We’re making SMARC carrier board design more accessible! I-Pi SMARC customers now have the option to design with Altium’s Upverter, a fast and easy circuit board design service. In this blog, we discuss what Upverter is and why we’re excited to bring Upverter to ADLINK customers!
What is I-Pi SMARC?
Let’s start with the basics. I-Pi SMARC is ADLINK’s industrial IoT hardware prototyping platform and design ecosystem that combines production-grade components, extreme software portability, and Raspberry Pi-like flexibility in a SMARC form factor. For simple product verification and/or early software development, I-Pi offers ready to run prototyping kits, consisting of a module of choice assembled on a standard carrier including wireless support, power adapter etc.
What is Upverter?
According to Altium’s website, “Upverter is an online design-to-order tool for IoT hardware and devices that lets you build or customize your circuit board in minutes and get it shipped in 15 business days.” [TS1] You heard that correct. Upverter makes it fast and easy to design custom carrier boards using a modular web-based drag-and-drop design tool.
I-Pi SMARC + Upverter Make Embedded IoT and AI Hardware Prototyping Faster
I’m excited to share that ADLINK is now offering Altium’s Upverter as an add-on service with I-Pi SMARC offerings for a fully automated SMARC carrier design process! Upverter is available for I-Pi SMARC modules based on NXP’s IMX8M Plus and i.MX8M, as well as Rockchip’s PX30.
The Upverter tool is a core component of Altium’s cloud technology platform. As Ted Pawela, Chief Ecosystem Officer, explains, “Altium’s embeddable experiences can be added to partner websites using only a couple of lines of code. Upverter offers ADLINK’s customers a simple yet innovative way to bring new products to life.”
We all know that fast prototyping and proof of concepts are key milestones to a successful hardware build, which is why we created I-Pi with a modular hardware and software approach. Now with Upverter, you can create your own SMARC carrier board design within hours and receive prototypes within weeks, reducing the time to production even more.
Besides making carrier design and prototype production a breeze, on the software side, all I-Pi SMARC modules support a variety of operating system (OS) options to help, including Debian, Yocto and Android.
Why ADLINK likes Upverter
We like Upverter because it shares the same design principal as I-Pi SMARC: make it easier and faster for industrial engineers to build embedded hardware prototypes for production environments.
1. Speed
Upverter offers a fully automated SMARC carrier design process for I-Pi SMARC customers. Now you can create your own I-Pi SMARC carrier board design within hours, directly from the I-Pi SMARC wiki, and receive prototypes within weeks.
Design access is also free! After a short registration, you can begin designing immediately. To place an order there are production and manufacturing fees (of course) which display instantly as you checkout for full transparency.
2. Ease
With Upverter, no engineering or hardware design experience is required. Upverter generates the electrical design files of custom-defined I-Pi SMARC carrier board designs on demand, as well as an instant bill of material with pricing, a customized device tree, documentation, and mechanical models.
You can automatically format your selected I-Pi SMARC modules and kits onto a carrier board layout in the Upverter workspace, and then use the modular drag-and-drop design tool to configure it, all from your browser. With instant previews, it’s a one-stop design-and-order service.
3. Ready for Industry
From system integrators to OEMs, I-Pi SMARC with Upverter is designed for industrial AI and IoT environments. You can reduce the time needed to go from prototype to production for industrial hardware proof of concepts (PoCs) by almost 50% compared to current approaches.
Excellent for low volume and custom hardware builds – you get the production-grade I-Pi SMARC modules with the fast and open carrier board design of Upverter for your industrial environment. And with I-Pi SMARC’s hardware / software integration and long-term product support, AIoT hardware development is ready for any industrial environment!
Learn more at Embedded World and Beyond
Want to try Upverter? The doors are open, come on in! We’re here at embedded world 2021 DIGITAL all week as well, 1st – 5th March, demoing, presenting and hosting Q&A sessions on I-Pi SMARC offerings, Upverter and other embedded edge AI hardware. Feel free to stop by our virtual booth to talk with ADLINK engineers and partners! Registration is still open and free, register here using promo code ew21456845.
