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?
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
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.
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.
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.
EXP baseboard (same as standard Industruino but with 14P IDC expansion port for external modules, plus a 7-28Vin -> 5V/2A switching voltage regulator).
specs look good Loic. Question on the RS485 - is that on the Indo IO only or on the EXP baseboard as well? From the pinouts it looks like that is using the same TX/RX lines as the mainboard so I can use serial levels on the mainboard/baseboard but this is replaced by RS485 levels on the IO baseboard - I no longer have both is that correct?
The diagram on the Industruino website suggests Modbus slave as a possible usage of the Industruino over it's RS485 connector. Any limiting factor that would stop it being Modbus master (sketch permitting of course)?
Great job! I'll be ordering one up now with Ethernet module and EXP or Ind I/O.
Guy
Thank you for the kind words, I'm glad to hear you like the look of our new products.
The RS485 transceiver is only included on the IND.I/O board, but could be easily added to the EXP board because it has a large prototyping area. On the IND.I/O the RS485 transceiver is indeed connected to the RX/TX lines of the mainboard but the RX/TX lines are also present on the 14p expansion port, so in case you don't use the RS485 portion of the IND.I/O you can still use the standard UART.
Modbus slave and master both run on the same RS485 hardware so INDO.I/O supports master mode.
I have libraries for both Modbus slave and Modbus master but I personally have only used the slave library. We ported the libraries from this source to run on the Leonardo: Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
CE is in progress, but be aware that the products is sold as a kit which is intended for your own customisation into a final product/installation, so you will still need to make sure your final product/installation conforms.
An updated version of the IND.I/O board will be in stock in September, together with a couple of newly released products. We are always looking for constructive feedback and for members of the Arduino community which are interested in collaborating in development of this projects. So please drop us a line at contact.industruino@gmail.com
I'm building ADC and DAC shield for arduino but can't decide what IC's to use. Please, would you share with us what IC you use for ADC and DAC functions on Industruino ?
Congratulation, it's a very nice and useful project/product!
Loic:
We are also developing a Mega version which will have space in the enclosure to host standard Arduino shields.
Really, then I can use standard Arduino shields inside the Industruino enclosure?
When will this be available?
Loic:
We are very please to announce 3 new products to complement our Industruino range of products!
...
2. IND.I/O baseboard (industrial level I/O interface baseboard).
3. EXP baseboard (same as standard Industruino but with 14P IDC expansion port for external modules, plus a 7-28Vin -> 5V/2A switching voltage regulator).
Does the "IND.I/O Industruino" also have
a 14p IDC expansion port for external molules and
a 7-28Vin -> 5V/2A switching voltage regulator?
I have some more questions please:
When I buy and want to use the "IND.I/O Industruino Kit" and the "External Ethernet Module", do I have to solder something? Do I need a soldering-iron?
Does the "IND.I/O Industruino" have a Real-Time-Clock onboard?
If not, what would you recommend as the most easiest solution to include a RTC inside?
The "IND.I/O Industruino" has industrial I/O levels (24V digital I/O, 0-10V/4-20mA analog I/O) and is fully isolated from the MCU. That's great! But do also exist some screw connectors which are connected directly to the MCU I/O pins? E.g. this is necessary to use OneWire/1-Wire withe the Arduino?
Or how can I use OneWire/1-Wire components with the IND-I/O Industruino (connected from outside)?
For the case, I like to see that the connectors have a break-out cover so that if you don't need the I/O on the bottom you don't see them.
This is really an advantage whenever you have to place the unit elsewhere and not in a cabinet on rail.
The Mega version has been put on the back burner for a bit at the moment to focus on the IND.I/O and our new 128k Topboard. Mega version will eventually come but will be for later in the year.
The IND.I/O also has the 14Pin expansion connector and its switching voltage regulator actually supports a larger Vin range (6.5-32V vs. 8-28V).
When you buy any of the kits you don't need to solder anything, just screw assembly
Currently there's no RTC built in, on the PROTO kit you can easily add it to the internal prototyping area. On the IND.I/O you can connect one to the 14p IDC connector, this connector has i2c and SPI so
The Ethernet module is based on the Wiznet W5500 ethernet chip and uses a library which is almost identical to the standard Arduino library (just some different setup routines), therefore programming over TFTP should be achievable with some work on the code. It is something that would benefit a lot of people so I will investigate in maybe contracting it out to get the code ported.
we made a new comparison page on the website for that, please have a look here
Covering the connectors with an optional break-out cover is a good idea, we need to see how we can move the connectors back a bit inside the case to allow for this.
