element14 Community
element14 Community
    Register Log In
  • Site
  • Search
  • Log In Register
  • Community Hub
    Community Hub
    • What's New on element14
    • Feedback and Support
    • Benefits of Membership
    • Personal Blogs
    • Members Area
    • Achievement Levels
  • Learn
    Learn
    • Ask an Expert
    • eBooks
    • element14 presents
    • Learning Center
    • Tech Spotlight
    • STEM Academy
    • Webinars, Training and Events
    • Learning Groups
  • Technologies
    Technologies
    • 3D Printing
    • FPGA
    • Industrial Automation
    • Internet of Things
    • Power & Energy
    • Sensors
    • Technology Groups
  • Challenges & Projects
    Challenges & Projects
    • Design Challenges
    • element14 presents Projects
    • Project14
    • Arduino Projects
    • Raspberry Pi Projects
    • Project Groups
  • Products
    Products
    • Arduino
    • Avnet Boards Community
    • Dev Tools
    • Manufacturers
    • Multicomp Pro
    • Product Groups
    • Raspberry Pi
    • RoadTests & Reviews
  • Store
    Store
    • Visit Your Store
    • Choose another store...
      • Europe
      •  Austria (German)
      •  Belgium (Dutch, French)
      •  Bulgaria (Bulgarian)
      •  Czech Republic (Czech)
      •  Denmark (Danish)
      •  Estonia (Estonian)
      •  Finland (Finnish)
      •  France (French)
      •  Germany (German)
      •  Hungary (Hungarian)
      •  Ireland
      •  Israel
      •  Italy (Italian)
      •  Latvia (Latvian)
      •  
      •  Lithuania (Lithuanian)
      •  Netherlands (Dutch)
      •  Norway (Norwegian)
      •  Poland (Polish)
      •  Portugal (Portuguese)
      •  Romania (Romanian)
      •  Russia (Russian)
      •  Slovakia (Slovak)
      •  Slovenia (Slovenian)
      •  Spain (Spanish)
      •  Sweden (Swedish)
      •  Switzerland(German, French)
      •  Turkey (Turkish)
      •  United Kingdom
      • Asia Pacific
      •  Australia
      •  China
      •  Hong Kong
      •  India
      •  Korea (Korean)
      •  Malaysia
      •  New Zealand
      •  Philippines
      •  Singapore
      •  Taiwan
      •  Thailand (Thai)
      • Americas
      •  Brazil (Portuguese)
      •  Canada
      •  Mexico (Spanish)
      •  United States
      Can't find the country/region you're looking for? Visit our export site or find a local distributor.
  • Translate
  • Profile
  • Settings
Raspberry Pi
  • Products
  • More
Raspberry Pi
Blog A New Ruggedized Raspberry Pi 3 –  netPI!
  • Blog
  • Forum
  • Documents
  • Quiz
  • Events
  • Polls
  • Files
  • Members
  • Mentions
  • Sub-Groups
  • Tags
  • More
  • Cancel
  • New
Join Raspberry Pi to participate - click to join for free!
Featured Articles
Announcing Pi
Technical Specifications
Raspberry Pi FAQs
Win a Pi
GPIO Pinout
Raspberry Pi Wishlist
Comparison Chart
Quiz
  • Share
  • More
  • Cancel
Group Actions
  • Group RSS
  • More
  • Cancel
Engagement
  • Author Author: shabaz
  • Date Created: 28 Mar 2017 4:10 AM Date Created
  • Views 7409 views
  • Likes 20 likes
  • Comments 19 comments
Related
Recommended
  • customised raspberry pi
  • customized raspberry pi
  • hilscher
  • profinet
  • raspberry pi3
  • industrial automation
  • real-time ethernet
  • rpi
  • netpi
  • germany
  • industrial ethernet
  • raspberry_pi_3

A New Ruggedized Raspberry Pi 3 –  netPI!

shabaz
shabaz
28 Mar 2017

Introduction

At Embedded World 2017 I saw something that initially made me very confused. It was a rugged piece of hardware that clearly looked like it was related to the Raspberry Pi in some way but upon opening it up I couldn’t see how a Pi would fit inside. The internal connector looked interesting because it had pins instead of a socket, so how could a Pi 3 plug on top of it? And it had many Ethernet and USB ports already fitted. It took someone to explain it to me. This was actually a complete new custom design that had the Raspberry Pi 3 already inside it!

