What Can the Artista-IoT Controller Do for an HMI or Signage Display?
March 18, 2025
The Artista-IoT controller runs the display, the touchscreen and the application on one board, so an HMI, information display or signage screen needs no separate PC and no PC software licenses. It combines the ArtistaMEDIA-IIIB TFT controller baseboard with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module, and drives LVDS displays up to 1920 x 1200 and PCAP touchscreens directly. Artista boards are developed by FORTEC Integrated (formerly Distec), our sister company in Germering, Germany, within the FORTEC Group. We supply, integrate and support them from Ronkonkoma, New York.
What hardware does the Artista-IoT offer?
An industrial baseboard with a choice of two compute modules. The original Compute Module CM3+ carries 1 GB of LPDDR2 memory. The CM4S, supported since 2025, raises that to up to 8 GB of LPDDR4-3200 with ECC, with eMMC flash options of 8, 16 or 32 GB, or a Lite version for external storage. Both run on the same board:
- LVDS displays up to 1920 x 1200, plus HDMI 1.3.
- 12 to 28 V DC wide-range input.
- -20 to +80°C (-4 to +176°F) operating range.
- 100 Mbit/s Ethernet, with optional Wi-Fi through a USB dongle.
- Long-term availability of at least six years.
What software runs on it?
Either the customer’s own application or one of our ready-made software packages. Raspberry Pi OS, an industrial Android and Yocto Linux are supported, and the board integrates into existing Windows and Linux environments. The ready-made options are:
- VideoPoster: energy-efficient media playback without a PC, configured in a web browser.
- WebPoster: full-screen web page display with remote management, suited to production environments and factory floors.
- Support for a partner platform for video walls and conference rooms, and a PLC development environment for control and automation.
For a custom user interface, the Artista-IoT runs the open-source Qt graphics library. A GUI can be built in a WYSIWYG editor on an ordinary Windows PC and uploaded to the board, without working through the embedded programming in detail, and existing Qt programs can be transferred too. The current operating system images, manuals and the Artista series information are on our ArtistaOS downloads page.
Where is the Artista-IoT used?
In industrial HMIs, information and advertising displays, digital signage, and embedded systems, on displays from 5.7 to 65 inches. It is also built into our own products:
- IoT Compact Panels, where the Artista-IoT sits in a protective box on the back of the TFT display, with passive cooling that allows full-load operation at high ambient temperatures.
- POS-PRO IoT monitors such as the POS-PRO IoT 10.1, a CE-certified unit with a 10-finger PCAP touchscreen and an IP65 front.
For development, we have offered a starter kit with the baseboard, a compute module, a 10.1-inch IPS display with multi-touch PCAP and all the cables, so engineers can start a project quickly. These are examples rather than limits: we design the Artista-IoT into whatever device and enclosure the product requires.
What else is in the Artista family?
Two variants extend the idea in different directions. The Artista M4, introduced in 2023, uses the Compute Module CM4 with a 64-bit quad-core processor and drives V-by-One displays up to 3840 x 2160, for info terminals and 4K applications in medical technology and building management. It adds Gigabit Ethernet, an M.2 slot for radio modules (dual-band Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 optional), HDMI in for an external x86 source, HDMI out for a second monitor, and audio and camera interfaces for conference rooms, with at least six years’ availability. The serial ArtistaGUI-II from 2018 let a host device drive screen layouts over RS-232, with 4 GB of eMMC for macros, images, fonts and videos; it is no longer in our catalog.
Tell us what the display has to show and where it will run, and we will take it from there. We recommend the controller and software, integrate it with the panel and touchscreen, and stay with the project from first samples to series production, backed by our technical services.
