Formats Chat

New Product: Evaluating Military Panel Computers

With so many rugged panel PCs on the market, selecting the right one for military use requires correct match of features to the nature of the operations involved.

In this article we will narrow our focus solely on military land vehicles.

Display Criteria
● The resolution,nits and also aspect ratio are important elements to consider relative to the intended application.
● Night mode: In the case of soldiers wearing night vision, the display must be able to accommodate lower levels of brightness
● Gloved touch: In certain operations the driver or operator is wearing gloves and this may impede the touch screen function, it is important that the manufacturer takes this operational concern into account.

Ingress & Cleaning
● Harsh wash-down protocols with water hoses will require a high IP rating of the computer.
● In operations where decontamination of the vehicle interior may be required or the vehicle electronics may encounter partial submersion, IP68 can be proposed.

High Shock
● Artillery and mortar solutions require a panel computer with a much higher than usual shock tolerance and a product’s ability to endure high g values in the long term is crucial for reliability.

Inputs/Outputs
• RS422, 485, CAN bus and digital I/Os are a common requirement of military Panel PCs for ground army use. The flexibility to accommodate customisation of I/Os is essential for solution architects. Joysticks, video controllers, EO cameras and many other sensors and subsystems bring with them their different connector and protocol requirements.

High MTBF
• High number of MTBF hours ensures that end users are able to operate their equipment out in the field for long periods of time with peace of mind while without easy access to depot repair support. An comparison of MTBF hours is 1 out of many factors in the evaluation criteria to get a clearer picture of how the various vendors compare against one another.

Ocean communications is a manufacturer of rugged military panel PCs, servers and other computing products specific to Land and Naval operations. For more information on our products and solutions, visit our Military Defence Products, https://ocean-comms.com.sg/military-defense/

New Product: Considerations for selecting a rugged military server

admin2023-01-26T11:43:29+08:00Categories: News, Rugged-Military-Server|Tags: mil-std server, Rugged military servers|

pin up

While the market for market for rugged military servers today is already mature with a multitude of players, changing technologies and requirements today require multi-faceted considerations.

New applications of rugged military servers
● Over the years, many R&D organisations, solution providers and integrators in the defence industry are developing platforms and products for unmanned and autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and analytics. Servers today are expected to perform with much higher computing power while being in a smaller package that consumes lesser power and often being at the edge.

Bridging the advances of commercial performance with military considerations
● In the world of commercial computing, controlled conditions of the datacentre and also gaming environments allow for the latest GPUs and processors to run without consideration of high impact shocks, vibration and wide temperature conditions often faced in the battlefield.
● Defence computer manufacturers need to take into account bringing in the latest technologies to the military while ensuring the product is ruggedised to the required levels meeting required MIL-STDs. This becomes a larger problem when the R&D of today on AI & Analytics is conducted using the latest releases of GPUs and processors to take advantage of high speed computing yet ruggedised computers are lagging far behind.

Windows 11 OS Support
● As we are in a transitional period towards the windows 11 OS, boards will need to support TPM2.0, this is a key consideration for developers and integrators.

Customisable I/Os
● Each project brings to the table unique requirements of inputs and outputs.
● For land vehicles, heavy usage of CAN bus is a common consideration while for rack mounted applications, often the ease of maintenance is required in accessing ports with possible requirements for more serial communications to link to various alarms and other industrial systems.

Power Supply
● Having variants to cover both AC and DC versions of a rugged server ensures it is especially versatile for both land shelter and vehicle applications, where 28VDC is commonly used.
● Meeting Mil-Std 1275 for vehicle power supply and the ability to handle voltage dips for sensitive equipment is a key consideration in server selection.

Ocean Communication’s ruggedised dual GPU Box servers and 19’’ rack mount server adequately solves the challenges highlighted above and even more unique rugged computing challenges specifically for land army and naval projects. Find out more about our rugged computer solutions: https://ocean-comms.com.sg/military-defense/