Case Study for Integra GritNAV

The Client

We were contacted by Integra Telematics, with a brief to create a rugged computer to go in a gritting lorry. Their product GritNAV, gives GPS guidance to the driver for his planned route as well as feeding back information about the lorry itself.

The brief was to supply a compact, rugged computer that could withstand the shock and vibration of the vehicle, as well as withstanding the corrosive salt particles that enter the cab and potentially the computer as well.

The Requirements

The brief was to supply a compact, rugged computer that could withstand the shock and vibration of the vehicle, as well as withstanding the corrosive salt particles that enter the cab and potentially the computer as well.

While having an IP rated computer would be the obvious choice, their budget could not stretch to it and we felt we could achiveve a reasonable level of ingress protection using good design practise.The requirements were as follows:

• Solid State PC, no moving parts because it would be used in a vehicle
• Power efficient Fanless Processor
• IP rated connections or at least sealed with rubber gromits where possible
• Wide input DC Power Supply
• Windows XP Embedded operating system

The Solution

The solution used a low power 800MHz VIA processor housed in a bespoke enclousre, after some temperature testing we confirmed that the chassis didn't require ventilation holes which meant we could make the unit sealed.

Where possible we then used IP rated connections and removed any unecessary holes for motherboard connections.