The Raspberry Pi hobbyist computer has established itself in education in recent years. Younger developers in particular rely on the British single-board computer for their work and feel at home in the platform's large open source software community. To enable industry to benefit from this expertise, electronics manufacturer Kontron has developed an industrial-grade product line based on the Raspberry Pi and is currently working on solutions for the new Compute Module 4.

There is a clear trend in the demand for the single-board computer: younger developers tend to have already worked with Raspberry Pi during their studies or are already involved in this community as hobbyists from the maker scene. The widespread use is also due to the price: the small computer only costs around 35 euros. However, the price advantage falls flat due to the additional effort involved in industrial applications, as the processor's protective mechanisms would temporarily reduce the computer's performance in hotter environments, causing it to fluctuate. It is therefore crucial to have a cooling concept that enables robust use in industrial temperature ranges in the first place.

With the Pi-Tron, Kontron supplies an industrial baseboard to be able to use the Raspberry Pi software community. The performance of the computer leads to a corresponding heat loss, which is dissipated by attaching heat sinks to the CPU and thermally coupling them to the housing. The small compact controller has various communication interfaces as well as several connections for sensors and actuators; a 24-volt connection, which is important for control cabinet applications, is also integrated. When selecting components, strict attention was paid to ensuring that only those components were used that are supported by the community software.

Compact control unit for the control cabinet

The Kontron PiXtend product line is particularly suitable for machine and plant construction, as it is predestined for use in control cabinets. It can be used for control applications in which sensors and actuators can be easily integrated thanks to the high number of I/O ports. PLC-oriented programming is guaranteed by the integration of Codesys: The integrated development environment for programmable logic controllers based on IEC 61131-3 is considered an important standard for application development in industrial automation. Codesys is already included with PiXtend as a free test license.

The boards are available in different versions with more or fewer I/O ports. Here too, developers coming from the Raspberry Pi world may opt for a product such as PiXtend, which functions as a PLC like a small computer with many connections for sensors and actuators. The mini PLC is also suitable for Industry 4.0 scenarios in which the focus is on networking machines and systems, as well as intelligent devices.