Raspberry Pi opens the gateway to IoT applications

26th February 2019

Mick Elliott

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Datasheet

Visitors to the Farnell element14 stand at embedded world in Nuremberg got a first look at the exclusive Avnet SmartEdge Industrial IoT Gateway, a new low-cost industrial gateway powered by Raspberry Pi. It enables seamless and secure connectivity to the cloud through Avnet’s IoT Connect platform running on Microsoft Azure, and is ideal for developing industrial automation applications such as, remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, process control and automation.

The gateway addresses key requirements for customers across a wide range of industrial applications – including additional ports to handle industrial protocols and a trusted computing module for added security on the hardware.

Connectivity options include a full set of industrial peripherals which include CAN-BUS and RS-232/ 485 (Modbus and DeviceNet) interfaces, isolated digital I/O and dual 10/100 Ethernet, with wireless connectivity including WiFi at 2.4GHz and BLE 4.2 via an integrated antenna with external connectivity, plus an mPCIe interface for cellular modems.

Power is via a 12-24 V DC input, and an HDMI display output is also incorporated. It is based on an 8Gbyte EMMC which replaces the standard SD memory card, with security guaranteed by an onboard TPM 2.0.

The device also has the 40-pin expansion header to link with a range of devices from the ecosystem of HATs and other accessories.

The enclosure features space for an additional internal accessory to provide Zigbee, Z-Wave, or LoRa communications capabilities, for example, or for multiple accessories through case expansion. Mounting options include DIN rail, wall or free-standing.

“The Avnet SmartEdge Industrial IoT Gateway offers a level of simplicity, capability and accessibility never before achieved in this environment”, says Ralf Buehler, Senior Vice-President, Product Marketing & eCommerce, at Farnell element14.“This new and exclusive product represents the value that Farnell can add to customers as part of Avnet’s unique ecosystem, creating opportunities to develop new solutions for customers, based on strong existing relationships with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.”

Lou Lutostanski, VP, Internet of Things, Avnetadds “Developers familiar with prototyping on a Raspberry Pi device will find it a straightforward task to bring their designs to a production environment without ever having to switch platforms.”

The Avnet SmartEdge Industrial IoT Gateway will be available from the summer from Farnell element14 in Europe and Newark element14 in North America.