German Firm Has Turned Raspberry Pis Into Serious Industrial-Grade Network Devices
May 30, 2023 by Dave Haynes
Low cost Raspberry Pi’s micro PCs have been part of the digital signage ecosystem for probably a decade now, but one of the knocks against the devices has been the need to put together the various hardware components – including a case – to come up with a serviceable, sufficiently rugged unit to put in the field.
So I was intrigued to come across a German company called Kunbus that has a series of industrial-grade Raspberry Pis that would maybe warm the cold hearts of IT people who specify systems, and otherwise might regard Raspberry Pis as gadgets for the maker crowd and middle-school electronics classes.
Revolution Pi, the company says online, is an open, modular and inexpensive industrial PC based on the well-known Raspberry Pi. Housed in a slim DIN-rail housing, the three available base modules can be seamlessly expanded by a variety of suitable I/O modules and fieldbus gateways. The 24V powered modules are connected via an overhead connector in seconds and can be easily configured via a graphical configuration tool.
Even that statement is somewhat over my head, but I get the base proposition that these are products built with IT and IoT needs in mind.
Most of the use-cases referenced by the firm – which says it has shipped more than 1M units – are for industrial applications, like water treatment plant control systems. But there is a direct reference to smart retailing, and using these devices for computer vision/shopper analytics.
It’s very helpful to know what you are doing, but people who know computing say the latest generations of Raspberry Pis are very capable media players for digital signage applications.
I think there is also room for a raspberry pi based plc which theoretically should be cheaper and gain some serious sales maybe
OpenPLC runs on raspberry pi already
I have done projects and consider the Pi a pretty fragile device. I would welcome a more robust piece of equipment. Need 2 more model 4 B but going to wait.
I set up one in my parents business, mostly as a gateway between Profibus, Modbus TCP and RTU, mqtt and other stuff. Works great with quite good response times. We used node red to program the majority of connections.
It’s connecting processing and cooling, solar, a chp and also some remote monitoring solution. For the price it is really worth it.
Digital signage starts with the display not the player. If you cant control the display it is not enterprise digital signage. Use only displays with embedded players supported with pro software.
Which ones would you suggest ?
I would agree.
While the 4B Pis can certainly do some work, they’re not designed for everything. Anyone can take a cheap POS, put it in a fancy case, and sell it for more than it’s worth. It might even do the job… for a while. But that doesn’t make it the best choice.
Yep taking a 35$ board & turning into 2k one. Hope it’s hardened
We have a more compact solution called EdgePi. You will get I/Os on the same module. Take a look at edgepi.com.
Full disclosure: I work for the company.
Very interesting and promising. Will help pushing protocols like MQTT, to replace “industrial protocols” designed in 1970 …
But with a temperature range up to 55° they are limited to delicate industries.
If you don’t want any dependence on the Raspberry but you can see the same flexibility, you can also have a look at ctrlX Core from Bosch Rexroth.
https://youtu.be/nUtwLl7iTY4
Here is a rpi 4 core soc platform with very good thermal specs that can make use of the Codesys Multi Core option.
https://www.onlogic.com/fr202/?cpsrc=SmartShopping&agname=&kw=&ps=&utm_term=&utm_campaign=PMax:+Raspberry+Pi&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=9181945420&hsa_cam=18296753453&hsa_grp=&hsa_ad=&hsa_src=x&hsa_tgt=&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAjwyeujBhA5EiwA5WD7_Tdgu7u2XOYZVwbaMOfu7XQzHCgICnec410XCmofjMFjBiDxEFySDxoCIFIQAvD_BwE
Fiz um projeto com 300 Raspberry na empresa e é um sucesso.
The lack of freely available RPis got me interested in repurposed thin clients and I am not going back. Pricing, power usage and stock availability are so much better. Consider the Dell Wyse 3040 which can be bought for under 30 GBP and powered by an Intel Atom CPU.
IOT2050 SIEMENS.
24V for a Pi ??
They are 5V, they need a converter.
These guys also make a great industrial PI based gateway
http://www.smithtek.com.au/products
The Passsport. Looks good.