AUSTIN, Texas – In his opening keynote speech at NIWeek 2015, CEO and co-founder of National Instruments, James Truchard, said that there was a new industrial revolution upon us. He was referring to the industrial “Internet of Things,” which has been a hot topic at this year’s conference.
National Instruments is looking to be a leader in this space, launching a handful of new products designed to make industrial processes more efficient using what Truchard calls analog data. From smart tractors and cranes to whole factories, the IIoT will change the way things are built.
Speaking at a panel on IoT, Paul Didier, solutions architect manager for Cisco System’s Internet of Things group also addressed how this new way of looking at construction, faring and manufacturing processes could open up a new world of possibilities.
“With basic connectivity to the machines … they’re starting to do zero downtime, asset utilization, asset optimization, [things] that are absolutely incredible in terms of the value they’re starting to bring to their customers, but also driving them to utterly new business models,” he said.
On Tuesday, National Instruments unveiled new control systems specifically designed for industrial IoT. The products include embedded systems hardware based on NI’s LabVIEW configurable RIO architecture. This hardware includes the CompactRIO controller, Controller for FlexRIO and Single-Board RIO controller.
NI said, “These controllers integrate the latest embedded technologies from Intel and Xilinx to deliver unparalleled performance and flexibility, empowering system designers and machine builders to address the most demanding control and monitoring challenges.”
“As the industrial Internet of Things continues to impact the way the world connects, communicates and optimizes smart systems, embedded engineers face growing and evolving networking, performance and security demands and increased pressure to get to market faster, all while reducing development costs,” Jamie Smith, director of embedded systems at NI said. “NI’s LabVIEW RIO architecture delivers a complete platform so engineers can quickly design, prototype and deploy embedded systems for advanced monitoring and control applications in the IIoT.”
The CompactRIO controller boasts an Intel Atom processor designed to increase the efficiency of the controller while adding greater precision with its quad-core 1.91 GHz processor.
The Controller for FlexRIO uses high-speed control algorithms and advanced signal processing with support for over 30 high-performance I/O adapter modules to help designers with high-performance embedded applications while the Single-Board RIO controller is designed with a board-level form factor to embed intelligence into smart industrial systems.
