
Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi - Tomte
https://revolution.kunbus.com/
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CapacitorSet
How industrial are we talking? Is it certified for use in industrial
environments? I saw a few mentions of IEC61131-2, but I couldn't find whether
it actually has certifications.

If it is suitable for use in the industry, I can't wait to ditch ladder and
Structured Text in favour of modern programming languages for industrial
controllers.

~~~
l1k
This was answered in the German Revolution Pi forum a few months back:
[https://revolution.kunbus.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6&p=1...](https://revolution.kunbus.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6&p=14#p14)

The TL;DR is that the products have gone through all the testing required by
EN61131-2 and you can safely deploy them in harsh environments (e.g. wrt
electromagnetic radiation or vibrations/shocks). However there is no external
certification.

~~~
TFortunato
Unfortunately, as awesome as that is, that pretty much means industrial "in
name only"...at least for non-hobby / non-startup projects

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l1k
Hi there. I'm an engineer on the Revolution Pi team. AMA.

~~~
chillingeffect
I'm always looking for LabVIEW alternatives... is one of your cards an analog
input module? How else to get 10-20 analog inputs? And is 10kHz sampling
reasonable? What's the highest practical Fs? Thank you/danke!

~~~
VdH1
Our AIO module which will be available in June/July is a high precision module
(0.1% FSC accuracy without calibration) having 4 differential inputs which can
be used as current or voltage inputs (several input ranges are software
controlled available). There are 2 additional RT100/RT1000 inputs and 2 analog
outputs (current or voltage). These modules are not designed for high speed
data acquisition but as standard inputs for typical industrial analog sensors
or analog controlled actuators. We are using delta sigma converters to achieve
the high precision but this excludes high speed acquisition.

~~~
chillingeffect
Thanks! Sounds like a replacement for an NI USB DAQ 6008.

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learc83
This would have been perfect for my last startup. Keeping those damn Pi's
running when they were deployed across the country was a nightmare.

The SD cards had around a 20% failure rate per year. Eventually I just started
shipping each system with a backup SD card taped to the inside of the case.

~~~
posguy
Were you using decent microSDs? Was each mSD getting QC'ed? We benchmark every
single mSD before deploying an SBC with it, and have switched to only using
Evo+ 32GB cards as they pass our QC 3/5 of the time, which is much better than
the other available brands.

Also, mSD corruption means your using a mSD card with a bad controller. The
mSD was bound to corrupt and was a low caliber card to start with, unless you
are doing a bunch of writes a mSD should last 2 years minimum, if not longer.

Another tact to take would be to switch to an OrangePi PC+ (8GB eMMC included,
$22) or similar, that way you know your getting good quality nand with a
decent controller out of the box.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Do you mind sharing your quality control method for this? We are hitting card
issues on relatively low device numbers.

~~~
posguy
Just saw this, TL;DR we transfer a large file onto and off of the mSD card. If
its above 10MB/s for both (which is the base rating on a class 10 card), then
it is a fine mSD card. I've also noticed that on multi-gig files speeds tend
to drop to around 6MB/s, not the end of the world for us, but also not a sign
of a bad mSD either.

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sigjuice
Is this a just a regular Raspberry Pi in a nice case?

~~~
bgentry
No, it appears to be using the Raspberry Pi 3 compute module. That's
essentially a small circuit board with the core components of an RPi3 already
designed and assembled. They then solder/plug this module into a larger board
to add connectors and peripherals to it. So there's some custom design
involved.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/compute-
module-3-launch/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/compute-module-3-launch/)

~~~
l1k
That is mostly correct. A few corrections/additions:

* It's either the Compute Module 3 or the older (cheaper, slower) Compute Module 1.

* The schematics of the base board in the RevPi Core are open source: [https://revolution.kunbus.de/download/1803/](https://revolution.kunbus.de/download/1803/)

* Normally you wouldn't open the RevPi Core case and solder stuff to the base board, though you're given all the information you need if want to do so. The expected use is to just mount the RevPi Core on a top hat rail and extend it with I/O or gateway modules via the PiBridge connector.

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01572
What if the user wants to run a different OS besides Linux? Seems like the
only option is Linux? No Plan9, BSD, etc.?

~~~
l1k
Anything that boots on a Raspberry Pi should also work on the Revolution Pi,
e.g. FreeBSD:

[https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/arm/Raspberry%20Pi](https://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/arm/Raspberry%20Pi)

It's just that we haven't tested it yet ourselves. Minimal adjustments may be
necessary due to a few small differences between the standard RasPi and the
RasPi Compute Module used in the Revolution Pi, e.g. the Compute Module lacks
the on-board BCM43438 WiFi that's present on the standard RasPi 3.

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ryanmarsh
+55°C max operating temp

Industrial? Nope.

~~~
l1k
That's the requirement prescribed by EN 61131-2. We test with 60°C, so an
additional safety margin of 5°C.

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chenshuiluke
I was more hoping for a PC coomposed up multiple pis or something

~~~
trengrj
They do exist
[https://www.picocluster.com/collections/pico-5/products/pico...](https://www.picocluster.com/collections/pico-5/products/pico-5-raspberry-
pi-cluster-cube). I have a 5 node Odroid cluster.

~~~
nhatbui
I saw that you mentioned running Hadoop/Spark on your cluster? Do you have any
comments on that? I just made a 3 node RPi3 cluster and I have to admit, it's
really slow. Like getting the spark Scala interpreter running takes about a
minute before anything I type registers in the console. (NOte: this is my own
cluster not a PicoCluster TM)

~~~
l1k
When all 4 cores are under load, the BCM2837 on the Raspberry Pi 3 will
rapidly reduce the clock rate after about 60 seconds (from 1.2 GHz to 600 MHz,
or even 300 MHz if the core temperature exceeds 85 degrees Celsius). Cooling
is required if you want decent performance for prolonged periods of time.

The RevPi Core 3 is equipped with a high performance cooler which is able to
sustain 1.2 GHz at full load for about 20 minutes (at room temperature). After
that the clock rate will be moderately reduced to 1.15 GHz.

~~~
strainer
A 4% heat throttle seems an unusually subtle adjustment. If testing has found
it to be effective that is a good finesse.

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epynonymous
are my eyes mistaken, but a cardboard case? is that safe? fire hazard?

~~~
cnvogel
From the datasheet (linked on the website):

Housing type: DIN rail housing (for DIN rail version EN 50022) Housing
material: Polycarbonate

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jkbbwr
Why is it 200 GBP? If it is a RPi3 compute board which costs only 25 GBP why
the insane markup?

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tyingq
The RPI compute module is the thing that looks like a memory dimm, with no
ports. It's not useful by itself.

The purported value add is that the product includes a backplane, ports, power
supply, and enclosure that are suitable for use in an industrial setting (wide
operating temperature range, shock/vibration, etc).

