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Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

revolution.kunbus.com

11–20 of 77 posts

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#11
post #7
post #5

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

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/

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/

* 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.

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#12

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.

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...

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.

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#15
post #3

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

They do exist https://www.picocluster.com/collections/pico-5/products/pico... . I have a 5 node Odroid cluster.

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)

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#16
post #15
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do exist https://www.picocluster.com/collections/pico-5/products/pico... . I have a 5 node Odroid cluster.

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)

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.

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#17
post #14
post #13

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

1. Where do you get those hilarious article photos in the blog from? Stock photos? Colleagues with chickens at home? 2. Why did Kunbus stop selling liquor? ;-)

1. There's a Photoshop wiz on the team. I'm not aware of any colleagues with chicken, must be stock photos then. The crazy stuff shown on expo photos is real though (snack lottery, "occupied" booth etc).

2. I think that was a different company, I'll have to ask the CEO next time I see him.

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#18
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Where do you get those hilarious article photos in the blog from? Stock photos? Colleagues with chickens at home? 2. Why did Kunbus stop selling liquor? ;-)

1. There's a Photoshop wiz on the team. I'm not aware of any colleagues with chicken, must be stock photos then. The crazy stuff shown on expo photos is real though (snack lottery, "occupied" booth etc). 2. I think that was a different company, I'll have to ask the CEO next time I see him.

1. Cool!

2. Yes, sure, we just found it incredible that he used the Kunbus name and address for the imprint. Had a few laughs about it over there in Ostfildern. :-)

Re: Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi

#20
post #6

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.

Have you tried SLC, pSLC or at least, industrial grade MLC cards? They are more expensive, but might be worth it in such applications.

See this whitepaper on why: https://www.cactus-tech.com/files/cactus-tech.com/documents/...

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