What do you think of Arduino Pro and which kit would you like to try out?

Not interested in any of them, Arduino as a beginners'  learning tool was great.

Arduino as a cheap simple part for rapid prototyping - good.

Arduino as an industrial product - non starter.

MK

Just been peeking at the schematics PDF for one of the control boards (it has the microcontroller board plugged onto it).

I don't understand why they would rely on tiny 0.4mm pitch connectors for the heart of it (connections between the microcontroller board and the rest of it, i.e. quite a critical connection!) for what's supposed to be presumably reliable/industrial.  Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too, for zero useful reason.

Also, there's no isolation on the serial interfaces (I didn't check the other interfaces), but would have assumed that isolation on the serial connections at least could have been useful given they don't know the precise situation customers will subject them to.

Also, on the one hand there's the suggestion of rapid prototyping, but on the other hand, it's really clear from their online store that they actually suggest it for real deployments. Pricing is unusual too; who wouldn't rather pay several times that for reliability in a real deployment. But for prototyping, it is overpriced for the kits, since no one kit (bundle) is likely to contain everything, nor be fully used, so the customer would need several of them.

shabaz said:

I don't understand why they would rely on tiny 0.4mm pitch connectors for the heart of it (connections between the microcontroller board and the rest of it, i.e. quite a critical connection!) for what's supposed to be presumably reliable/industrial.  Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too, for zero useful reason.

Could it be an application in certain environments/countries that for whatever reason have that as their requirements or what's available to them?

I wonder sometimes if it's a matter of different locations' standards or expectations in how they design.

cstanton said:

Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too

(quote is shabaz text)
The compute module provides a combination of (SMD or edge) connector + mounting holes, that allow a firm connection. I think that that one is fit for use in industry. Beyond prototyping.

The IO kit and case are flagged as "for prototyping". Those are more fit when designing software while the final hardware isn't available yet - or when developers don't have access to the final product that embeds the module.

I think they just assume everything is built the same way as consumer-grade, mass-produced items. Whereas in reality for a smaller production run for industrial purposes, their decision means an unnecessarily lower yield since there's no opportunity to fine-tune production and assembly for tens of thousands of mating boards. You'd naturally want to use a larger part than 0.4 mm pitch if it can be avoided, and it's not even an ancillary less important bus, it's the main controller, and damage could be significant if connector mating failed and power was applied. With the Pi Compute Module, there's space on the underside, they could have used a larger connector if they wished. They themselves use quite large testpads to improve reliability for their testbeds.

They could have also increased the size of the board, but even if they didn't then if it's possible to route the connectors more inward, then they may even have been able to stretch the spacing up to 0.8 mm, with possibly no size increase! Other benefits - easier to service, a lot more mating cycles too (those 0.4 mm pitch are designed for 30 mating cycles, fine for a home electronics product).

This is the render in the user docs, I thought it must be simplified, surely they would have some screws holding the boards together:

However, no screws are visible in this photo from a video online.

Underside photo:

This device has thermocouple interfaces which are not isolated either, that's another accident waiting to happen.

I could totally understand the device being used for experimentation, but the user docs don't say that; they suggest actually deploying the devices for real.

Here's a board from possibly one of their competitors in this space, Advantech. They are using very large pin headers as interfaces between the control portion and the user connections. Plus the connections are isolated.

I do fancy experimenting with PLCs but as Shabaz says it would be good if Arduino had added some more protection on the I/O.

Have also been looking at the Wago devices.