During the 2015 Computex exhibition in Taipei's World Trade Center, GIGABYTE will showcase its latest capabilities as a one stop system supplier for IoT companies and professionals. More specifically, this showcase will take the form of a live intelligent vending machine and its backend system, demonstrating GIGABYTE's IoT portfolio ranging from servers to smart terminals.
Before the emerging IoT trend, companies involved in the vending machine industry were traditionally limited by the lack of interconnection between their machines dispatched in the field and the management processes of their headquarters. Technical difficulties often prevented operators to manage and control their terminals remotely, which prevented to properly forecast the restocking and maintenance needs of each machine. Such operations had to be planned and performed by physically sending people in the field to read each machine's data, which was obviously a very inefficient and costly way to proceed.
Following the observations of this vending industry's needs for improvements and thanks to Intel's push in IoT technology, GIGABYTE has designed a range of products to penetrate this market and bring concrete and ready to deploy solutions to solve the traditional vending machine inefficiencies. This range mainly relies on the four following products:
- Server systems based on the Intel Xeon processors E3-1200 v4 product family.
- The GB-BXBT-3825 IoT gateway, which provides connectivity between legacy devices and intelligent IoT infrastructures.
- The GB-TCV1A vending machine controller and its vending machine API, which provide a level of abstraction allowing vending operators to focus on high level applications, such as user interface.
- The GC-SSP Expansion Card for traditional vending machine interfacing.
Photo: Company
Intel Xeon E3-1200 V4 Based Server Motherboards
GIGABYTE will announce its line of server motherboards supporting the new Intel Xeon processors E3-1200 v4 product family in synchronization with Intel during Computex 2015. This complete range of entry level server motherboards will be easy to integrate in various formats of server chassis, and will have many different layout options for the largest server configuration possibilities. Always insisting on using the highest quality components to build its motherboards, GIGABYTE and its server hardware are always perfect to answer the demanding needs of professional server applications.
The GB-BXBT-3825 IoT Gateway
By integrating the technologies and protocols for networking, security, and manageability on the GB-BXBT-3825, GIGABYTE offers vending operators a key building block to rapidly replace legacy systems. The GB-BXBT-3825 is a computing platform based on the Intel Atom processor E3825. Through its onboard software stack validated by Intel, the GB-BXBT-3825 is the ideal building block for a fast development of intelligent vending machines. It provides:
- Connectivity bridging between legacy equipment and the cloud.
- Data acquisition from terminals and pre-filtering for further delivery.
- A hardware security root providing trust, data encryption, and software protection.
Photo: Company
The GB-TCV1A Vending Machine Controller
At the heart of GIGABYTE's intelligent vending solution is the GB-TCV1A computer powered by an Intel Atom E3815 single-core processor. It delivers high I/O connectivity, such as HDMI output for digital advertising, LVDS for low cost touch screen, USB 2.0/3.0 for printing and other consumer-level interactions. The GB-TCV1A, associated with its vending machine API, provides a consistent programming interface regardless of the underlying hardware. It helps the application to work across disparate machines and all functionality and features are developed as plug-ins and installed on the platform. It enables the vending machines to be capable of:
- Multimedia interactivity
- Cash/cashless payment and identity-based validation
- Digital signage
- Video analytics
Photo: Company
The GC-SSP Vending Machine I/O Expansion Board
The GC-SSP Vending Machine I/O Expansion Board offers a broad range of modern and legacy vending ports and connectors to scale with both newer interactive vending platforms and older machines. It handles protocol conversion and provides a high-level of I/O flexibility.
Photo: Company
A recent example of concrete usage of GIGABYTE's solutions is the acquisition by Coca-Cola Taiwan of variations of the products above to upgrade its existing park of vending machines across the country. The objectives of this upgrade were not only to improve the monitoring and forecasting abilities of Coca-Cola's operators, but also to make their machines future-proof regarding the rise of electronic payment methods.
This kind of real world scenario demonstrates the critical importance of having technologically up-to-date vending machines that are ready to seize new kinds of business opportunities, from new forms of cashless payments to display advertising. This is why GIGABYTE wants to be the one stop supplier of the IoT era with a competitive product portfolio covering all the technological needs of IoT actors, from datacenter systems to smart terminals. Please visit GIGABYTE at the Computex 2015 exhibition, and its staff will be more than happy to introduce you to its solutions in more details.