Industruino - DIN-rail Leonardo compatible

I would be interested to hear from people what they would like to see developed as baseboards for Industruino (the equivalent of shields with standard Arduino).
Standard Industruino comes with an empty prototyping baseboard which allows anyone to add their own circuits, but for certain applications we intend to develop custom baseboards.

As a first board we are planning to develop a 4-20ma I/O + PT100 board, to facilitate the connection to off the shelve industrial sensors and actuators.
The second item on our list is an ethernet board, but we are debating whether maybe this should be integrated in the main controller board instead (top board) as a different model altogether. Other ideas that came to mind were: 1. RFID + relay board 2. fibre-optic connection board (for long distance comms, or opto-isolated triggering of HV systems) 3. RS485/DMX board.

So please, any suggestions for baseboards would be appreciated and considered for development.

Loic

Looks very good and as speakers before I like to have some extra buttons with small cables so I can decide to connect or not.
+1

The LED idea I like too but maybe you should have pieces that are easy to remove [doordrukstrips ] so I can decide If I want leds or a switch or so.

And of course I want an Ethernet shield (or other communicating shield) inside as everything should be connected. Is that possible?

(You can PM me in Dutch if you want to)

It could be a good in it with a model without display and with knaper and RGB LEDs, instead of and to minimize the number of I / O pins you can use a PCF8574 is an I ² C bus to LEDs

I can self use one that has display, 3 buttons, Ethernet and RS485 (terminal) and have the opportunity to self add a TO-220 regulator, for I have 24V DC to another controller to run together

@K7-3D: Thanks for the tip on the PCF8574! I2C expanders will definitely play an important role in feature add-ons for Industruino. I can imagine that a DIN-rail extension board with say 8 relays, all driven by the Industruino's I2C bus could be very useful.

In its current incarnation Industruino can already house all the options that you mention (v-reg, rs485, ethernet) on the empty prototyping base board. I'm looking now on how to integrate Ethernet as option on the base board without sacrificing too much space of prototyping area.

If you're working with 24V DC please have a look at this: http://www.mornsun-power.com/cn/product_inf.aspx?typeID=62#
They have the same pinout as 7805 regulators but are switching instead of linear type. So when working with >12V they are really useful because they are much more efficient and thus don't generate much heat, don't need a bulky heat-sink, and save power. I'm planning to offer them as an option on future versions of Industruino. I've used their isolated versions before and I am very happy about them. If you don't want a Chinese brand you can get the same types from XP-power.

I recentely played with a PCF8574 and the PCF8574 can act as a sink for 10mA but as a source it can provide less current, 0.1mA.

When I connected the GND side of the LED to the PCF8574 and the other side on +5V the LED works as expected.
When I connected the +5V side of the LED to the PCF8574 and the other side to GND the LED fail to light up brightly.

Reading back the status of a line also failed but I don't recall in which of the 2 scenario's.

solution I used - additional transistor to drive the led

I got an idea that you can use an angled 5-pole female HDR connector on the controller and a male connector on the expansion modules as and in the accordance followed a female connector on the other side of the expansion module so you can just link them together

and in the HDR connector will be SDA, SCL, VCC, GND and Vin

I hope you can use my idea to develop the Industruino

Any news on the ethernet part? I'm very interested in that as I'm planning to do a home automation project based the Industruino.

It is the most professional, industrial-oriented solution for Arduino I have seen.

It is what most industrial customers like to see: a small box to be DIN rail mounted.

From my experience, it sends the arduino platform to industrial arena.

Hi everyone,

After two months of working on improving Industruino I am pleased to announce that we have finally released the next version (beta3) of Industruino which incorporates all the suggestions from our early beta testers. Please have a look at www.industruino.com for new pictures and more information.

We will now have more time to work on Industruino Ethernet, which will be implemented on a baseboard using the Wiznet W5200 chip. The idea is to have a baseboard which can be swapped into an existing Industruino to add Ethernet functionality (same principle as shields really...). We see the urgency of Ethernet functionality so we will push to release asap. I expect early beta samples in a months time.

Greetings,

Loic

In the pinout diagram on the website you could show which pins are on top and which are on the bottom side of the industruino - just add 2 colours in the background.

Less important:
the images on the website - upper right - do not reflect the new design => mirror the image and your done :wink:

my 2 cents,

Excellent! Exactly what we are looking for.

Weatherproof enclosure? Integrated CATkit shield?

I will PM you. 8)

Excellent product !!!!

That's what i'm looking for 8) 8)

I think that the next important steps in your project are:

  • 24 V input and output ()
  • 0 to 10 V analog input
  • RS 485 and RS 232 interface

We can not use the actual IO configuration in industrial projects :wink:

Hello everyone,

A couple of months of die-hard labour further and we are pleased to announce the new version of Industruino. In this new version we have updated to a new LCD screen which uses the U8G library and also moved to a 4-layer board for improved signal quality. Please have a look at our website for more information: www.industruino.com We have also made a short movie introducing Industruino: First Industruino Introduction video (2013) - YouTube

@ Simone_550, Thank you for your feedback. I totally agree that this should be the next step. We first had to make sure we had a good base to work on, and that's exactly what we've done in the last couple of months. We will develop a number of boards that connect to Industruino which will offer a number of industrial I/O options and power regulation.

