Arduino's Pro Range Gains an Industrial IoT Powerhouse: Meet the Portenta Machine Control
This $355 DIN-mountable Portenta aims to add edge computing and AI to otherwise-disconnected industrial equipment.
The Arduino Pro family has grown bigger once again, with an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) device designed to bring edge computing and artificial intelligence to industrial automation: the Portenta Machine Control.
Arduino launched the Portenta family with the Portenta H7, unveiled at CES last year. Designed to appeal equally to Arduino's base of hobbyists and the new market of professionals looking to prototype or even produce new devices built on Arduino hardware. Since then, it's been updating the range with new add-ons: The Portenta Vision Shield gave the board tinyML capabilities for computer vision and voice at the edge, and its follow-up the Portenta Vision Shield LoRa included long-range low-power wireless connectivity.
Now, the Portenta Machine Control has its sights set firmly on the Industrial IoT. "The Portenta Machine Control adds Industrial IoT capabilities to standalone industrial machinery," the company explains of its latest launch in the Arduino Pro range. "It enables the collection of real-time data from the factory floor and supports the remote control of equipment, even from the cloud, when desired. Thanks to its computing power, the Portenta Machine Control enables a wide range of predictive maintenance and AI use cases. It can be programmed using the Arduino framework or other embedded development platforms."
Based on the Portenta H7 core, which is powered by an STMicroelectronics STM32H747XI with Arm Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M4 cores, the Portenta Machine Control includes eight 24Vdc inputs, two channels for encoder readings, three analog inputs dedicated to PT100/PT1000/J/K temperature probes and another three analog inputs offering 4-20mA/0-10V/NTC 10K, eight 24Vdc digital outputs, four 0-10V analog outputs with up to 20mA per channel, and 12 24V-logic programmable digital input/outputs.
The board comes equipped with Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity as well as CAN bus and RS232/422/485 support, a dedicated programming port, 8MB of SDRAM, 16MB of on-board flash, and supports operation from -40° C to +85° C (-40° F to 185°F). The board, which can be paired with a DIN bar compatible housing, measures 170x90x50mm (around 6.7x3.54x1.97in).
The Portenta Machine Control is now available on the Arduino Store for $335.