News

AOPEN intros new media player designed for digital signage

The Digital Engine DES4100 is based on the AMD embedded G-Series SoC platform.

October 28, 2014

AOPEN has introduced a new media player, the DES4100, designed for the digital signage and automation industry due to its low power consumption and extra expansion slots, according to a press release. With its abundant I/O ports, it is also suitable as a process control device or as a POS (Point of Sale) application.

The Digital Engine DES4100 is based on the AMD embedded G-Series SoC platform. Slim-sized (35mm) with a sleek design, it delivers high graphic performance with low-power consumption. It also comes with an optional GPIO board for extra input and output capabilities, according to the announcement.

The DES4100 is the first AOPEN media player to include advanced features such as DASH, a hardware monitor, Super RTC and an optional infrared remote controller:

• DASH: enables a user to monitor the hardware via a Web interface to check the settings and the state of the system, and send some basic control commands. DASH is designed for remote out-of-band management of systems, and is fully independent from the OS. For example, DASH will respond to a "power off" command, overriding the OS.
• Hardware Monitor:monitors the sensors in the system including the CPU temperature, system temperature, fan speed and power usage. This feature allows you to set up warning levels to get alerts if certain indicators are too high: useful in varying temperature conditions.
• Super RTC:all AOPEN Digital Engine devices have a bios option called the "wake on Real-time Clock" that allows users to schedule the time to power up the device. AOPEN has now enhanced this with an interface called Super RTC that allows a user to set up a weekly schedule of “On and Off” times.
• Infrared Remote Control:an optional IR receiver/controller kit that emulates a keyboard to perform basic tasks, such as changing Bios settings and powering the unit on/off with the use of a remote controller.

In addition to the above mentioned features, the DES41000 also has an extended power switch capability that can be useful for built-in applications, such as kiosks, vending machine, moving vehicles and other hard to reach installations.

Customer feedback is vital to AOPEN's success and some of the DES4100's features, such as the Super RTC, are a direct result of customer requests according to Arco de Vos, Field Systems Engineer Manager AOPEN.

"Our customers have been asking for the ability to not only schedule a time for powering on the device, but also for turning it back into sleep mode by accessing the RTC schedule. In response to this demand we've come up with the Super RTC functionality. It lets users control the system's on and off time by the time of day on a weekly basis. We can also supply a SDK (software development kit) for software integration," Arco de Vos says.