 

The company, Hilsher, has worked with the Raspberry Pi 3 manufacturers in order to create an entirely new variant of the Raspberry Pi 3. After seeing and learning about it I really want one. It is the best Pi variant yet, ruggedized, with a decent power connector, expandable, and capable of operating in all typical Raspberry Pi usage scenarios and more as will be described. It is not currently available, but will be available soon.


image

 

What do Hilscher do?

The key to understanding the netPI is to examine the motivation for the product. Hilscher is a 30-year old company (originally established in Germany but now they are a global business) deeply involved in Real-Time Ethernet (also known as Industrial Ethernet). This technology (actually, a range of technologies – there are several standards) has become the dominant way of building automation within factories. Every time you see a robotic assembly line building a car, there will be a controller somewhere talking to many sensor devices and output devices, and all the communication between controller and such node devices is occurring over the Real-Time Ethernet connections.


image

 

Real-Time Ethernet takes traditional Ethernet but transports some protocols over it that can be deterministic. This means that message loss is not tolerated like in a non-industrial network. In a normal non-industrial network there is no guarantee that a packet will not be lost. It is up to the higher-layer protocol to re-send the packet if needed. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) is used to relieve the application layer (user applications) from the burden of reassembling packets of data and requesting retransmissions but these would cause delays that would be unacceptable in an industrial assembly line. To take one example, known as PROFINET IO, Real-Time Ethernet solves this typically by defining a type of ‘upper-class railway carriage’ type of scheme where there is a regular train time and the upper-class carriage portion of the train is never allowed to fill up with non-priority packets. Only the deterministic packets are sent in that carriage.

image

 

There can be different levels of determinism such as strict (which requires packets to arrive within a certain time) or soft determinism which doesn’t mind if the packet takes a little longer sometimes to arrive (but it must arrive and must not be dropped) depending on the particular type of Real-Time Ethernet that is being used. There are also techniques to ensure that packets do not sit for very long in a buffer. A normal (non-industrial) Ethernet interface will collect up the packet before it is announced to the application. With Industrial Ethernet it is possible to start serving the packet to the application (the sensor or output node software) as it arrives on the wire. This type of functionality is only possible with special hardware. A normal Ethernet interface does not have this capability.

 

Hilscher is a company which has developed custom chips to perform Real-Time Ethernet capability and embedded them into different products such as:

  • Modules or Interface boards that can connect a computer (say using PCI-E) to the Real-Time Ethernet bus to perform controller or node operations depending on the specific use-case
  • Interface PCBs that can connect embedded hardware (say using dual-port memory) to the  Real-Time Ethernet bus
  • Gateways that can perform Real-Time Ethernet operations and interwork them to traditional Ethernet and TCP/IP for sending over the network for server based applications to monitor or control or manage using protocols that function well over IP networks or the Internet, such as MQTT
  • Test tools for diagnosing Real-Time Ethernet

 

In essence, the Hilscher products act like a bridge between the Industrial Ethernet world and any other hardware or software, either locally or over networks.

 

A while ago Hilscher launched a little PCB that could connect to the Raspberry Pi using the 40-pin connector on it. The PCB had Hilscher’s secret-sauce Real-Time Ethernet chip on it, a couple of Ethernet sockets (some Real-Time Ethernet technologies use both ports) and talked to the Pi using the serial peripheral interface (SPI) that allows applications running on top of Linux on the Pi to interwork with Real-Time Ethernet. This product allows for possibly the cheapest way for anyone to experience Real-Time Ethernet. It would even be possible to use several Pi’s and build up a controller and nodes and simulate a factory basically.


image

 

