The Power to Compute

Dick Morley, widely considered to be the guy who developed the first PLC, also introduced many people to the industrial computer. He didn’t call them industrial computers in those days, but actually they were industrial computers. Today you can find an industrial computer in almost every corner of a factory. There are big differences between an office PC and an industrial PC, for which you must take account of operating temperature range, shock and vibration requirements, humidity, dust, EMI, IP/NEMA ratings and expandability.

David Kaley, HMI product marketing manager, Omron Electronics (www.omron247.com), says: “Most industrial panel PCs have gone to fanless designs with no spinning data-processing media to improve reliability for critical applications. Disk-on-module (DOM) replaced the spinning media, but the high price has had limited acceptance of DOMs. Even though prices for PCs with DOM have dropped almost by half, recent advances in CompactFlash deliver a more affordable media than DOM for most applications. For long-term support and maintenance, CompactFlash offers the advantage of easier replacement. Users are migrating to higher-reliability PCs with self-monitoring health functions to prevent unexpected lockup or shutdown. Voltages, operating system and designated application software are monitored.”

But, there is another side to industrial computers, and that is the embedded industrial computer. “Originally, embedded systems were designed to provide a preprogrammed solution to a single application, but advances in operating system design have made it possible to develop monolithic kernels, such as the adaptations of Windows and Linux operating systems,” says Mike Berryman, Advantech, Industrial Automation Group (www.advantech.com). “This gives programmers an environment similar to a desktop operating system. This type of embedded system allows reuse of publicly available code for objects like device drivers, web servers and firewalls.”