Compact, ARM/Windows CE-based human interface panel computer with 7-inch touch screen
(by Kirk Linsky)

Habey USA Inc., which is part of NORCO Intelligent Technology of China, is a designer and manufacturer of embedded systems, industrial PCs and panels, and related products. In March of 2012, the company introduced the PPC-6107 as a Human Machine Interface (HMI) product for automation applications in building management systems, fleet management and numerous other deployments.

The PPC-6107 is a small (7.5 x 4.9 x 1.06 inches) panel/tablet that weighs just a pound. Its housing is made of tough ABS+PC plastic that will neither break nor scratch. The wide-format 4-wire resistive touch screen measures 7.0 inches diagonally and offers 800 x 480 pixel resolution. The device is running Windows CE 6.0 on a 532MHz Freeescale i.MX31L processor (see i.MX31 product page at Freescale), millions of which are powering consumer, industrial, automotive, medical and general embedded devices.

To address the wide potential array of human/machine interface requirements, the PPC-6107 the device offers an unusually complete array (for a small tablet) of I/O for signal reception and response. This includes USB On the Go, USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet, RS-232 serial, audio, a 2-megapixel CMOS camera webcam, and an SDHC card slot for storage expansion up to 32GB. For wireless, there's 802.11b/g WiFi and optional GPS, but apparently no Bluetooth.

On the ruggedness side, the device can handle a fairly wide 14 to 122 degree Fahrenheit operating temperature range and the ABS+PC housing looks like it can take plenty of abuse, but Habey's spec sheet doesn't supply additional ruggedness data.

Don't mistake this Habey device as an attempt at a rugged tablet. That is not its intent. Instead, the PPC-6107 was designed as a simple, economical tool to handle applications in telematics, navigation, as an automotive media center (it can handle MPEG4/H.264 encoding/decoding), VoIP and video phone, home automation and media center, order management, E-education device, advertising, digital signature capture, etc.