Difference Between Industrial Computers And Regular Off-The-Shelf Pcs

Commercial personal computers available at office or home and the industrial PC use similar motherboards and microprocessors. These may also use similar floppy drives, hard drives, or CD-ROM drives which keeps down the costs. Other than that, though there are a few similarities between the two.

Here are some notable differences between the two.

Built differences

Commercial PCs rarely find use outside the comfortable office or home environments. These come in desktop casing and freestanding tower made of plastic and metal light sheets. In majority of the cases, you need to attach the associated keyboards and monitors separately. Considered together you will see that these models are mostly of disposable varieties. This is never the case with industrial computers, which are for use in harsh environments and for longevity. Packaged in stainless steel and aluminum rugged enclosures these operate without fail in water, heat, cold, and amidst corrosives.

Expansion

Myriad industrial cards are available for Interdepartmental Service Agreement (ISA) format that includes I/O and device networking, motion control, vision, and data acquisition. However, these kinds of slots are still extremely rare in the commercial PC and even if these are present, it is only of the half-length, single slot variety. Maximum 6 ISA full-length slots are available with industrial computers for accommodating manufacturer installed devices and networks.

Communications

Industrial touch screen computer and similar varieties depend upon serial and parallel communications. This includes operator interfaces, PLCs, devices or serial input, backpack drives, network printers, detectors of RF tag, and touch screen remote interfaces. However, the latest commercial devices nowadays are using USB and Fire wire (IEEE 1394). While things may change in the industrial scenario but until now, no USB ports are available in the industrial devices.

Power management

Power management remains in built with system and BIOS components in commercial PC. These may cause unnecessary interference during commercial applications. Functions such as ACPI or OnNow that makes the systems sleep or spin down during inactive phases and allow setting of rescheduled shut down or start-up time. While these may be desirable in a commercial setting, only causes nuisance in the industries. Naturally, operators disable such functions there.

Maintenance

Maintaining touch screen panel and related devices in industrial setting requires quick action with personal maintenance and system integrators troubleshooting and maintaining units in real time. There is no chance of removal of these away from plant floors. In order to make this happen easily industrial computers come with different design features.

This includes device front access ports, drive bays, external pop off fan filters, two-piece hinged chassis and easy removal back cover that don't require any tools. If absolute removal is necessary for repairs or programming then it is possible to detach the rear chassis completely from front panel minus any effect to enclosure rating or panel mounting. No such elaborate design requirements are necessary in a commercial computer.

Do you want to know more about industrial computers? Feel free to visit the website Comfiletech.com.

About The Author

Timothy Parker is a computing technology expert who believes touchscreen monitors and HMI to be the epitome of convenience and versatility. He recommends ComfileTech.com as the name to bank upon for all your touch panel PC requirements. Visit Comfiletech.com for more information on touchscreen monitors.