
Revolution Pi – The Industrial Raspberry Pi - Tomte
https://revolution.kunbus.com/
======
nimbius
15 years ago I would love to have had a product like this when working
mechanical maintenance in a machine shop but Jesus Christ the price alone is
ridiculous. $360!?! some shops have _hundreds_ of machines.

Back when I _was_ in mechanical maintenance, we would wire up every machine on
the floor (lathe, shave, heat treat, cymbal cutters, you name it) to Serial
Comm adapters that convert the RS232 from most machines into IP/CAT5. These
only cost $80USD, and were bullet-proof enough to replace when needed. The
CAT5 lines were shielded so they were robot friendly, and went all the way to
the front office where the Linux administrator had them all wired into switch
panels and network servers for the guys in the QC labs.

Besides, most newer CNC come with remote desktop or SSH or something remote
you can use to poll them or interact with them by default. Sometimes they even
come with wifi antennas.

I guess if you were building a new robot or machine, and needed a logic
interface, this would be an excellent solution to a proprietary world, but as
a bolt-on accessory no.

~~~
Accujack
If the modules work as claimed, then $360 a pop is fairly cheap. Real world
PLC units capable of extensible digital and analog I/O, networked, usually
cost anywhere from $1000 - $10,000 per unit.

These aren't little gateways to CNC machines built-in interfaces (although
they can be), they're controllers and automation systems for factories and
production lines.

~~~
jecxjo
For most PLC customers this is a no-go. They aren't in the market to save
money on hardware. They save money by reducing downtime and eliminating
failures. Without certifications for industrial control protocols (which take
years and lots of engineering time to get passed), these will only be useful
for those who don't really need a PLC.

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jwr
Incidentally, the Raspberry Pi Compute Module is indeed "rather unknown",
which is a shame. It is amazingly useful and lets you design devices without
getting into high-complexity PCBs and BGAs. You can place an SO-DIMM socket on
a simple 4-layer board (adventurous types might even go with 2 layers if you
don't need USB) and build a computing device that would otherwise be out of
reach.

Another added bonus is the built-in flash, which is significantly more
reliable than the whole SD card setup (for many reasons). Or the two CSI ports
(only one is exposed on the standalone RPi board).

All in all, for anything except prototyping, this is a much better solution
than a standalone RPi. In my designs, I found it to be a useful and reliable
workhorse.

~~~
domsl
May I ask, in case you use Wifi: Which Wifi module do you use for the Compute
Module?

Because I agree it is a very useful form factor.

~~~
l1k
There's a Revolution Pi product coming this year which has WiFi built in
(called "Connect Flat", was on display at the SPS fair in November 2019).

We used a chip based on Cypress CYW43455, basically the same as on the
Raspberry Pi 3B+, to benefit from the existing decent driver support.

~~~
domsl
I see, thats smart.

My question would be how would I start out doing something similar? Because
the I was thinking I would just have a look at the rasperry pi 3 b+ schematics
(which do not show the Wifi Module, because they are incomplete, so I guess
SDIO or UART?). Compare it to the schematics of the compute module, design a
board thats connectso the Cypress Wifi Module and use the same drivers used in
the rasperry pi 3 b+.

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cashsterling
I can see a niche for these units in some IoT and small/simple control
applications. But they are close enough in price to Beckhoff's ARM-based
industrial PC / PLC's that I would tend towards Beckhoff for pretty much
anything I wanted to do (especially now that Beckhoff offers FreeBSD instead
of windows embedded). Note that Beckhoff offers both a hard-real-time PLC and
a soft-realtime general computing environment on their PLC's. You can program
the PLC side in standard PLC languages or C/C++ (with some limits on available
syntax). On the soft-real-time side, you can pick any programming approach you
want (C/C++/C#/Python/MATLAB/Labview/Elixir/TS or JS, etc.) and communicate to
the hard-real-time side via a variety of options.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
What kind of of pricing are you getting on these (and what base model CX unit
did you select) that they're 'close enough'?

I'm at a Rockwell shop getting 5069-L306 PLCs for just under $1000 (which is a
pretty good rate), and have only gotten list-price quotes for a handful of
Beckhoff parts. I wish they'd just publish a price list and discount schedule.
They wanted a lot more than $500 for a CX5020 or CX9020 last I looked.

~~~
cashsterling
Unfortunately, I don't have current detailed pricing for Beckhoff's lowest
end. I, too, wish they would just publish pricing. IIRC, low end beckoff arm
controllers do get down to 400-500 USD. A CX9020 1GHz A8 based unit, with win
embedded compact edition runs about 1000 USD with the runtime. As I understand
it, this is the lowest end unit system for basic multi-axis motion control.
Keep in mind that this is actually a lot of computational horsepower. When
beckhoff says "basic" that means mid range for most other PLC's.

For complete honesty... I ended up using a Galil motion controller rather than
the Beckhoff ARM unit mentioned above, but that was due to really tight form-
factor issues. Technically, the Beckhoff unit would have been better. The
overall hardware cost was moreorless a wash between Galil and Beckhoff.

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gregmac
I used to work on a product that these would have been perfect for. At the
time (early 2000s) we were using consumer mini-itx stuff in industrialised
cases, because the true "industrial" stuff was all decade-old tech, or an
absolute fortune (and still at least a couple years out of date).

