Greetings, thanks for having a look at our newest project, called Revolution Pi. But what is Revolution Pi all about? You are in a hurry? Here is an abstract for you:
RevPi Core is based on Raspberry Pi’s Compute Module. Like all other members of the RevPi family it is compliant to EN61131-2. The RevPi Core is complemented by several digital and analogue IO-modules as well as fitting fieldbus gateway modules. Hard- and software is completely open source – we will publish all circuit diagrams and source code listings. We plan to build up a big international community on our internet platform where ideas and proposals can be exchanged. It is also a place where we will offer several services like P2P connection services or SMS gateways. There will be an online shop where you can buy application software for little money (like EN61131-3 compliant soft PLC including a web server based MMI). The Revolution Pi will be officially launched at the SPS IPC Drives exhibition in Nuremberg this year.
Are you curious now?
Revolution Pi is a product family
RevPi Core is – who would have thought – the core of the family: A small computer based on Raspberry Pi’s Compute Module. It provides USB, Ethernet and HDMI connectivity. It’s a rugged 24 V industrial grade hardware protected by a DIN-rail housing. Being compliant to EN61131-2 PLC norm this hardware is fully suitable as compact industrial controller. We have added a LINUX operating system with RT-patch and a driver module which collects data into a central process image. This may be data coming from our RevPi IO modules which are connected to the RevPi Core via high speed backplane bus. There are digital and analogue IO modules (all EN61131-2 compliant) as well as certified fieldbus gateway modules for all relevant fieldbuses.
We won`t leave you alone with just the hardware, an operating system and drivers. You will also find an EN61131-3 soft PLC from logi.cals in our shop. Spider Control by ini.Net running on a built in web server will also be available for little money and enable you to build your own GUI. After all there are already many, many applications running on Raspberry Pi or LINUX out there which will also run on our RevPi Core.
In our online shop you will find all products needed for a complete industrial controller system: Power supplies, hubs, routers, etc. We will help you getting an easy start, promised.
Revolution Pi is a platform
This blog is just one of our communication channel. Visit this blog regularly (or sign up to our newsletter) and join our journey as we finish the development of our Revolution Pi modules. We will give you detailed information about the different modules available and the latest progress of the project. You have constructive criticism or propoals regarding the project? Feel free to tell us your thougts in the comment section of this blog and/or our forum (which will be online in November `16 latest). We will take your comments and proposals serious and let them be part of our plans. In fall 2016 we will get the shop-system online and web pages with all the essential information and documentation will be added at the same time. A forum will be the right place to communicate with other RevPi users. Our product developers will read the threads and try to deliver answers to all technical questions raised in the forum.
Revolution Pi is a community
We believe it’s about time to blow up the rigid structures of industry by the concept of open source. Therefore we will publish all our circuit diagrams and source code listings of Revolution Pi devices. We do not want to limit you to our ideas and solutions but we want to encourage you to develop your own ideas and solutions. If you frankly exchange these ideas and solutions with other users on the RevPi platform a strong community will result. We will provide you with the tools to set up this network: video channels, forums and blogs. We plan to run a kind of “app-store” later on where you may search for solutions or provide others with your solutions. Together we are strong and will find ingenious solutions to manage the challenges of 4th industrial revolution.
Revolution Pi is a concept
Revolution Pi is not just a way to provide a cheap industrial grade version of Raspberry Pi using open source concepts and raising a community based project. With Revolution Pi we will aim at a much more important concept of 4th industrial revolution: We will open up undreamt-of possibilities for you to earn your money in the cloud. Revolution Pi will overcome common barriers of IoT. For example we have thought about security and put a highly secured Crypto Chip onto our devices. And once you’ve got your data secure into the cloud you may find services and business models for new markets. We will support you. We will provide examples for such shifting of creation of value and offer server services to assist you in order to take off the burden of technical realization from your shoulders. If you like, we may be your partner to completely realize your ideas: from development and production of custom specific hard- and software up to providing SMS gateways, MQTT-Broker and other backend services.
What`s next?
In our next blog entry we will dive deeper into each of these topics. Next week we will take a closer look at the RevPi Core. You will learn all about its components, our software concept and much more.
Hi, thanks to the great revolution. I have some ideas to share with you.
The new Raspberry Pi 3 compute module is on its way. Will it be possible to see your solutions.
Please refer to http://hackaday.com/2016/07/15/the-raspberry-pi-3-compute-module-is-on-its-way/
There are some other SBCs needed to be mentioned like Pine A64, Odriod-C2, and DragonBoard 410c.
Not only the hardwares, but also the softwares and their ecosystems.
CentOS is more popular than other Linux distributions in industrial controls.
Both Pine A64 and Odroid-C2 have been tested for 64-bit version of CentOS.
Please refer to https://github.com/umiddelb/aarch64/wiki/Install-CentOS-7-on-your-favourite-ARMv8-ARM64-AArch64-board
And Raspberry Pi 3 will be soon available.
Please refer to https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/Arm32/RaspberryPi3
Microsoft is a big player in this domain, so the Windows 10 IOT supported SBCs should be good enough.
Please refer to https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/downloads
And https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/02/29/windows-10-iot-core-support-for-raspberry-pi-3/
Raspberry Pi would be the most popular one among those SBCs.
I guess that the 4th generation of Raspberry Pi using ARM Cortex-A73 will be soon available.
So I hope you can create a great ecosystem supporting Raspberry Pi in industrial domain.
Regards.
Thanks for your inspiring comment!
Yes we are in direct contact with RPF about CM 3. So far there is no possibility to give any final comments about this topic. We will have to wait for availability and need to check if we might be able to survive a much higher power dissipation of the 64 bit SoC at 55° C plus margin in our test labs or we might consider a derating of ambient temperature if CM 3 is used.
As RevPi is an open system you will be able to use any Linux Distribution you like. But we will test and deliver a RT patched Debian distribution which is close to what Raspberry customers are used to and still will give us full control over the scheduler in order to realize RT applications.
Hope to see you back on the blog,
Volker (Project Manager Revolution Pi).
You might consider an RS232 module – pull out the rx/tx from the GPIO, level-shift and expose as a DB9. There are a number of available modules that do this that we’ve delivered with the Pi. It’s a lot cleaner than USB serial. That said, a multiport USB serial module would also be an interesting product if you’re running the USB as well as the GPIO from module to module.
We’ve been hoping for a 24V Pi and industrial packaging for a while, the 5V versions and commercial cases are not ideal in industrial applications
Welcome Jim,
nice idea! As RS232 would not be a good idea for rough industrial environment we do exchange our data on the back plane bus via RS485. Right now we offer already our Modular Gateway “serial” for RS485 or RS232 data exchange which can handle Modbus and very soon DMX data streams. This Module offers a pre-configured programmable script-interpreter to help dealing with custom protocols.
Our modular gateways are plug and play solutions. You simply plug them aside a RevPi Core and they will start exchanging their data-pool with the central process image – all done by a driver running in the background of our Core.
Hi
Any news about support centos os because currently centos release a version for arm 7, we tested as well because we manage servers working very robust as ever.
So please could we know if exist a way to have centos official as patched raspian for RT
Also what about the new release of raspberry to support more ram
Best Regards
Hi Jean,
please use our forum for questions. Thanks.