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Computer On Modules
Data Acquisition
Digital Signage and HMI
Displays
Embedded PC
Imaging Products
Modems
Motherboards
PC/104 CPU Boards
PC/104+ CPU Boards
PC/104 FPGA Boards
PC/104 Peripherals
Power Solutions
Rugged Storage
Serial Communications
Single Board Computers
Software
Wireless Sensor Network
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The Leader Corporation Chooses PC/104 Solution from EMJ Embedded Sytems EMJ Embedded Systems is pleased to offer the following case study as an example of how companies benefit from designs based on off-the-shelf technology. The Leader Corporation of Arlington, Texas is a leading supplier of inkjet printers used in factory line item marking. The company’s newly developed Eagle Series prints crisp, distinctive images on both porous and nonporous surfaces including secondary packaging such as shrink-wrapped plastic. The printers are easy to use, portable, highly reliable, and lower in price than most high resolution and large character printers. Designed around a revolutionary printhead, the Eagle Series is powered by MOPS PC/104 Boards from JUMPtec (now known as Kontron), which Leader Corp. purchased from EMJ Embedded Systems. Leader Corp.’s developers chose this off-the-shelf technology to jump-start their new printer series. Using MOPS boards, the company had a prototype up and running in its lab in less than 3 months. President John Bateson describes his decision to use the JUMPtec board. "We knew we wanted to stay with a PC format," he says. "We decided not to design the board ourselves, choosing instead to put our resources into the development of very sophisticated software that allows our printhead to do what it does." Other requirements included electronics that were small and largely self contained in order to make the printers easily adjustable as well as portable. The boards had to have all the interfaces and I/Os the printers required and be easy to customize based on manufacturers’ needs. Since Leader Corp. introduced the Eagle Series, its design has migrated from 386 to 486 to 586 processors based on customer demand. "This would be hard for us to do with a standard board," states Bateson. "The PC/104 board is really versatile and easy to upgrade." The JUMPtec MOPS/586 offers the power of a 586 133MHz processor with optional Ethernet, 4MB DRAM (upgradeable to 36MB) and 1.6MB bootable Flash. The MOPS/586 provides a harddrive interface, a floppy interface, a printer interface, 2 serial ports, a keyboard interface, watchdog timer, integrated power fail circuit, realtime clock and boot counter. For Leader Corp. the JUMPtec boards control everything in the Eagle printers. "We use an embedded real-time software program," explains Bateson. "As a user interface, we have a small terminal with an alphanumeric display that operates through the serial port. On this, the customer programs the message that will be printed, be it bar code, pictures, serial numbers, expiration dates, whatever. The processor then takes the information and formats the actual print, sending it to a driver board we designed, and this is then sent out to the printer head where the drops are sprayed on the product." The Eagle Series does not use the MOPS onboard Flash to store the directions the customer gives the printer but instead uses a compact Flash adapter (which they refer to as an internal Flash disk). Leader Corp decided on this design feature in order to allow easy removal by customers wanting to load their own images on the Flash. With Ethernet capabilities on the MOPS/586 boards, the printers can be connected to a network. Bateson says, "We have desktop software that you can run on any desktop PC or laptop, allowing the user to compose his message remotely in lieu of the handheld terminal, save on a floppy disk and transfer to the printer. With the Ethernet option, this process can be done directly over the Ethernet connection." These options offer a competitive advantage for the Eagle Series. Messages printed on objects can range from the very short to more than 30 inches long with pictures and barcodes. Some of Leader Corp’s customers enter a single message on the handheld terminal, then walk away, and the printer creates the marks over and over again. Others make changes to their messages every day, or they may have thousands of different products, each needing a different message. "We have one customer that has 80,000 different messages based on different products, identified by bar codes." The Eagle Series printer is housed on a stand that can be pushed up to a conveyor belt. It includes the electronics in a chassis which measures 8x10x10 (roughly the size of a large shoebox), the print head and ink system, and the handheld terminal (which is roughly the size of a large calculator). Of course to the customer, the final result is what counts – does the printer make a good mark on a surface. "Our initial goal was to have a printing technology that was different from what was on the market," says Bateson. "Our continuing goal is to give customers options on how to mark and label their products." ABOUT LEADER CORPORATION The Leader Corporation is a leading supplier of industrial inkjet products and systems to distributors and OEMs. Formed in January 1996 by the founders of two other successful engineering and manufacturing companies, The Leader Corporation has developed a proprietary line of inkjet products that are available for distributors to sell and, with the company’s considerable design experience, may be prepared as customized products and systems to additional OEM's. ABOUT KONTRON TECHNOLOGY Kontron is a leading global embedded computer technology company. Kontron supplies a diversified customer base of OEMs, system integrators and application providers in the communications, automation, transportation, medical, military, aerospace, and test and measurement markets. The company helps its customers to considerably reduce their time-to-market and to gain a competitive advantage with products including high-performance open computer platforms and systems, single-board computers, man-machine interfaces and mobile computers. Kontron employs over 1100 people worldwide and has manufacturing facilities in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. The company is listed on the German TecDAX 30 stock exchange under the symbol "KBC". For additional information on Kontron, please visit our vendor page or www.kontron.com. ABOUT EMJ Embedded Systems EMJ Embedded Systems, a division of EMJ America Inc., distributes a full line of single board computers, CompactPCI solutions, Flash solutions, PC Card disk drives, PC Card readers, PC/104 add-on cards, PC/104 peripherals, displays, software and enclosures. EMJ is a publicly traded company with revenues of $150 million and can be found on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol EMJ.  |
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