These tick a lot of useful boxes, in particular the supply voltage, DIN Mount,
usb host ability (plug in a PC to be able to field service a dead unit), real-
time clock, and isolated IO modules.

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l1k
Hi, I'm a kernel dev on the Revolution Pi team. AMA.

~~~
aequitas
I've been searching for RPi's in this formfactor and with protected I/O for a
while. Besides your product I found some others but all suffer from the same
drawback (for me at least), which is the price. I can understand there is some
extra cost involved in the certification of these devices, eMMC and such. Most
industry customers will probably find the price resonable even. But for me as
hobbyist I can't justify it to myself if I could buy a handful of 'normal'
pi's instead (solving the DIN mounting problem using zip ties).

Do you think your company might develop a non-industrial line for hobbyists
which could bring the price more into the range of sub $100?

~~~
Accujack
I could see them potentially selling just the bare motherboard to hobbyists in
non certified form.

However, they might not since that's the main product, along with the I/O
expansion modules and the software that drives all of this. To make the
motherboard useful that software would probably be needed.

$360 is cheap if this system does what is claimed. Sub $100 is probably not
realistic given what is involved with being truly industrial grade - the level
of protection from the environment and reliability alone would require raising
the price beyond that.

There's a big difference between an "Industrial Pi Case with a DIN mount" and
a certified Industrial Pi PLC. This seems to be the latter.

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vorpalhex
The DIN rail idea is very neat. I've seen a few projects of mounting regular
Pi's in server racks but DIN is a much more compact form factor. Wonder how
long until someone makes a regular Pi to Din kit.

~~~
danesparza
Are you referring to this? [https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-
module-3-plus/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-3-plus/)

I guess I'm not sure what you mean by the word 'kit'

~~~
vorpalhex
A din rail is a way of mounting things. It's very compact, cheap and simple.

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willis936
Ships with a non deterministic OS and is labeled for automation?

It looks cool and I want to like it, but it needs a RTOS, if any at all, for
automation.

~~~
jacobush
First, start Linux with only one process running, and it's no worse than
VxWorks, at least.

Second, you can run bare metal on the Raspberry if you _really_ want to.

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nottorp
How's the Compute Module with temperature? We've had trouble keeping Raspberry
PIs (3 not 4) stable in industrial settings because they overheated (no, they
weren't doing anything critical so we just configured them to reboot every
couple hours).

I see something about a passive heat sink, I wonder if that's enough...

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
There's a temperature hat that you can get that puts a 40mm fan powered by the
fan headers out there ($10 each).

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gallexme
Does it still ship with minecraft installed? We had 2 of em full of bloat and
gui tools, don't know exactly why

~~~
l1k
Not anymore, no. We use the "Raspbian with desktop" image as a basis and
delete most of the games to make the image fit on the 4 GByte eMMC variants of
our products (with about 1 GByte to spare).

Customers who don't need a GUI may create a custom Revolution Pi image based
on "Raspbian Lite" using our imagebakery scripts:
[https://github.com/RevolutionPi/imagebakery](https://github.com/RevolutionPi/imagebakery)

~~~
gregmac
Why desktop as opposed to a server (headless) image?

I would suspect it would be more common to connect via ethernet from a PC or
laptop, vs local console. Especially for field servicing, carrying a laptop is
simpler.

In the case HMI is needed, installing the desktop is just some additional
packages.

This raises another question: what repository are you using? How are
(security) updates handled, if at all?

~~~
l1k
A lot of our customers have a background in automation and are used to Windows
on their desktop PC, with little prior Linux experience. Shipping a desktop by
default is intended to make their life easier.

Since the image is based on Raspbian, updates are installed via apt-get as
usual. There are some deb packages of our own pre-installed. Updates for those
are made available via our apt repository at packages.revolutionpi.de.

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sebastianconcpt
_Revolution Pi 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._

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a9h74j
I like the modular I/O.

Partly off topic, but I've imagined an ecosystem where Pi-like SBCs _only_
connect out via USB-C to a powered hub, and from there to physical I/O. Sort
of a different take on North Bridge / South Bridge.

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viburnum
I don’t know anything about electronics, but I would like it if the
replacement cost for home appliance control boards wasn’t $300. Making it a
cheap interchangeable part would really cut down on waste.

~~~
petra
It's a good idea. It's realistic.

But appliance manufacturers aren't interested.

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cozzyd
I was hoping this would be price competitive with the BBB industrial. Alas,
it's not (although it has substantially more raw computing power).

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The big advantage this has isn't its temperature range or price, it's the form
factor and power supply. Pluggable screw terminals for the industrial 24V
power supply and a professional case with a DIN rail bracket make this a much
easier sell than a bare singleboard computer. In units of 1, you'd trivially
burn through the hour of engineering time that represents the price difference
while setting up a case, mounting hardware, and accessories for a Beaglebone
Black.

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outadoc
Looks cool for storing a home automation server in an electrical closet,
although it would be pretty expensive at that price point

~~~
egdod
For that application, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use a regular
raspberry pi.

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dvfjsdhgfv
How is it different from Strato and ModBerry?

~~~
rtkwe
Different take on a similar type of device. This one is much smaller and has a
custom image which skimming the ones you mentioned I don't see.

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unnouinceput
Raspberry Pi was all about the price, hence the success vs. Arduino. Checking
the prices on site for these...and cheapest is above 100 Euro? Not a chance in
hell.

