Case Study: 10.1″ IP65 Fanless Panel PC for 50+ Outdoor Municipal Alarm Terminals
How an ODM program solved the half-sealed panel PC problem — aviation locking connectors, IP65 end-to-end, and a 10-year lifecycle for public-space infrastructure in Brazil.
Representative installation: a pole-mounted outdoor terminal in a public garden environment. Illustrative render.At a Glance: An IP65 Seal That Survives Rain, Dust, and the Public
A Brazilian integrator needed a 10.1″ touch terminal for an alarm and monitoring system installed outdoors, in public gardens, in the middle of a city. No catalog panel PC survived that combination of weather, public handling, and field installation. The real problem wasn’t compute — it was keeping an IP65 seal intact while still bringing signals in and out of the box.
BITECH developed the AP-AW1S as an ODM program: a fanless 10.1″ panel PC sealed to IP65 at the front and fitted with aviation (circular locking) connectors so the seal isn’t broken at the I/O. The platform now runs across 50+ municipal garden sites.
The Deployment: Alarm Terminals in Unprotected Public Gardens
The customer builds and deploys alarm and monitoring systems for municipal public spaces. Their new rollout placed interactive terminals in city-centre public gardens — an environment that quietly destroys most panel PCs:
- Outdoors and unprotected — rain, dust, humidity, and day-night temperature swings, year-round.
- Public-facing — the terminal gets touched, leaned on, and occasionally mishandled by people who don’t work there.
- Distributed in the field — each unit sits in the open, cabled to sensors and the network, not tucked inside a clean control cabinet.
Their requirement looked simple on paper: a 10.1″ panel PC with an IP65-rated front, deployable outdoors and serviceable in the field. But no standard product met it — and the reason wasn’t the one most buyers expect.
The Challenge: The IP65 Seal Is Only as Good as the Connector
A panel PC can be sealed at the front bezel to IP65 — dust-tight and protected against water jets. That part is well understood. The failure point is elsewhere: the moment you put standard connectors on the box — USB Type-A, RJ45, DB9 — you create ingress paths. Those connectors can’t hold a seal at the interface, have no locking mechanism, and are trivially unplugged. In a rainy, dusty, public outdoor setting, that turns every port into a water path, a vibration failure, and a tampering target at once.
This is the trap of the “half-sealed” panel PC: a beautifully gasketed front bezel with ordinary ports on the back. The IP65 rating stops where the cables start. For this deployment, the customer’s requirement for IP65 implied an I/O redesign whether or not it was written into the spec — exactly the kind of hidden constraint an ODM program exists to catch before it reaches the field.
| Standard Connectors (USB-A / RJ45 / DB9) | Aviation (Circular Locking) Connectors | |
|---|---|---|
| Interface seal | No seal at the interface — an ingress path | Threaded coupling + gasket maintains the IP seal |
| Vibration & strain | Unseat under vibration and cable strain | Screw-locking; stay mated |
| Tamper resistance | Easy to unplug — a tampering risk | Require deliberate action to disconnect |
| Design intent | Built for indoor, cabinet-protected use | Built for outdoor, field, public-space use |
The Solution: AP-AW1S — Fanless, IP65-Sealed, Aviation-Connected
BITECH engineered the seal and the I/O together, so the IP65 rating holds end-to-end — not just at the bezel.
| Display | 10.1″ industrial LCD |
| Touch | Resistive or PCAP — specified per deployment (resistive chosen here for outdoor, gloved and wet operation) |
| Front-panel protection | IP65 — dust-tight, protected against water jets |
| I/O connectors | Aviation (circular locking) — sealed, vibration-resistant, tamper-resistant |
| Cooling | Fanless — no vents, no dust intake, no moving parts to fail outdoors |
| Mounting | Wall / pole / panel-cut — configured as deployed |
| Power | Wide-range DC input — specified per site |
| Application | Outdoor alarm & monitoring terminal, municipal gardens |
Every design decision traces back to the environment: fanless because vents are dust and water paths; aviation connectors because standard ports break the seal; resistive touch because it works with gloves and in the wet; wide-range DC because field power is never clean or standard.
