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  • Author Author: garynelson
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Is there a place for Raspberry Pi and other single board computers within the industrial market place?

garynelson

 

The Raspberry Pi single board computer, and in particular models 3B and the new 3B+ model, has found itself being considered by design engineers as a viable solution for industrial applications. With the Bluetooth and wireless capabilities of this innovative small form factor computer system the Raspberry Pi lends itself perfectly to be used in remote monitoring applications on the factory floor. The ability to send data to a cloud based server remotely giving the status of any machine in real time is an increasingly important solution in helping prevent potentially costly machine down times.

 

One of the challenges faced by design engineers using single board computers is how to package the product in order to suit the working environment it will face when it’s finally finished and released. The decisions around what interfaces the product will need to have users interacting with also has to be considered especially when deciding upon the physical size of the end product. With the advancement in technology and the birth of Industrie 4.0 the product ultimately designed may need to have a smaller form factor than has been traditionally used and space will therefore be at a premium. One additional consideration is where the unit is to be mounted i.e. on the din rail within a cabinet, as a stand-alone unit or perhaps even wall mounted. All of these decisions made by a design engineer can ultimately mean that the only way of housing the product is with a bespoke enclosure solution which can be costly and add long lead-times to receive the first off samples.

 

When designing electronic devices around the Raspberry Pi the choice of available enclosures can be overwhelming especially for non-industrial applications. If you are developing home based media servers or a small scale router you are ideally looking for something aesthetically pleasing as well as functional.

 

At Phoenix Contact we offer a number of innovative enclosure solutions based on the standard form factors of embedded system printed circuit boards (PCB’s) and have some specifically designed to accommodate the Raspberry Pi. If you require Din rail, wall or even table top mounting we have flexible solutions to meet your needs. Our universal case system (UCS) has the additional flexibility of removable flat side walls for any customisation requirements you may have and is available in 4 sizes, 2 heights and 2 colours as standard.

 

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  • For anyone interested in seeing the RPI-BC enclosure in bits, this is what comes in the RPI-BC kitRPI-BC kit (spares and accessories are orderable separately too):

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    The black pieces are PCB supports that the Raspberry Pi snaps onto. The orange pieces are optionally used to act as spring clips on the underside of the enclosure, to clip it to a DIN mounting rail (used in industry). There are also four tamper-indicating stickers supplied for optionally using with the enclosure.

    Everything is snap-fit which is great, and easy to disassemble if needed.

  • in reply to garynelson

    Hi Gary,

     

    Thanks for this information! There's no doubt in my mind, the Phoenix Contact enclosures for Pi are extremely clever, the RPI-BC has implemented things in extremely optimal way it seems - and although the RPI-BC I have is intended for Pi 3, by luck it worked totally fine for Pi 4 : )

    Also the provision of space to the side of the Pi works really well; today I tried inserting a second board (the red thermocouple board) and it fits nicely, connected via a flat flex to the board next to it. But I'm planning to fit another board inside the RPI-BC too, attached to the screw-holes visible on the red board.

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    Thank you for the list of enclosures and the great description. I'll investigate the UCS 145 series, and the UCS 237. I'm not planning to use the large display currently, but I think it could be easy to blank that off with a sheet of material, and if required any other shape can then be milled into it.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Hi Shabaz,

     

    Thanks for sharing your design I always enjoy seeing how people have used our products in their projects and designs as they are always so varied!

     

    I'm pleased you were happy with the RPI-BC enclosure as this was our first major step into brining Raspberry Pi's into the industrial marketplace and the results have been staggering. As you can imagine when designing it we used an existing product from our BC range and modified it to ensure easy access could be achieved to the ports on the Raspberry Pi and be expandable.

     

    In answer to your question we have a new range of enclosure products called UCS and within this range we have created a number of Raspberry Pi versions. The real beauty of this range is all 4 sides are flat, so easy to mill and drill, and top and bottom are identical making it far easier to modify them with printing or again milling. The range includes a number of mounting accessories enabling wall, desktop or DIN rail mounting.

