Why are Industrial Pis so expensive?

this is a bomb proof raspberry pi no really well i guess it's technically explosion proof but still there are industrial raspberry pi computers out there built to run in some of the most toxic and explosive environments on earth and it's a good thing it's explosion proof because i just found out there's also a bomb powered by a raspberry pi now but i'm not in the military so i probably won't get to test that in this video i'm going to focus on something most people don't ever get to see industrial raspberry pi computers specifically computers built with the tiny compute module 4 which is this thing there's a whole computer on this tiny board and it can do things like power robots automate your home or heck if you watched my video last week even run displays like the ones you see in a shopping mall this thing is so tiny so powerful and so efficient it's no wonder it's out of stock everywhere the cm4 has sparked a revolution in embedded computing i'm going to focus on three industrial pi computers in this video the lincoln bins cm4 box pro the factor 201 and the explosion proof milo x industrial edge gateway also i'm giving away this pi box with a compute module 4 inside and those aren't easy to find right now watch to the end of this video to see how to enter before we dive in industrial pies cost a lot well at least in comparison to the 35 dollar base pi model b ensure these things include an enclosure and power adapters and those cost money but the industrial pies are usually part of an ecosystem and they have a bunch of different mounting options like din rail visa or even rack mounting they also usually have more documentation better support and sometimes even specialized industry certifications like if you work at an oil refinery you can't just grab a raspberry pi and duct tape it to the wall that's why these things exist and that's why the prices can sometimes be eye watering you're not just paying for a raspberry pi heck you're not really just paying for the hardware you're buying into industrial computing which comes with a different level of reliability testing and support getting right into it lincoln bins specializes in electronic enclosures they ship this box to me and all the parts inside are built around their new pi head cm4 carrier board the carrier board has a half height m.2 and vimy slot for ssds it has a push button for power control it has hdmi usb 2 gigabit ethernet camera and display connectors and headers for power serial bus and control the board is part of a whole set of different enclosures including this cm4 box pro that can be put on a visa mount din rail surface mount or even be racked up three across in a 1u rack mount unit they also sent the pro plus which is made for desktop use with labels for all the ports and a little simpler case there's even a euro card model heck if dead mouse ever wanted to stick some raspberry pies in his massive music production eurorack this thing would let him install hundreds of them you can fit 10 and a half rack or 20 in a full width rack not quite as many in a 19 inch rack as the cm4 blade i showed last year but these can be packed pretty dense all their kits center around the pie head carrier board and it has a lot of heat sinks built into it including this sexy looking aluminum iot heatsink for the pie lincoln bins make some other enclosures like for the pi 3 pi 4 and tanker board 2. i asked them what makes a pie industrial and they told me they see five main differences they usually run custom software for a particular use they're usually mounted using some sort of industry standard they have to be made reliable they often run in harsh environments and finally they usually cost more since designers have to build them to be more reliable and fit in those custom enclosures normal raspberry pi's aren't great for that especially for mounting the raspberry pi 4 model b has ports along two different sides making it hard to integrate into standard mounts like rack mounts din rails and eurorack also the pi's built-in power circuit isn't ideal for powering other devices especially if they require a lot of current so when a company like lincoln bins designs a custom cm4 carrier they can add in more reliable power supplies that deal with heat and power distribution better also the support you get from industrial vendors is usually better and that's another big reason for the added cost you can usually get a human being on the other end of an email or phone call and you can often get replacement parts shipped within days i actually had a problem with the din rail mount that was included in my kit and a couple days after i told lincoln bins about it a replacement showed up in the mail now lincoln bins makes full pi computers but they really specialize in custom enclosures onlogic is on the other side of the same coin they have custom enclosures but they focus more on the actual computers than the cases they come in they sell options from this factor 201 a raspberry pi based computer built for harsh conditions all the way up to full-fledged rugged pcs with 12th gen intel cpus when they first contacted me i asked them what do people generally use these kinds of computers for and they told me things like rfid tool tracking at manufacturing plants solar panel and hvac controls sensor monitoring and digital signage the pi is perfect for that because it uses a lot less space and power than traditional industrial pcs while still having enough ram and processing power onlogic is also working on a factor 202 with a touch screen and a lot more i o but these factor computers have a lot going for them starting with the case it's din and wall mountable it has metal plates for heat dissipation on both sides and some easy to read leds on the front it's got usb 2 and usb 3 ports on the top along with full size hdmi and usbc for flashing there are also four antenna cutouts in case you want to install 4g or 5g wireless inside and it came with this wifi antenna on the bottom there's a poe capable gigabit ethernet port a second ethernet port a terminal block for serial communication and a 3 pin terminal block for power if i unscrew the cover you can see inside it comes with a sata m.2 ssd in this case a 128 gigabyte model from transcend and it has a separate b key slot for 4g or 5g modems the second ethernet