The Digi ConnectCore® 8M Nano is an advanced embedded SOM platform designed to meet the needs of organizations developing industrial, medical, agricultural and transportation products that require advanced connectivity and multimedia capabilities.
Based on the NXP® i.MX 8M Nano applications processor, the Digi ConnectCore 8M Nano features up to 4x power-efficient Arm® Cortex®-A53 cores and 1x Cortex-M7 core.
This highly integrated, cost-effective SOM platform optimizes power consumption while maintaining a standard of high-performance, making it suitable for a wide range of industrial and medical applications including Internet of Things (IoT), human-machine interface (HMI), equipment monitoring, audio/voice, edge computing and machine learning (e.g. anomaly detection).
Faster Development, Lower Total Cost of Ownership
A key objective of this product is help organizations get to market faster and with lower development costs. Digi ConnectCore solutions achieve this with pre-certified wireless connectivity, an integrated device security framework, remote management tools, cloud integration and a complete Linux software platform based on Yocto Project®.
The Digi ConnectCore family of SOMs is designed to short-cut development and enhance the functionality end products. The software and security enhancements integrated into this development platform support more stable and predictable product development and maintenance costs.
Software Support
A key component of the Digi ConnectCore 8M Nano development platform is Digi Embedded Yocto (DEY) – an open-source, production-ready Yocto Project™ based embedded Linux distribution with fully tested and maintained BSPs and APIX software extensions for security, power management and wireless connectivity. As a distribution, DEY provides the following:
• Digi BSP. DEY provides precompiled images that are ready to use, but you can also compile the whole distribution from source. The distribution contains the following components, which have been customized and tested for the ConnectCore module.
• A U-Boot-based bootloader customized for the ConnectCore module to boot the Linux image. You can configure U-Boot at boot time, and it integrates a useful set of commands so you can program your own scripts. Digi provides source code that can be tailored to your design requirements as well as integrated within the build system. When the Yocto image is built, the U-Boot image is also built with it.
• A Linux kernel customized for ConnectCore products. DEY includes the kernel source as well as device tree configuration files.
• Reference root file system images using the DEY reference distribution.
• SDK. DEY includes a precompiled C/C++ toolchain. You can use it to cross-compile applications to run on Digi embedded platforms.
• Precompiled images. DEY includes pre-built reference images to accelerate your development process.
• Documentation. DEY comes with comprehensive documentation covering all the development and technical aspects of the ConnectCore products.
• Software extensions. DEY is designed to improve your time to market with common and simple to use software features that work out of the box.
Designed for Scalability
Digi ConnectCore 8M Nano provides functional scalability to help companies design for any market demand. In addition to various processor core options, Digi ConnectCore includes upgradable memory up to 16 GB eMMC flash and up to 2 GB LPDDR4 to meet a range of deployment options. Digi provides the ability to scale with increased processor cores and memory to future-proof designs.
Built-in Security
All Digi ConnectCore solutions, including the ConnectCore 8M Nano, incorporate the Digi TrustFence® security framework. Digi TrustFence is an integrated, tested, and complete Linux device security framework that simplifies building secure connected products. Designed for the long product lifecycles of embedded devices, Digi TrustFence allows customers to easily integrate device security, device identity, and data privacy capabilities.
The built-in security of Digi TrustFence gives you immediate access to critical features including secure connections, authenticated boot, encrypted data storage, access-controlled ports, secure software updates, and seamless integration of the dedicated on-module Secure Element.
Built for Product Longevity
The Digi ConnectCore 8M Nano SOM is also built to support product longevity – another key to reducing total cost of ownership. It employs the Digi SMTplus mounting format to maximize both reliability and design freedom, and is designed for the extended 10+ year product lifecycles of many embedded devices, which supports OEMs in reducing their R&D and development costs.