The ODM Process: From Deployment Brief to Sealed-Unit Validation in 7 Steps
- 1
Requirement review
The customer brought the deployment, not a datasheet. BITECH asked what the unit connects to, where it lives, who touches it, and what had already failed.
- 2
Specification
The deployment was translated into engineering requirements — IP65 front sealing plus an I/O architecture that doesn’t compromise it.
- 3
Mechanical & electrical design
Enclosure, sealing, connector selection and placement, thermal path, panel cutout, and mounting.
- 4
Prototype & validation
Bare-board bring-up, then sealed-unit environmental and thermal testing.
- 5
Customer sample & sign-off
Real hardware in the customer’s hands before commitment.
- 6
Production
Fixed-BOM control and lot traceability across every unit shipped.
- 7
Lifecycle
A 10-year availability commitment — so a municipal rollout isn’t orphaned when a component reaches end-of-life.
The Results: 50+ Municipal Garden Sites on One Sealed Platform
- A platform that fits the environment, not the catalog. The AP-AW1S met the IP65-outdoor requirement end-to-end — sealed front and sealed I/O — where off-the-shelf panel PCs could not.
- Deployed at scale. The design now runs across 50+ municipal garden sites.
- Field-ready by construction. Fanless operation removes the vents and moving parts that fail first outdoors; aviation connectors hold the seal and resist tampering in a public space.
- Protected for the long term. A 10-year availability window with BOM control shields a municipal rollout from component end-of-life — critical where re-qualifying hardware is slow and expensive.
Why It Matters: The Environment Drives the Design, Not the Catalog
This project is a clean illustration of what “industrial ODM” actually means. The customer didn’t need exotic compute — they needed a box that survives rain, dust, public handling, and years in the field without a service crew on standby. That required engineering the sealing and the I/O as one system, on a fanless platform, with a lifecycle long enough for public infrastructure.
When no catalog product fits the environment your hardware has to survive, that’s the ODM path — and it’s where BITECH starts from a deployment, not a part number.
AP-AW1S · Industrial ODM
Frequently asked questions
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With OEM, you take an existing design and apply your branding and configuration. With ODM, the product is designed and manufactured to your requirements — mechanics, I/O, sealing, form factor and mounting. ODM is the right path when no catalog product fits the environment your hardware has to survive, as with the AP-AW1S outdoor terminal.
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The gap wasn't the processor — it was the sealing and the I/O. A bezel can be sealed to IP65, but standard USB Type-A, RJ45 and DB9 connectors create ingress paths, don't lock, and are easy to unplug. Outdoors and in a public space, the connector becomes the weak point, so the IP65 requirement implied an I/O redesign.
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Aviation (circular, threaded) connectors keep the seal at the interface with a gasket and threaded coupling, stay mated under vibration and cable strain, and resist tampering. A panel PC that is IP65 at the front but has standard rear ports isn't really sealed — the rating stops where the cables start.
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Yes — that's the AP-AW1S. For outdoor deployment we engineer the sealing (IP65 or higher), select connectors that maintain that seal, use fanless construction so there are no vents or moving parts, and specify display brightness and temperature range for the site. Tell us where the unit will live and what it connects to, and we'll spec it.
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It varies with project complexity and the degree of custom tooling. For configuration-level changes it can be low; for a fully bespoke enclosure and I/O it is higher to cover engineering and tooling. Share your target volume and we'll give a straight answer for your specific project.
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Yes — a 10-year availability window with fixed-BOM control and lot traceability. For municipal and infrastructure deployments, where re-qualifying hardware is expensive and slow, this protects the rollout from component end-of-life surprises.
No catalog product fits your deployment environment?
Start an ODM conversation — tell us where the unit will live and what it connects to, and our engineers will spec it.
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Products, engineering & solutions behind this build
An ODM program starts from a catalog platform and a deployment. These are the BITECH products, engineering resources, and solutions that anchor a custom build like the AP-AW1S.