Automation specialist Omron has introduced a new Industrial PC for reliable, round-the-clock operation even in the most demanding industrial conditions. The DyaloX IPC features a no-compromise design in which every potential source of failure such as moving parts has been eliminated as far as possible. The units are manufactured from the highest industrial grade components and come with a full 3-year warranty.

It's commonly recognised that moving parts in a PC, such as cooling fans and hard disk drives, are a potential source of failure. Fewer moving parts mean fewer failures and hence a more reliable product. So instead of a hard disk drive, Omron's new DyaloX IPC uses a 1 or 2 GB "Disk on Module" silicon storage system that offers fast access and exceptional ruggedness. Moreover, instead of an electric fan to cool the CPU, heat is radiated away by a heavy heatsink with cooling fins.

The new DyaloX IPCs are built using state-of-the-art supplier-guaranteed components, including an industrial-grade power supply and 1.3 GHz Celeron CPU. In addition, to ensure the quality of the motherboards, Omron designs and assembles these in-house.

In creating the DyaloX, Omron has drawn on its extensive experience in the manufacture of industrial-class stand-alone PC-based equipment (like ATMs) to create special self-diagnostic hardware and software. This includes the company's proprietary RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) solution in which a built-in RAS board, interfaced by RAS utility software, continually monitors and logs the status of the IPC.

Because this unique RAS board is a stand-alone board, it can gather data from the motherboard no matter what the Operating System or hardware conditions are. The Omron RAS solution can notify the user when unstable hardware or software conditions are detected. It can also, if necessary, take action to automatically resolve errors and enables causes of failure to be investigated. Whatever the reason for failure, the RAS board is able to provide a system snapshot just before failure occurs. Then, by analyzing the logged data, the trend and cause of failures can be quickly found and rectified for higher reliability in the future.

DyaloX IPCs are also delivered with pre-installed software. Besides the Omron RAS utility software that acts as the interface to the RAS board, pre-installed software includes a special highly-stable 'industrialised' version of the Windows XP Embedded operating system.

The functionality of DyaloX IPCs is expandable via two PCI slots, USB and serial ports plus an Ethernet port and PS/2 interfaces. Expansion possibilities include a special PLC PCI option board featuring an Omron PLC powered by a separate power supply. This board enhances reliability by adding a second CPU independent of the motherboard. Other expansion possibilities include a Compact Flash data storage extension and expansion by software such as a runtime for existing Omron NS-series HMI projects.