November 17
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ndustrial
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omputing
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ommunication
they are not familiar with. This can poten-
tially spark a power struggle between the
domains over interfaces and protocols. In the
age of Industrie 4.0, it is not in the best inter-
est of any organization to keep the OT and
IT domains apart; therefore, eliminating the
knowledge gap between them and aligning
them more closely deserve operation manag-
ers’ undivided attention.
A multi-protocol integrated device will make
the lives of SIs much easier here. For exam-
ple, a smart I/O that supports various pro-
tocols—such as Modbus/TCP and EtherNet/
IP for IA engineers, and SNMP and RESTful
API for IT engineers - allows communications
with different interfaces, which is certainly a
step in the right direction to bridge the divide
between OT and IT. This solution makes it
possible for both IT and industrial automa-
tion (IA) engineers to conveniently retrieve
data from the same I/O device.
Demonstrating just how much OT and IT
are worlds apart from each other is the fact
that OT network devices are always treated
as transparent, making it difficult to monitor
them—even in the case of emergencies. This
adds to the frustration of network operators -
as troubleshooting becomes almost pointless
when they are experiencing downtime. Of
course, this situation cannot be accepted, as
situational awareness is very important for
network operators in order to ensure contin-
uous production and prevent abnormal sit-
uations. Ensuring continuous visibility of all
network devices and the status of a network
in a control room is top priority. However, to
capture abnormal events on the shop floor
and then interpret the information about
these perceived events in real time is quite
challenging, due to the complexity of the pro-
tocols and networks.
For production lines that employ OT pro-
tocols, Ethernet switches that support
PROFINET, Modbus TCP, and EtherNet/IP
protocols enable engineers to simultaneously
view data and the network status at a cen-
tral site on a SCADA system or locally on an
HMI. If an industrial protocol fails, the switch
reports it, and the PLC sends an alarm so that
the situation can get fixed immediately. Lever-
aging IT expertise and sensibilities can speed
up troubleshooting, reduce system downtime,
and increase situational awareness.
In boardrooms, executives expect data min-
ing and analytics to pay dividends in reduced
operation costs, optimized production, and
predictive maintenance to minimize down-
time. As one would expect, this data needs to
be collected from field sites, and it has become
the job of OT engineers to transfer this data
from the devices in the field to the cloud,
where it is stored for analytics purposes. This
new addition to their job description takes
OT engineers somewhat out of their comfort
zone as they would rather focus on program-
ming that adds value to their specific field
instead of communications tasks.
OT engineers lack of IT knowledge is defi-
nitely their Achilles heel. As it is, sending
data from an edge device to the cloud can be
time-consuming, and OT engineers’ unfamil-
iarity with IT technology only compounds the
process. In the race to IIoT connectivity, the
biggest challenge for them is to cut down on
the time to set up and program the network-
ing connections between edge devices in the
field and the cloud.
To spare engineers lots of programming effort
and reduce time and costs, an embedded
computing platform that supports versatile
interfaces, coupled with a software suite that
integrates a ready-to-use Modbus engine and
cloud connections such as AWS, enables fast
integration between devices in the field and
the applications required for the IIoT. Fur-
thermore, for those who want to adopt OPC
UA in order to unify automation interfaces, a
software suite solution is available that pro-
vides both an OPC UA server as well as cloud
connection capabilities. The beauty of this
solution is that it requires no extra costs to
implement additional architecture for cloud
connectivity.
n
Cincoze: rugged workstation with 7th/6th
gen Intel Xeon E3 and Core processors
Cincoze expands its product offering by intro-
ducing new rugged workstation DX-1000. The
system is based on workstation grade Intel
C236 chipset to support 7th/6th Generation
Intel Xeon E3 and Core Processors in LGA
1151 package. The DX-1000 Series can play
4K UHD content through Intel Gen9 graph-
ics engine with two DDR4 SO-DIMM sockets
up to 32GB memory which delivers outstand-
ing computing performance for high-end and
multi-task applications.
ARBOR: modular Box PCs for flexible
expansions
ARBOR Technology present its new ARES-
1970 Series of intelligent modular BOX PCs
with high configuration and application
potential. Based on Intel 6th generation Core
i Skylake-U platform, the fanless embedded
controllers deliver excellent computing per-
formance and low power consumption. Cur-
rently, there are three models differentiated
in terms of their I/O configurations, form
factor and power Input so as to optimally
address deployment requirements in various
fields. The product review is now available for
download. Supporting modularized design
and customizable, stackable I/O expansion
boards, the ARES-1970 Series minimizes cost
and space requirements, as well as fits individ-
uality and tailor-made customer solutions.
Axiomtek: IIoT gateway enables quick
connection to the cloud
Axiomtek announces the upcoming availabil-
ity of ICO120-83D, an industrial IoT gateway
designed to simplify device-cloud connection
and accelerate industrial internet of things
development. It was specifically designed for
smart energy and smart automation fields
that need to collect and transfer data from
large numbers of end devices.
IEI: Medical Box PC to provide smart
healthcare for operating rooms
As the elderly population increases, the med-
ical industry also enters the era of informa-
tion operations. Using electronic devices to
deliver, store, and capture the clinical data has
become a trend. For this reason, IEI develops
a high quality and reliable medical commu-
nication system, the HTB-100-HM170 med-
ical grade embedded system, to meet a strict
medical, safety and EMC testing that complies
with ISO13485, IEC 60601-1(V3.1) and IEC
60601-1-2(V4.0) standards.
AAEON: network appliance provides
secure deployment for mission-critical
frameworks
AAEON launches the ICS-6270, a fan-
less-based and industrial-grade network
appliance which facilitates security solutions
and critical infrastructure in an IoT context,
and is powered by the Intel Atom Apollo Lake.
Designed to streamline security management
in unmanned and harsh environments, the
ICS-6270 provides secure deployment for
mission-critical frameworks, supporting both
Windows and Linux operating systems, and
is built to supplement existing network plat-
forms in industrial environments with mini-
mal configuration.
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