Portable, rugged, battery powered communications box supports interface to various off-the-shelf standard sensors and communications interfaces. The unit uses a MPC8349 PowerQUICCII and provides up to 8 high speed USB 2.0 interfaces, up to 8 10/100 Ethernet interfaces and up to 8 Firewire IEEE1394A interfaces. Field upgrades are easily accomplished via the standard Compact Flash card socket and options are available for external AC power. Dual battery trays allow for hot swapping of battery's while the unit is operational.