Best Regards,

Loic

Congrats! This is exacly what I was looking for for an energy meter project. :slight_smile:
In fact I was just looking for the case, but this will make me consider my design from scratch.

I don't know whats on your roadmap, but for my use case I would love to see some add-ons:
-220Vac to 5Vdc power supply, so that you can power the unit straight from the 220Vac
-Maybe a baseboard with an header interface capable of use regular shields already on the market.

  • Or shield's/modules combining uSD card with either Xbee/ Bluetooth or Electric IMP.

Keep up the good work.

btw-It's not clear from the site, the dimensions of the kit. How many DIN RAIL units does it take. Looks like 5, but not shure.

my suggestions :
make the base unit pretty much like you have it.
have a side connector for a second unit, IC2 or some such and allow a second unit to have dedicated parts.

if you look at any of the small PLC's on the market, they have one base unit, and then add-on units.

that keeps the main unit clean and gives everyone the option of stuffing the add-on with all the circuits they want.

I am looking for dimensional layout of the terminal board. that way, I can make my own for my needs.

Dave

Hi, first of all congratulations!! I like the idea, it's almost what I'm looking for..
It's always the same problem with all those arduino, there is a lot of shields and modules but it's almost impossible to find a proper box where everything can fit.
All my arduino project look like junk of wires which is not really good from a reliability point of view..

However, I see one important point/suggestion:
it would be good if we could directly put 1-2 existing shield into your box. The actually design does not seems to be optimized for that (please, correct me if I'm wrong).
Almost all those shield arduino Uno/Leonardo compatible have the same format/size so it should be possible to do something.. That would make your Industruino much more flexible, people could put a ethernet/SD card/bluetooth/RS485/motor driver shield according to their needs.

For example, in one of my project, I have an SD card shield and a bluetooth shield, is there any way to integrate those parts into the industruino?

If that cannot fit into the actual industruino package, it could be some kind of extra module connected to the main industruino. Those external modules could have the appearance of the current industruino but without the screen&uC board.. that would provide much more flexibility!

What is your point of view? does it make any sense to you?

Second the 24V IO... that would make this nice for Industrial integration projects.

Also, this will go well in a Shapeoko cabinet. Even better, if the Stepper Shield were built into a particular model of this design.

I could see people really wanting direction keys for moving the Shapeoko with this. Very nice project.

Hi.
congrats - a great idea and great execution. For industrial use I would suggest adopting a modular approach - the variety (and physical size) of some of the I/O that is going to be popular in this application probably won't fit well inside your enclosure and would want to be electrically (and EMF noise) seperated anyway. e..g I'm thinking maybe 8 Mains rated relay's would be a very common application but tricky to fit inside your enclosure safely to a degree that anyone would be comfortable using in a safety regulated industrial setting. One definite on my wish list though has to be the Ethernet interface. With that and probably i2C and RS232 and RS485 interfaces exposed you would cast the Industruino as the intelligent hub of a solution that could displace many PLC and more expensive microcontroller based solutions.

Other posters referrenced bringing the I/O out on a side connector to allow daisychaining to I/O modules on the DIN rail. Thats a common technique in the industry but one I personally find a little inflexible when one has a lot of I/O as it means you need a long single run of DIN rail which is often awkward to accomodate. extending on ribbon cable might be an option but is harder to suppress interference on low voltage I/O lines so personally I would stick with the individual I/O screw terminals you have and allow people to add on your or others external boards.

I assume you have seen this? http://www.ruggedcircuits.com/ruggeduino/
Have you gone for similar levels of electrical protection for the microcontroller in your design? That is pretty much necessary to install in industrial situations unless you want to end up with a lot of broken units by careless installers :slight_smile:

Great job - will be following with interest and as soon as a board with inbuilt ethernet and maybe some of those serial interfaces is available I'll definitely be buying one to evaluate.

good job.
Guy

Hi, industrino looks like! very good project.
I know another project similar, more or less also less than more :P, its industrialshields. you can see in www.industrialshields.com
Do you sell industrino in industrialshields web? they have an industrial platform to develop projects and sell products. It will be look like to see industrino there.

Thanks, very good project!!!!! :slight_smile:

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for all the great feedback! We have listened closely and tried to implement as much of the requests as possible.

@hangas: Thank you for your suggestions. We are also developing a Mega version which will have space in the enclosure to host standard Arduino shields. Regarding mains power: We will offer industry DIN-rail power supplies on our website. We prefer this route as it is avoids a lot of the safety concern of an internal mains power supply. It would also be more flexible, allowing users to choose a power supply of the right amount of power for their specific sensors/actuators.

@damien09: Please see our new EXP baseboard which adds an expansion connector for optional external modules.

@magno32: lets get in touch! I would definitely be interested in producing a Shapeoko baseboard for Industruino, but I would need design support.

@gsalerni: Please have a look at our EXP baseboard for expansion module or IND.I/O baseboard for a ready to go solution that has isolated industrial level I/O.