WNIP NOV DEC 19.6 DIGITAL

16
Meeting current and future requirements with
flexibility - platform strategy also suitable for industrial PCs
The forward-looking Industrie
4.0 project calls for equipping
machines and plants with
innovative components and
systems so that they can costeffectively
produce customized
products with increasingly
shorter lifecycles. In keeping with
this approach, the industrial PCs
in the Valueline product range
can be configured for specific
applications.
Operating solutions featuring a
cutting-edge user interface are
integral to Phoenix Contact’s solutions
for the future.
The era of standard machines
that produce the same product
for decades on end is over.
Nowadays, there is high demand
for applications that can be easily
adapted to new conditions.
A platform strategy provides
the flexibility that this requires.
Phoenix Contact has been
pursuing a platform strategy
approach since 2009, when the
company became one of the
first providers to bring modular
industrial PCs (IPCs) onto the
market; namely, the Valueline
product range.
The second generation of
this product range combines
the known advantages of IPCs
– such as fanless construction
and maintenance-friendly
design – with functions that can
fulfill new requirements. These
industrial PCs only contain the
chip manufacturers’ embedded
roadmap components, ensuring
that the devices have a service life
of at least five to seven years.
This also ensures long-term
image and driver compatibility.
As such, machine and system
engineers enjoy a high degree of
security throughout the entire
lifecycle of their applications .
Box PCs are particularly well suited for
demanding applications such as image
processing, visualization, and control
and regulating tasks.
Completely decoupled
processing unit and display
There is hardly a machine that
can operate, monitor, visualize,
or collect data without using an
IPC. The devices must therefore
be perfectly adapted to the
respective conditions.
To facilitate this, Phoenix
Contact has decoupled the
processing unit and the display
from one another. In turn, this
means that these two components
can be flexibly combined.
If the display needs to always
remain the same, the machine and
system engineers integrate this
into the design of their application.
Then they select a processing unit
of the required performance class.
Conversely, engineers can
supplement a processing unit that
needs to always remain the same
with displays with different screen
diagonals, or even do entirely
without the display device.
After all, if the user is primarily
using the industrial PC for
visualization, a large display with
a lower-performance CPU (Central
Processing Unit) is preferable.
A complex application, on
the other hand, requires a highperformance
process for CPUintensive
operations, while a
small display suffices for control
functions with little operator input.
Long-term planning reliability
thanks to multitouch
technology
The latest generation of
the Valueline product range
also supports the projected
capacitive touch (PCT) technology
necessary for gesture operation.
Since the sensor technology is
located behind a glass panel, the
touchscreen functionality cannot
be impaired from the outside, and
it is not subject to wear.
The touchscreen even
continues to function if the
glass is scratched. Moreover, the
capacitive technology has proven
to be robust against aggressive
cleaning agents and sharp objects.
This is the case because, unlike
with resistive touchscreens, there
is no plastic foil attached to the
glass front. Display sizes of seven
inches (800 x 480 pixels) to 21.5
inches (1920 x 1080 pixels) provide
enough space to display both
simple workflows and complex
production processes.In the event
that a machine or system cannot
be displayed in its entirety, the user
can zoom into the desired level of
detail using gesture control.
This makes operation
manageable,
simplifies
navigation, and minimizes
errors, such as ones cause by
19.6
two-hand operation. Thanks to
the multitouch display, the user
can take advantage of hardware
that has been designed for new
operating concepts, such as
gesture control, already now. This
provides planning reliability and
time to work on creating intuitive
solutions.
High-performance CPUs and
graphic chips
Gesture control and graphicsintensive
visualization require
high-performance GPUs (graphics
processing units) that ensure
smooth operation. In the past,
processors used for industrial
applications provided the
corresponding CPU output, but
this did not exceed the required
graphic performance.
Consumer-level graphics
cards were ruled out as a viable
alternative because of their
high power loss and limited
temperature resilience.
Because of this, Phoenix
Contact fitted the new Valueline
IPCs with only the latest CPU
technology. Users can choose
between various processors,
depending on the application
requirements – from the Intel
Atom E3800 series (Bay Trail), to
Celeron (Bay Trail), through to the
sixth-generation Core i7 (Skylake).
Latest-generation processors of various
performance classes offer a
high degree of flexibility.
Despite their highperformance
CPUs, industrial
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