Background
To address new demands within the smart retail space, AAEON, a leading designer and manufacturer of industrial IoT and AI Edge solutions, was tasked with developing an embedded platform capable of powering a line of outdoor smart vending machines. By leveraging its ODM expertise and agile, collaborative approach to building intelligent solutions, AAEON produced a custom Pico-ITX single-board system equipped with the MediaTek Genio 510 platform tailor-made for deployment, anywhere.
Challenge
Outdoor Deployment
Given the automated vending machines would be installed outdoors in areas with high foot traffic, insufficiently ruggedized embedded hardware risks revenue and stock being lost due to machine downtime in the event of environmental failure.
Chromium-Based GUI Requirement
The end customer wanted to integrate their unique branding into the user interface of the machines, and so a responsive, high-resolution touchscreen running a visually appealing Chromium GUI was required.
Connectivity Concerns
The smart vending machines had to be able to operate as fully integrated retail terminals, handling everything from inventory management to payment support. This demanded an embedded platform able to efficiently handle all necessary tasks without additional hardware.
OS and Software Compatibility
The customer specifically requested their application run on Debian 13 as its operating system.
MediaTek Solution
AAEON developed a fully customized embedded Pico-ITX board designed to deliver a luxurious user experience while maintaining reliability and robust operation in the face of space constraints and environmental challenges. To achieve this, the solution relied on several key features.
Key components and features of the AAEON’s solution include:
- Custom 100mm × 72mm Pico-ITX Design: Compact, low footprint, but armed with a dense I/O layout including three serial communication connectors offering both RS-232 and RS-485 signals, an 8-bit GPIO, and LAN and multiple USB ports to meet all deployment needs without additional hardware.
- MediaTek Genio 510 Platform: Running at approximately 3.5W, the MediaTek Genio 510 was an exceptionally power-efficient platform. In addition to this, it’s hardware-accelerated video encoding/decoding granted the application elite multimedia performance with smooth 4K display output.
- Software Fine-Tuning: The customer had a number of software customization requirements including audio output tuning and a customized logo display to be present immediately upon start-up, which AAEON’s technical team swiftly performed. Most importantly, the customer also needed to run their application on a Debian 13 OS, so AAEON worked with a MediaTek-endorsed third party to build a fully customized Debian 13 image.
- Environmentally Resilient Design: -20°C to 70°C temperature tolerance with support for 12V to 24V power input ranges, preventing failure as a result of power supply volatility or harsh environmental conditions.
- Wireless Connectivity: Support for both 4G and Wi-Fi modules via both a SIM card and M.2 2230 E-Key slot provided secure connection routes for transaction, telemetry, and remote monitoring data from the edge.
How MediaTek Genio 510 Platform Met the Requirements
The integration of the MediaTek Genio 510 was crucial to the application’s need for low-power, high performance operation:
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Multi-Core Processing: The MediaTek Genio 510’s hexa-core Arm® Cortex® processing provided excellent multi-tasking capabilities while maintaining the power-efficiency needed for continuous operation on the edge.
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Versatile OS Support: OS support for Android, Yocto Linux, and Ubuntu opened the door to a greater breadth of environments through which the customer could run their application on AAEON hardware.
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Native High-Resolution Displays: The MediaTek platform offered native video encoding/decoding and superior visual rendering capabilities to produce smooth, intelligent visuals via a selection of supported display interfaces.