port uses a real technique off the usb 3 bus and that's how this unit has so many different expansion options from that external usb 3 port to an extra gigabit port and the two internal m.2 slots and heck they even heat synced the ssd controller so you don't have to worry about it overheating in my basic thermal test the ssd side barely warmed up that hot spot is actually the reflection from the label the other side has the cm4 so it does get a little hotter but it's still able to keep the pie running across a wide range of temperatures from negative 20 to 60 degrees celsius according to the spec sheet and when i pull off the back side you can see they're even cooling the pi's power circuit and one of the board's power circuits using that side's metal plate this little pcb has a ton of chips on it providing all the different features through the pi's single pci express lane but everything i tested worked great and putting it back together was really easy on logic even has a detailed step-by-step guide on their website i screwed in the din rail mount and powered it up and everything worked well through either lan port or over wi-fi they also sell a poe kit for the factor tool and in fact i tested it with my industrial din rail poe switch and it won't power on without that installed the price is a little steep but that's a theme here part of the reason is the design process and certifications industrial computers like the factor 201 have to go through i mean look at this list on their website it's certified for emc for scientific medical and maritime equipment it has safety and wireless certifications all those certifications especially across different countries take time and sometimes lots of money but it shows in the end product i mean they don't just stick emf shielding on certain parts of this thing for fun this thing is built to live in places where there might be sensitive measurement equipment and it has to run without causing interference or braking because of interference i think the factor 201 is one of the best examples i've seen of the compute model 4 being used to its full potential if the pi had more i o it could go even further with things like faster ethernet faster ssd speeds and no bus contention for usb 3 and cellular modems but as it is for a lot of industrial needs this thing's a great fit it sips 5 to 7 watts max and only takes up a tiny bit of room compared to other industrial pcs meaning it can be deployed in more places and is truly an edge iot device but the cm4box pro and the factor 201 are both generic computers they're meant to work in a wide variety of environments the bomb proof pie it's designed for one single purpose to provide efficient compact edge computing while not causing an explosion the pie i'm talking about is the milo x and i spoke with its designer matthew smith so my name's matthew smith i'm originally from south africa but i've been based in france for 22 years he started a company called field cloud and they specialize in edge computing for industrial customers he said when he started out they integrated industrial grade pcs into rack mount cabinets it was a nightmare trying to lug everything to remote locations like angola in central africa their customers wanted the same amount of computing power but they wanted it to take up less space and use way less energy so in 2012 they started building arm computers that were way smaller and used a lot less power but what we did is we engineered a very compact very robust edge computing gateway system basically we took bits that were found in routers we took bits that were found in network um attached storage appliances and also some low power arm 9 based uh semi-embedded system-on-chip um you know technology and put that into a box we call that the ns box that was around 2012 when the first raspberry pi came out its chip wasn't very fast and it didn't have much ram and it couldn't even run 64-bit applications but it was great for hobbyists and learning but when the pi 3 came out it could finally support those 64-bit applications field cloud had to run but the mounting options for the sodim compute module 3 were limited in terms of heatsink design also the storage bandwidth was a major concern because of the databases they needed to run on these things they started building prototypes with the raspberry pi 3 and 4 but the compute module 4 changed everything we actually designed a prototype board around the pi 4 thinking that we would take that into uh our our customers environment and the part the compute module four was was was announced and we said okay we're going to scrap that design and go for a five uh compute module four so anyway with with all the fanfare that this thing deserves right and i've actually got the box open but this is what we call milo x which is our carrier board our custom carrier um you don't see the compute module four there's a very important reason why you don't see it right it's not facing altitude and that's because it is mated to a uh custom milled aluminium heat sink which then is then uh connected or mated to the chassis so basically that whole thing is a giant heatsink it is a giant heatsink but it is also allows this to be explosion proof and it might not be intuitive but it's actually explosion proof to prevent an explosion inside the box from getting out though it'll do pretty good preventing damage from outside too but matthew said electrical sparks are one of the most common sources of ignition in industrial environments and that can happen from something as simple as a person touching the wrong part of the pie board and the air is highly combustible in places like oil refineries pharmaceutical plants flower mills and mines so in the case of this milux an important part of being explosion proof is actually the threads on the cover basically if there's an explosion right i've got a release of pressure and this pressure is going to have to go out somewhere right and the actual thread on that particular cover is actually going to slow down the release of that pressure and so it's going to reduce its energy which means that it's no longer hazardous on the outside the way they get signals in and out of the box is also important cable glands these things on the bottom of the enclosure protect the pie physically and electrically basically we've got a number of cable