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Building on their popular FPGA-based PXI, PC, and CompactRIO platforms, National Instruments has announced a new line of Single-Board RIO modules that offer designers a lower-cost, integrated hardware option for embedded control and data acquisition applications. The new sbRIO-96xx devices combine a real-time embedded processor and a reconfigurable FPGA plus analog and digital I/O on a single 8.2 x 5.6-inch printed circuit board. Similar to the existing FPGA-based platforms, designers can use LabVIEW graphical system design software to configure the Single-Board RIO hardware as well as develop the application’s embedded firmware. The modules feature a 266 MHz or 400 MHz Freescale MPC5200 processor, the Wind River VxWorks real-time operating system and a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA. The onboard analog and digital I/O connects directly to the FPGA to provide low-level customization of timing and I/O signal processing. You can expand the I/O capabilities using three expansion slots for custom hardware or any C-Series I/O module. Pricing for the Single-Board RIO devices start at $1,000 for quantity orders of 100 or more. You can find more information or watch a demonstration video at the Single-Board RIO webpage.