Dev Kit Weekly: OnLogic IGN800 Industrial Raspberry Pi IoT Gateway
October 07, 2022
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This may come as a surprise, but Raspberry Pis, by themselves, are not industrial grade. But what if I told you there’s a kit out there that could turn a Raspberry Pi into a SCADA gateway for automation facilities that requires little-to-no integration at all? Well, it’s right in my hands, and it’s called the OnLogic IGN800 Industrial Raspberry Pi IoT Gateway.
The IGN800 is a 4.04in x 5.08in x 1.50in fanless, aluminum-encased industrial edge gateway capable of operating from -20ºC to 60ºC and powered by none other than the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. The industrial-grade Raspberry Pi CM4 contains a Broadcom BCM2711 with a quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC that runs at 1.5GHz. There’s also up to 8GB of LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM, as well as up to 32GB of eMMC Flash memory and an M.2 SATA drive that allows for an additional 2 TB of storage.
Now, the CM4 doesn’t just drop straight into the IGN800 enclosure. It sits on a custom carrier designed by OnLogic that brings out a ton of connectivity interfaces such as dual 1 GbE LAN ports and several USB ports, backed by an on-carrier Realtek RTL8153 USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet LAN controller. The carrier also brings out signals such as RS-232/422/485 to an f-pin terminal block, as well as multimedia to an HDMI port supported by a video codec that provides up to 4Kp60 H.265 decode and 1080p60 H.264 encode.
An Infineon CYW43455-based Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 5 combo module and four antenna holes on the carrier also makes wireless connectivity an option should the environment permit. The whole setup can be powered by a wide-range 8-24 V DC power input, accessible via a 3-pin terminal block.
Of course, we promised out-of-the-box SCADA, and while the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 is great it’s not designed from the ground up for that purpose. But what is, is one of the modules available in Inductive Automation’s Ignition Edge Software.
Ignition Edge is a suite of lightweight field application software that enables capabilities such as data collection, visualization, and system management in a single package. The base Edge Core stack connects to OPC UA servers and acts as an OPC UA client capable of supporting up to two device connections and native drivers for UDP, TCP, BACnet, and Serial devices; ABB, Allen-Bradley, Emerson, Omron, Opto22, Siemens, and other leading automation systems; and more, allowing endpoints and their data to be integrated into customizable dashboards and controlled remotely.
Ignition Edge can be used on systems that run Windows, macOS, or Linux, including Raspberry Pi devices like the CM4. For the deployment of entire SCADA networks, users can leverage web-based tools to integrate Ignition Edge-enabled devices with servers like Ignition SCADA to create robust, somewhat ad hoc, but massively scalable SCADA networks that provide data visibility and control at scale.
OnLogic has worked directly with Inductive Automation to certify the IGN800 for Ignition Edge and package licenses of the software with the hardware to streamline time to deployment. There are also several add-on modules that provide additional capabilities on top of Ignition Edge Core, like Ignition Edge IIoT that publishes data over MQTT; Ignition Edge Compute, which runs scripts and creates REST APIs for third-party application interfacing at the edge; and Ignition Edge Sync Services, a quasi-remote server that synchronizes data collected at the network edge to a central Ignition server.
If you’d like to learn more about Inductive Automation and Ignition Edge, visit https://inductiveautomation.com/ignition/edge.
So, now that you know how simple it could be to establish your own SCADA-connected industrial gateway, are you seeing the humble Raspberry Pi in a different light than ever before?
If you’d like to get started on your own, you can purchase an IGN800 with Ignition from OnLogic’s website for $449.50. Or, you can enter the raffle below for a chance to win this one right here for free —we’ll even cover the shipping anywhere in the world.
(Note for raffle: Ignition software available separately.)