     

    The UCS -RPI ranges already have pre-milled sides for access to the ports and was originally launched in 2 sizes and 2 colours. When the new 4B came out we redesigned the enclosure milling to suit the new layout so we now have those available as well. The last addition to the range for Raspberry Pi's is a larger case with pre-milled sides for the ports and a pre-milled top to accommodate the official 7" touchscreen enabling you to create home media controllers, industrial low cost HMI's or, in my case, an arcade machine!

     

    Here's a couple of images of the products and I've listed our part numbers which should help you to find them on the Farnell website. The only ones currently not available on there are the new ones for the Raspberry Pi 4B as these only came out this year so are available but not yet in the Farnell portfolio. It's also worth noting that the display case is currently only available for the 3B/3B+ products.

     

    I hope this helps for your next design and thanks for using Phoenix Contact products. You'll find the parts list after the images.

     

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    Parts list:-

     

       

    Article no.Farnell pt no.TypeDescriptionRaspberry Pi version10197202821862UCS 145-125-F-GD-RPI 9005 Small size in black3B/3B+10197232821863UCS 125-87-F-GD-RPI 9005Larger size in black3B/3B+10197242821864UCS 125-87-F-GD-RPI 7035Small size in grey3B/3B+10197492821865UCS 145-125-F-GD-RPI 7035Larger size in grey3B/3B+11047803226511UCS 237-195-F-GD-RPI-DT7 7035Display case in grey3B/3B+11047813226512UCS 237-195-F-GD-RPI-DT7 9005Display case in black3B/3B+1139227N/AUCS 125-87-F-GD-RPI4B 7035Small size in grey4B1139237N/AUCS 125-87-F-GD-RPI4B 9005Small size in black4B1139240N/AUCS 145-125-F-GD-RPI4B 7035Larger size in grey4B1139242N/AUCS 145-125-F-GD-RPI4B 9005Larger size in black4B

  • Hi Gary,

     

    I used the RPI-BC enclosure with Pi 4 for this open hardware project called VIKI:

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    The RPI-BC is very good, but with the slight limitation was that it was quite small, and the cut-outs were only suitable for 5A 150V connectors (PTSM series)

    Some links to it all here:

    An Industrial Enclosure for Raspberry Pi

    VIKI (Versatile Intelligent Controller for Industry) Schematic, Bill of Materials and Component Placement Diagrams

     

    I like enclosures with panels that are easy-to-machine, especially removable panels like the RPI-BC's front cover.

     

    However, it would be great to see an enclosure that can take more (and 240V capable) connectors than the PTSM series, and if possible more space than the RPI-BC, because I wanted to insert additional PCBs.

    In summary, I liked the RPI-BC, it's possibly the best Pi enclosure I have used, although I wished it was a bit larger (and still fairly low-cost! the RPI-BC has a perfect price-point). In the future the VIKI board will be redesigned, and it is an opportunity to use a larger enclosure. Which enclosure would you recommend?

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  • Hi Allen,

    We have worked with a number of industrial customers who were using the off the shelf Raspberry Pi 3B & 3B+ for their designs and needed an enclosure that sits on a DIN rail with easy access to the ports. The designs have ranged from reporting modules along a production line sending status reports via blue-tooth to a cloud based server, to industrial I/O modules. Our RPI-BC enclosure was the first version released that is purely based on a DIN rail and we have sold 10's of 1000's of them to industrial customers since it's launch. The latest enclosure system we have is our UCS-RPI which is being used by customers designing 4G routers and controllers for lights amongst other things.

     

    I wrote the piece as the evidence we have so far seen is that the Raspberry Pi single board computers have a very strong opportunity in the industrial marketplace without the need for modification in most instances. You'll find the ranges I've mentioned in stock at Farnell and they have been very successful in the sale of the units since adding them to their portfolios.