Having a high performance ARM chip opens up a lot of possibilities. Hilscher decided to take the leap and build a custom product that would use the heart of the Raspberry Pi but in a ruggedized industrial form-factor. For the software stack, Raspbian wouldn’t do; a hardened Linux kernel is needed for reliability and security. However to maintain ease-of-use Hilscher did a clever thing and provided Raspbian in a ‘software container’ so that software programmers still get the same Raspbian experience if this is desired, but in a protected container. This will be examined further below in a bit more detail.


image

 

The end result is a product that can be used and programmed the same as any normal Raspberry Pi in any preferred language of choice, and has applicability for a range of functions in industrial automation. The possibilities are immense. It could be used as a gateway, or a controller, or it could be used to attach additional custom sensors or actuators. It just depends on the software, and whatever users decide to attach to the netPI’s hardware interfaces.

 

Check out the discussion with Hilscher at Embedded World 2017 here:

You don't have permission to edit metadata of this video.
Edit media
x
image
Upload Preview
image

 

Hardware Overview

The netPI has a single circuit board which contains Raspberry Pi 3 functionality including wireless and Bluetooth and video connections. It has the same 40-way connector inside so all the usual Pi accessory boards can be fitted inside the enclosure. The USB connectors are spread out, it has a total of 4.

 

It has the default Ethernet interface but also an extra two Ethernet interfaces built-in; these are intended for connecting to the industrial network. There is also a built-in real-time clock with power back-up.

image

 

What is very cool is that there is an expansion connector slot with blanking plate on the side and it allows for modules to be inserted and removed. These could be additional Ethernet interfaces or other future functionality.

 

The interface is based on a mini-PCIe connector but the connections carry general-purpose input/output (GPIO) and serial bus signals such as I2C and SPI. The details of the expansion interface will be opened up so it will be possible to design custom hardware to fit into the slot.

 

Industrial customers could benefit from the netPI even if they do not use it for real-time Ethernet, since it would be possible to design sensors or control circuitry to fit into the expansion module slot. A module that supports thermocouple probes could be a nice example.

 

Overall the hardware design is very nice. The radio antenna has been designed for good coverage by extending it beyond the metal chassis (a non-conductive shell to enclose the antenna is not shown in the photo). I also liked the easy-to-see LEDs, the space to install additional functions (even though the netPI is still very compact) and the wider-range power supply input with a more usable connector than micro USB.

image

 

Software Overview

The nice design extends beyond the hardware too. In order to provide something secure and reliable while remaining easy-to-use, Hilscher have taken the effort to produce a software image which uses a hardened Linux kernel (based on the Yocto project) at its core. On top of that a container technology is run (Docker). This is kind-of similar to virtualization but can be more efficient in terms of resource usage. Docker is one of the open-source success stories that is extremely valuable and worth experimenting with.

image

 

The end result is that it is possible to run Raspbian in a container, and upgrade it (and any applications) as required, remotely. The benefit of this is that software developers can make use of all the familiarity they already have with Raspbian (and can even develop apps on a traditional Pi 3 before deploying to the netPI). Furthermore there is reduced risk of software clashes; it is possible to add additional containers for all your new applications, each running on a separate Raspbian if desired. The container technology allows for safe upgrades because one can always fall back to an earlier container if a new one has any issues.

 

Hilscher supply a ready-made Raspbian container that already has technologies like Node-RED and all the drivers to support Real-Time Ethernet built-in. People can directly use that, or modify it by adding their own applications to create a new container and then deploy it remotely to as many netPI’s as desired.

 

Summary

I was impressed with the level of detailed attention paid to the product design and the software implementation to make it easy for developers and for deployment. I hope to see and experiment with more Hilsher technology in future, I like that they have found ways to make Real-Time Ethernet accessible for all.

  • Sign in to reply

Top Comments

  • balearicdynamics
    balearicdynamics over 8 years ago +6
    IMHO this is probably the best variant than the traditional PI after the more "classic" DIMM-sized version. At a contained cost it seems a great option for industrial automation and control, especially…
  • shabaz
    shabaz over 8 years ago in reply to balearicdynamics +6
    Hi Enrico! Good question, I don't know pricing ballpark yet, but this product should be available in a matter of months as I understand. You're right, it looks a fantastic option for industry. I can see…
  • superjojo2001
    superjojo2001 over 7 years ago +6
    Hi Guys, I can confirm that meanwhile netPI is out and available at Amazon.de. Read on here for details https://www.netiot.com/industrial-raspberry-pi-3/netpi/ Seems very promising since it is working…
  • shabaz
    shabaz over 6 years ago in reply to mp2100

    It's a great price, refreshing to see that for a ruggedized industrial compute system with decent performance.

