OEM Technology Solutions Pty Ltd ( incorporating Dominion Electronics), announces COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) technology utilised in railway projects internationally for the display of passenger information and infotainment systems.
Infotainment solutions give passengers orientation regarding train stops, schedules and routes, hints for changing trains and intermodal transportation, short-term changes of the route, delays and emergency announcements. They also provide entertainment, for instance by displaying news of the day and the weaterher forecast or byplaying movies, sports and music.
Content servers are used to store this data and display programs. They connect to the screens the vehicle via wired LAN or WLAN. Apart from displaying pictures, text and audio data, these systems can also control TV or radio programs. Content servers connect to the outside world, e.g. the depot or operations centers, to receive up-to-date information whilst traveling.
Modular 19" systems like 3U CompactPCI or CompactPCI Serial are ideal for this type of application because they are flexible with regard to the board and feature combination and they are maintenance-friendly, e.g., offering hot-plug functionality. In combination with content servers, intelligent display computers are increasingly used to show the content. Infotainment and content servers typically require full EN 50155 compliance.
In Another application, a combination of serveral display computers and one content server is used. With a train unit of up to 18 cars and a maximum train length of then 315m, every car typically contains between two to six displays. The 15" display computers used here are customised versions of the DC1 device. They are based on the Intel Atom, featuring a typical power consumption of less than 27 Watts. The fanless units apply conductive cooling to dissipate the heat to the outside of the housing, thus reaching operation temperature class Tx with -40 to +70ºC. All I/O signals are concentrated at the back via a customised rea mounting plate which enables direct wall mounting using a customer-specific snap-in solutions.
In a high-speed train application, two custom display computers from the same DC1 family with 19" wide screen displays are mounted to a bracket back to back. Both are protected by a special housing and a vandal-proof glass pane. In addition to the standard Ethernet and USB interfaces they offer also HD audio. Two of the Ethernet ports enable daisy chaining of several units. Ethernet frames are forwarded with less than 500ns and bypassed even when the unit is in powerless state.
Many other customised solutions are realiseable for metro trains, light rail (trams) or buses are based on either the DC1 family of display computers with screen sizes between 12" to 21", or on the COTS (Commercial-off-the-shelf) display electronics boards SC21 and XC2 from MEN Micro.
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