BSP puts QNX 7 onto Ka-Ro TX8 and QS8 mini-SBCs

Update: April 8, 2021
BSP puts QNX 7 onto Ka-Ro TX8 and QS8 mini-SBCs

It has been developed to provide a starting point for industrial designs.

“QNX is ideal for safety-critical projects and is also available in safety-certified versions, making it a perfect match for the high-quality Ka-Ro modules in demanding industrial applications,” said Direct Insight MD David Pashley. “Using an off-the-shelf module to which QNX is already ported, and which is tried and tested with the operating system, makes it easier to use a high-performance 64-bit Arm processor.”

Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53s clocked at 1.6GHz are used alongside graphics processing on the modules, which have up to 2Gbyte of DDR3L RAM and a 4Gbyte eMMC.

“Ka-Ro modules are extremely reliable with a typical operational life of over 12 years,” according to Direct Insight.

Mechanically, QS8M (above right) is a 27mm square solder-down package while TX8M (left, also branded Triton-TX8M by Direct Insight) is a 200pin SODIMM.

The BSP contains basic features required to run the QNX 7 operating system on the boards – included are drivers for Ethernet, watchdog timer, I2C, SPI, USB, SD Card and UART, and there is an optional display driver.

To demonstrate it working there is a free binary download (requires contact details), then source code can be licensed per-project.  Enhancements including additional drivers, production-hardening and testing are also available.

‘Triton-TX8M development kit’ is available with a 10inch touch screen.

The QNX 7 BSP is available through this web page