The TS-7553 features a 250MHz Cavium Arm922T™-based CPU and a 5000 LUT Lattice FPGA. With 64MB RAM and a bootable 256MB on-board flash drive with our new XNAND technology, the TS-7553 is a powerful and extremely reliable embedded solution. External devices can connect to the TS-7553 via Ethernet, XBee radio socket (point to point, unlike the Zigbee which supports mesh networks), USB host, USB device, or I2C ports, as well as DIO, UARTs, CAN Bus, DMX, and SPI which are implemented in the standard FPGA load.

Does your application require custom real-time logic such as non-standard bus interfaces, PWM outputs, quadrature decoding, pulse timing, or digital counters? embeddedTS can integrate that functionality into a custom TS-7553 FPGA configuration for an elegant and affordable solution.

The standard TS-7553 configuration implements the following features:

• 4 XUARTs* (2-RS232, 1-RS485, and 1 TTL level to Xbee socket)
• 1 CAN Bus
• SPI Support
• I2C Support
• DMX Support
• Watchdog Timer
• Up to 11 DIO Lines
• Battery Backed RTC
• XBee Radio Socket
  
• Temperature Sensor
• Designed to fit in an optional low-cost plastic enclosure
• Multipurpose Reset/Script Button

TS-7553 Power Consumption

The TS-7553 requires about 3.2 Watts of power (642mA @ 4.98V) for normal operation and will require more if connecting USB devices, a larger microSD card, or XBee radio. For this reason, it is recommended to power the device at 5-12V input via barrel connector or 2 pin terminal connector.

Differences between TS-7553 and TS-7552

The TS-7553 was released April 2010 and is a smaller form factor and cost reduced version of the TS-7552 without the extra USB ports. It was designed to be mated with an inexpensive plastic enclosure and serve as a standalone general purpose embedded server.

XNAND Technology

embeddedTS XNAND technology is an ultra reliable and industrial grade user-space device driver that uses Reed-Solomon codes, extra checksums, and a RAID based technique to allow any Linux filesystem to be used with confidence on SLC NAND flash. Our TS-BOOTROM can also boot from XNAND for an ultra-reliable bootup. Please refer to the XNAND whitepaper for more information.

Software

The TS-7553 SBC boots to Linux 2.6.24 from either a microSD Card or on-board XNAND drive. The 256MB on-board XNAND drive is enough to store a bootable kernel image, initial ramdisk image, and a minimal version of Debian "Lenny" Linux. Storage memory can be expanded through the microSD card socket. A bootable microSD card must contain a Linux kernel image, a initial ramdisk image and a valid Linux root filesystem. The fast Linux bootup solution was optimized for speed and includes kernel, initrd, and filesystem (Busybox) tweaks. Since this board boots to an initrd (initial ram disk) with a read-only mounted filesystem, it is possible to have something other than a shell prompt running after bootup by editing the /linuxrc shell script on the initrd. Additional TS-7553 software features include:

• Boots Linux 2.6.24 out-of-the-box in less than 3 seconds (to a shell prompt).
• MicroSD card pre-installed with minimal Debian "Lenny" Linux distribution.
• Un-brickable design ensures 100% recoverability from MicroSD card in case of onboard XNAND drive erasure.
• Startup Linux mini-root scripts allow flexible root and backup filesystem selection (microSD, NFS, USB flash) as well as software field upgrade support.

Linux OS and Debian Support

embeddedTS's TS-7553 Arm®-based Single Board Computers (SBC) are compatible with a wide range of Operating Systems (OS's). The Linux choice is highly recommended and our products are totally integrated with the open-source vision. The boards ship with Linux 2.6.24 kernel running out-of-the-box. There is no proprietary source code in the kernel since all the hardware specific functionalities are handled by user-space utilities. The Linux kernel includes driver support for on-board hardware, enabling quick time to market of end-users applications. Examples and source codes are also available for downloading.

The compact initial ramdisk filesystem is based on Busybox and uClibc and is improved for performance and flexibility. Specific Linux scripts and utilities that handle the TS-7553 functions are included. In addition, the full Debian binaries and services are available from the initial ramdisk after mounting the microSD card.

The TS-7553 SBCs are configured to load Debian "Lenny" Linux from the on-board XNAND drive or microSD card during boot up time. The on-board XNAND drive uses a minimal Debian "Lenny" Linux distribution that has been compacted to fit in the 256MB space and leave about 70MB free for the user and includes utilities such as apt-get for installing and removing programs. The microSD card uses a full featured Debian "Lenny" Linux distribution which includes a complete GNU C/C++ embedded development environment. In addition, Apache Web Server, FTP, SSH, Telnet and Samba network services are available with C/PHP/Perl for embedded CGI development.

CAN Bus Support in User Space

The TS-7553 utilizes an SJA1000C-compatible FPGA core out of the box complete with documentation and sample code. The sample code provides a simple utility to send/receive CAN packets and perform useful and common functions with the CAN bus from userspace. Additionally, this sample code includes network CAN service and can be automatically started on TS-7553 bootup which makes the writing of CAN enabled applications even simpler and furthermore allows for the possibility of development in languages other than C (Java, Python, etc..) and on systems other than the local Linux SBC (Linux/x86, Windows, etc..)

Please contact embeddedTS for further information regarding Operating System and software support for this product.