MEN Mikro BL72E rugged box PC

MEN Mikro’s BL72E is a robust box PC with strong communication and storage abilities. It is suitable for rail and public transportation markets, particularly for onboard applications such as Internet-on-Board, positioning via GNSS, CCTV/recording, passenger entertainment and more.

The product is a fanless, maintenance-free box computer for embedded applications in transportation. It is based on AMD’s Ryzen V1000 APU family featuring good power-per-watt performance and a Radeon Vega next-generation 3D graphics engine. With up to four high-performance processor cores and AMD virtualisation support, and up to 32 GB soldered-down DDR4 SDRAM, the unit offers powerful computing for handling data-intensive workloads.

To provide internet connection for passengers or locating the vehicle, many wireless options are available. This includes a GNSS positioning interface, two PCI Express Mini Card slots and two M.2 slots for implementing mobile service standards up to 4G LTE or WLAN IEEE 802.11, and derivates. A total of eight externally accessible micro-SIM card slots are available as well. The box can also be delivered with a second I/O board offering additional LTE modems, storage and I/O.

The device offers a SATA HDD/SSD shuttle providing the storage capacity necessary for entertainment servers or video surveillance systems, plus eMMC memory and an M.2 slot for PCIe based storage (NVMe). It supports one DisplayPort interface with maximum 4K resolution. A multitude of other I/O is available, including four Gigabit Ethernet, audio, two USB 3.0, RS232, RS422/RS485, IBIS, digital inputs and outputs. An MVB master or slave interface can optionally be implemented.

The rugged box PC comes with a class S2 wide-range power supply and complies to EN 50155. Its rugged aluminium housing with cooling fins serves as a heat sink and provides conduction cooling. This allows fanless operation at temperatures from -40 to +70°C (+85°C for up to 10 min).