Industrial Control Computer (Industrial Personal Computer, IPC), referred to as IPC, has important computer attributes and features, such as having a computer motherboard, CPU, hard disk, memory, peripherals and interfaces, and an operating system, control networks and protocols, computing power, friendly human-machine interface and so on. So, can an industrial controller be used as an ordinary computer? The answer is no, for the following reasons:
1, the dull hardware that can smash walnuts
Industrial control machine categories are: IPC (PC bus industrial computer), PLC (programmable control system), DCS (decentralized control system), FCS (fieldbus system) and CNC (numerical control system) five, but no matter which one, the hardware of these products are usually cured design.
Appearance for the "loyal and honest" type, all the interfaces, styles are designed, want to change is very difficult; compared to the computer's flexible DIY, industrial control machine seems particularly dull.
In addition, many industrial computer in order to achieve good dust, water, moisture performance, many of the closed design, some through the internal fan for air circulation cooling, and some of the blade fanless cooling design.
Compared to the computer's "open" design, "conservative" industrial control machine is like a brick, strong, durable, smashing walnuts are a piece of cake.
2, specialized to boring software system
Personal or office computers are generally installed Windows operating system, with a mature software ecosystem, audio and video entertainment everything.
Industrial control machine can choose to install Windows operating system, but in many cases prefer Linux, Unix and other open operating systems.
Compared with the Windows system, Linux, Unix does not have a unified software ecosystem, but each enterprise to set up their own supporting, so it is easy to form a closed system, with a strong system security: the products of different enterprises often can not be interconnected; worse, the same company's products at different times are not compatible.
Software system closed ecology, so that the industrial control machine can concentrate on dealing with things, such as dedicated to traffic light control, face recognition, data analysis, etc., dealing with things monotonous and specialized.
Even if the industrial control machine is installed with Windows operating system, because the equipment is designed to meet the special needs, the hardware configuration to meet the needs of the guidelines, will not pursue high performance, the operating system may not be the latest platform, such an industrial control machine does not have enough hardware resources to support additional applications, can not meet the demand for redundant audio-visual entertainment.
If you want to play in such a turn to work and the existence of the industrial computer, will be bored to death.
3, to be more than perseverance, industrial computer afraid of who?
Industrial control machine is usually applied in harsh working conditions, in order to ensure the stability and reliability of the equipment, reduce the amount of maintenance, often designed to work 24 hours a day 7 × 24 hours a day "workaholic", the average trouble-free time up to ten or twenty years.
If such a device as a home or office computer, then congratulations, the future of a long period of time, you can not replace the computer, perhaps you have replaced the N cell phone, this "computer" is still stable as the beginning of the computer can save a lot of replacement of the cost of computers, provided that you can tolerate unsatisfactory use of the experience.
In addition, industrial control machine in the beginning of the design of a variety of dust, humidity and other harsh environments, with such a device as a computer, even if the king of dirt, but also do not have to worry about downtime for the host dust.
4, if the computer as an industrial computer with ......
Then someone has to ask, can the computer as an industrial computer to use?
The answer is also no!
Once someone will be PC computer host as an industrial computer to use, responsible for image processing.
In practice, because the PC can not support ultra-long hours of work, the equipment will be down at intervals; and video processing, the efficiency is far less than the professional industrial computer, there are such as delay, stream coding is not stable, the picture noise and other unfavorable situations.
Of course, you can also use the top configuration of the computer to replace the industrial computer, but the cost is quite large.
Generally in the absence of conditions, some engineers will be in the validation phase, borrowed PC briefly instead of an industrial computer, really put into use, or to use back to the professional industrial control equipment.
5, written in the end
As the saying goes, there are specialties, the emergence of industrial controllers, is to solve professional problems and the existence of long-term practice and verification of the results, never civilian products can be easily replaced.
With the diversification of applications, especially 5G, autonomous driving, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other new technologies, the emergence of new applications, the use of industrial controllers has also become more professional, perhaps its hardware performance is not the best, but the application effect is the best.