    I wish there were a normal Pi HAT with the same PCIe socket on it, compatible with the Hilscher version, because, then it could be a nice option for hobbyists too, since it would be nice to see what interface cards people would build for it : )

    I might try e-mailing that suggestion to them, (or at least if they could release the spec on the interface slot, since I believe they intended to do that) to see what they say..

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up 0 Vote Down
    • Sign in to reply
    • More
    • Cancel
  • mp2100
    mp2100 over 6 years ago in reply to brycewilkins

    The price seems high on Amazon.  Shabaz's link in the other discussion goes to the netPI netIOT site.  The prices are much better than Amazon!  That's unusual.

    https://www.netiot.shop/

    Euro 180 for base model.

    Euro 251 for 3 Ethernet model.

    (I suppose the strong dollar makes that look cheap for me, $1.14 at the moment for 1 Euro.)

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up +2 Vote Down
    • Sign in to reply
    • More
    • Cancel
  • brycewilkins
    brycewilkins over 6 years ago in reply to uniqueitmail

    @Abdur: It is showing on Amazon (US) here: https://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Raspberry-Industry-Communication-4x1-2Ghz-Ethernet/dp/B079NRY2SB

     

    Its a quite a bit more pricey than I expected, but perhaps that comes with the fully customized build.  Perhaps part of the delay getting it out to market is that it seems to support WiFi and RFID now; I didn't see those mentioned in the article.

     

    @Shabaz: Love your style of articles!

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up +1 Vote Down
    • Sign in to reply
    • More
    • Cancel
  • Robert Peter Oakes
    Robert Peter Oakes over 6 years ago

    So something new is out utilizing Raspberry PI 3 Compute modules

    https://revolution.kunbus.com/

     

    Industrial PLC type device, UL, CE approved etc, 24V compliant etc etc

    I have a set of these and am currently putting together a review (From a different distributor image ) but in the mean time, I thought I would show you the vendors site, these are awesome units and utilize a distributed processing architecture (Sub processors based on ST Micro microcontrollers in each expansion module) as well as Real Time patches to Raspbian to achieve its processing needs, it also utilizes many fully compliant IEC 61131-2 components

     

    Definitely worth a look

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up +2 Vote Down
    • Sign in to reply
    • More
    • Cancel
  • tonydbeck
    tonydbeck over 6 years ago

    Hi Shabaz,

     

    Thanks for your write up on this device and summary of industrial ethernet - it's a great write up and good video too! image  

     

    I could definitely see this being used in the factory I work in - I am tempted to buy one to try out. 

    It is a shame there is not a wider selection of I/O - it looks like currently, the only modules available are: RS232, RS485, Real Time Ethernet and Dig I/O unless I just have not found others!?

     

    It is great that it utilises Node-Red.  I started using it last year and was amazed how easy it makes it to connect stuff to the Cloud.

     

    -----------------------------------------------------------

    Tony

    • Cancel
    • Vote Up +3 Vote Down
    • Sign in to reply
    • More
    • Cancel
>
element14 Community

element14 is the first online community specifically for engineers. Connect with your peers and get expert answers to your questions.

  • Members
  • Learn
  • Technologies
  • Challenges & Projects
  • Products
  • Store
  • About Us
  • Feedback & Support
  • FAQs
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Legal and Copyright Notices
  • Sitemap
  • Cookies

An Avnet Company © 2025 Premier Farnell Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Premier Farnell Ltd, registered in England and Wales (no 00876412), registered office: Farnell House, Forge Lane, Leeds LS12 2NE.

ICP 备案号 10220084.

Follow element14

  • X
  • Facebook
  • linkedin
  • YouTube