glands and we also have two very special they they they look cool if you watch doctor who this probably reminds you of a dialect you know protrusion but these are explosion-proof intrinsically safe ethernet couplers they're made by a partner of ours a company literally called solexi wireless so we basically have a connector this is just a standard m12 connector which is used a lot for industrial ethernet and profinex and um there's a number of different types of coding schemes the coding scheme we use is for 10 100 megabit ethernet there are coding schemes for gigabit ethernet but inside this is resin and protection circuits with zener diodes that basically limit the current and the risk of again electrical signals going in so this this this deals with the ingress risk of having for example over current that could cause a circuit on our board to explode or it also protects if i have a fault an electrical fault on my board it will not actually go out of this coupler it'll be it'll be quenched inside the coupler even tiny details like the rtc battery are different than what you might see on other pi boards so uh that green guy here on that side there that is the battery and so that battery is rated and can work up to 125 degrees centigrade that's a little bit uh better rating than the little coin cell batteries correct so we have to run that with a d rating safety factor in order to again certify that this equipment can work up to plus 75 degrees centigrade but the physical enclosure isn't the only thing that makes this board better for industrial use repairs can be costly and take time so they run a database off two m.2 ssds in raid 1 and put an lte modem in another m.2 slot they also have a separate wi-fi card for a local access point so technicians can wirelessly connect to the pi and check on the data i asked matthew about cost and i'm pretty sure it's a case of if you have to ask you can't afford it i think a lot of people some people who are you know angry that they can't buy the raspberry pi and they blame it on industry or something they're like oh they just want these cheap computers but it doesn't seem to be about that and what like when you build this thing what kind of price does it end up being like no that's a trade secret i mean you know you'd probably fall off your chair if i told you i'm uh sort of the num the numbers but you know if we go through all that is required to actually deploy in or integrate in it's not really the deployment it's the integration part because these kinds of systems get fitted into a pretty complex chassis um you know so there's mechanical integration there's electrical integration there's safety standards that we have to follow in the explosion-proof world what carries a cost or and again it's not a cost you can avoid is safety and quality and a lot of that cost comes in through third party certification just like with onlogic and their interference certifications products like the milo x can't be used unless they pass certain standards like iec ex and building to those standards and doing all the required testing costs money so in the end the price of these industrial products is a lot less about the hardware the pie inside and more about the whole product from build to testing to integration and ongoing support but why use a raspberry pi specifically why did the pi take embedded computing by storm when literally there are hundreds of other arm boards and socs out there yeah we're talking about systems which would normally sell for at least half a million dollars each right and so there's a lot of pieces and components that go into that the cost actually isn't in sourcing the hardware so to get caught up on a 35 computer right it kind of misses the point but i'll say this about raspberry pi it's not about the 35 price tag it's actually about the community that surrounds it the quality of the community that supports for example porting the kernel manager maintaining the kernel maintaining uh again all of the software components that can go into a full operating system and that's probably the biggest benefit that we've got is that we're part of this broader community and we're all are sharing little bits of that cost if we were doing it alone this is a big difference and which is why raspberry pi ended up being a game changer and a category changer is in the old days of embedded computing if we looked at arm9 system on chips each manufacturer and each generation and each model within a generation required a specific board support package of bsp that echoes my experience there are die hard users who will get things working on a specific board and there are awesome projects like armbian that make a ton of different boards useful but embedded chips from rockchip hard colonel marvel and others are often one and done or require huge amounts of investment just to get support hopefully we get more options with the same level of support the compute model has but right now it's hugely popular for low power edge computing you know what else is hugely popular this video's sponsor the pie box pybox is a tiny pi storage server based on the compute module 4. this new solid metal enclosure is a huge improvement over the 3d printed enclosure i used in my video on it last year and it can hold two ssds inside pybox also runs cube sale a kubernetes-based self-hosting service that puts you in charge of your data it gives you remote access easy backups and even an app store so you can install whatever you need on your pi powered home lab go to this link to enter to win this pi box which includes a cm4 with eight gigs of ram but if you don't win cubesale is still selling pi boxes with raspberry pi's if you can believe that or not check out the pi box at pybox.io and until next time i'm jeff gerling

Channel: Jeff Geerling

Views: 372,885

Keywords: raspberry pi, industry, industrial, pc, atom, edge, iot, internet, things, computing, computer, bomb-proof, explosion-proof, pi, cm4, compute module, carrier, onlogic, broadcom, sbc, arm, intel, lincoln-binns, factor 201, plant, manufacturing, monitoring, systems, oil rig, mining, environment, din, rack, eurocard, eurorack, controls, heavy, atex, iecex, ul, listing, certification, standards, mounting, nvme, raid, reliability, reliable, robust

Id: 9MqJI_F-sz8

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2022