thats today!), sees countries around the world observe World Blood Donor Day.

Established in 2004, World Blood Donor Day helps to raise awareness of the need for safe blood products, and thanks all the very lovely voluntary unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.

A generous donor giving the gift of blood

VersaLogic have been involved with a project to design and build an Automated Blood Collection System, which collects a combination of red blood cells, platelets and plasma from donors. These highly integrated, computerised systems minimise the need for human intervention, integrate key functions, and provide important data at a moment's notice, maximising the efficiency of blood centre operations.

Blood components separated by a centrifuge - Plasma, White Blood Cells and Platelets, and Red Blood Cells

Driving the FDA-approved system is a VersaLogic EBX single board computer that automates the collection process. The state-of-the-art technology uses cell separators that allow for the division of the various blood components in a high-speed centrifugal field while the device is still connected to the donor. This process allows collection of any combination of red blood cells, platelets, and plasma while returning unneeded components to the donor, allowing more frequent donations.

Automated Blood Collection System featuring boards from VersaLogic

Blood transfusions help save millions of lives every year. They can help patients suffering from life-threatening conditions live longer with a better quality of life, and support complex medical and surgical procedures.

So why not do something amazing - give blood.

Sarsen Technology is Going on Tour!

We are taking part in the 2013 Dream Marketing Defence and Aerospace Roadshow this September, taking our unique blend of embedded COTS technology to the masses.

The travelling exhibition begins on 16th September and lasts for 3 weeks, visiting some of the biggest names in the Defence and Aerospace marketplace including Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, GE Aviation and Thales.

Travelling Exhibitions have changed a bit over the years....

The vehicle itself is quite special. It expands to accommodate around 20 individual exhibition stands, which all have their own power supply, cupboard storage and lighting. Plenty of room for us to show you the good stuff.

We’ve been involved with the Roadshow in the past, and have found it a brilliant way of being able to get our technology in front of engineers and developers who unfortunately don't always get to visit more traditional trade shows.

The proposed schedule is as follows:

Date	Venue	Location
Mon 16th Sep	BAE Systems	Barrow
Tues 17th Sep	Rolls-Royce	Derby
Wed 18th Sep	Selex	Luton
Thurs 19th Sep	Selex	Basildon
Fri 20th Sep	Goodrich	Pitstone
Mon 23th Sep	Messier Dowty	Gloucester
Tues 24th Sep	Cobham Mission Systems	Wimborne
Wed 25th Sep	Thales	Templecombe
Thurs 26th Sep	GE Aviation	Cheltenham
Fri 27th Sep	General Dynamics	Newport
Mon 30th Sep	BAE/MBDA	Filton
Tues 1st Oct	Rolls Royce	Bristol
Wed 2nd Oct	L-3 Comms	Tewkesbury
Thur 3rd Oct	Agusta Westland	Yeovil
Fri 4th Oct	Thales	Basingstoke

If you’d like more information please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or drop me an email – laura.jeffs@sarsen.net

X-ES Announces 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Support Across Seven Industry Standard Form Factors

It's official. You heard it here first....

Our friends at Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) have introduced their new family of SBCs based on the 4th generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700EQ processor (formerly codenamed "Haswell").

We are all very excited about this news, as the 4th Gen Intel Core i7 processor has some serious advantages, including increased raw processing performance per watt, hardware-based memory encryption with Intel® AES New Instructions (AES-NI), and increased floating-point and integer performance utilising Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 (AVX 2.0). The GPU has also been enhanced, adding additional execution units and up to a 24% increase in raw performance.

If that isn't enough for you, the 4th generation Intel Core i7 processor also supports OpenCL 1.2, allowing it to perform as a general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU).

One size doesn't fit all...
Variety is the spice of life, so X-ES has incorporated the new Intel Core i7 processor on a range of form factors, including 3U VPX, 6U VPX, XMC, 3U CompactPCI, 6U CompactPCI, 6U VME, and COM Express. The new line up of conduction and air-cooled 4th generation Intel Core i7 products from X-ES includes the XCalibur4500 6U cPCI, the XCalibur4530 6U VME, and the XCalibur4540 6U VPX modules, which maximise I/O capabilities and add configurability with two PMC/XMC sites.

They have also introduced the XPedite7570 3U VPX and XPedite7530 3U cPCI modules - ideal for space constrained aerospace and vehicle platforms that require maximum processing performance and I/O capabilities, with the flexibility of PMC and XMC support. For applications with extreme size, weight, and power (SWaP) challenges X-ES also offers the XPedite7501 XMC and XPedite7550 Rugged COM Express modules.

XCalibur4530 from X-ES

For more information about the new boards from X-ES, featuring the 4th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email the sales team at sales@sarsen.net