AIS Also Contributes to Industrial Market with Touchscreen PCs

It appears that Mitsubishi is not the only company paying attention to the market for industrial displays, as AIS has also prepared a number of products, HMI operator interface terminals in this case.

Mitsubishi only revealed a pair of devices, and they were 'just' display modules that haven't even come close to availability yet.

Meanwhile, AIS created a range of electronics that are more complex and definitely more varied, not just in size but overall feature set as well.

The outfit presented the Express II line of HMI operator interface terminals which, essentially, can be considered industrial touchscreen panel PCs with a so-called (more or less) special feature, the PCI slot that is.

That said, they measure 10.4, 12.1, 15, and 17 inches, respectively, and have all the PC capabilities needed to perform such things as industrial automation, complete system data logging for mid-level and supervisory level HMI applications and plant monitoring.

That said, the central piece is an Intel Atom processor, which is accompanied by communication ports RS232, RS485, Ethernet and solid state storage.

For those that want more specifics, the Atom processors used has a clock speed of 1.6 GHz and consumers 2.5W.

The products also have the benefit of a fanless construction, which ensures low power draw and, thus, greater uptime.

Other things that should be mentioned are that the AIS touchscreen panel PCs have an ultra-slim, vibration-resistant design and IP65, CE and FCC certifications, plus RoHS compliance.

AIS expects the newcomers to work best when running the HMI and SCADA software, which allows one to save time, money, enhance flexibility, reduce downtime and facilitate enterprise integration.

In other words, it will be possible, among other things, to view processes form one's desk or web-connected mobile phone or tie into ERP and “back-offve” systems via built-in relational database connectivity.