Industrial Computing Solutions for Environments That Break Standard Hardware

1. Wide-range 9–36V DC input — not a 12V rail. Truck buses swing 8–32V under load; a fixed-voltage brick browns out.
2. Ignition control with programmable on/off delay — so the PC doesn't drain the battery when parked and doesn't crash-restart on cranking.
3. Transient protection to ISO 7637-2 and ISO 16750-2 — the load-dump and cranking pulses are what fry the input stage on the day of the first cold start.
4. Isolated CAN and RS-485 for the vehicle bus — ground potential differences between chassis grounds are real.

The AX-234BT and vehicle configurations cover all four as a single spec, not four separate add-ons.

Deep dive: Powering an Industrial PC in a Vehicle →

The camera setup usually decides, not the TOPS number.

Jetson Orin NX (AE-NJ60BT) — 4 or more cameras cabled across a moving chassis, ROS2 + Isaac ROS stack, VSLAM or multi-object tracking. GMSL2 ingress (~15 m over coax) solves what MIPI and USB cannot.

RK3588 (AE-3588LBT) — simpler AMR on a fixed route, 1–2 cameras, stable model, cost per unit matters across a fleet.

Both run fanless, both support isolated CAN. The wrong choice usually shows up as GMSL2 gap or RKNN toolchain overhead 3 months into the project.

Full framework: RK3588 vs Jetson Orin for Multi-Camera Vision and AMR →

Depends on who touches it and how.

Box PC + external display — when the operator interface is mostly fixed (mounted screen in a truck cab, HMI on an AGV), and compute needs to survive vibration in a location the operator does not reach.

Rugged tablet — when the same operator carries the interface between vehicles or workstations, when hands-free bar-code / RFID scanning is part of the workflow, or when the deployment involves outdoor field service.

The reliability engineering (fanless, sealed, wide-temp) is similar on both form factors; the difference is what happens in the operator's hand.

They serve different networks and should stay physically separate.

Isolated CAN — use it on the powertrain bus, motor drives, and any CAN that crosses vehicle chassis segments. The 4000V isolation barrier stops ground potential differences and switching transients from cascading into the compute.

Non-isolated CAN — fine for a low-noise sensor sub-network with a shared local ground (a mast-mounted sensor cluster, an in-cabin telemetry loop). Lower latency, lower cost per port.

BITECH platforms typically ship with 2 CAN FD ports so you can dedicate each to its own network rather than compromising with a single mid-tier isolation level.

Guide: Isolated vs Non-Isolated I/O →

Match to the failure mode, not the marketing number.

• IP65 — sealed against dust and low-pressure water jets from any direction. Enough for outdoor cabinets, roadside enclosures, and covered outdoor installations.
• IP66 — sealed against powerful water jets (fire hose level). Needed for exposed marine, vehicle roof, or driven-rain locations.
• IP67 — sealed against temporary immersion (1 m for 30 min). Needed only if the enclosure will actually be submerged.
• IP69K — sealed against 80°C high-pressure steam cleaning. Needed for food and pharma washdown, not for weather.

Overspecifying costs money on the enclosure design and often forces aviation connectors that limit I/O layout. Match the number to the actual failure you're preventing.

Three deployment realities push you into the wide range:

• Unheated outdoor enclosures in continental or high-altitude climates — overnight temperatures can hit -30°C or lower, and the PC must boot cold in the morning.
• Sun-loaded sealed cabinets — direct sun on a black steel cabinet in a hot climate pushes internal air well above 60°C even with modest ambient.
• Vehicle engine bays and rooftop installations — radiated heat plus solar plus enclosed volume.

If your deployment is indoors with HVAC or in a shaded outdoor location in a temperate climate, -20°C to +60°C is usually enough and cheaper. Do not overspecify the temperature range for a rooftop that never sees direct sun.

The threat is not the operating voltage — it's the transients when equipment switches, and the ground potential differences between the switchgear and the control room.

The BITECH energy configuration uses 4000V galvanic isolation withstand on every field-facing interface (CAN, RS-485, DIO). This creates an electrical firewall between the substation ground and the compute core, so a surge on the field side does not cascade into the CPU.

Combined with wide-temperature fanless construction and Fixed BOM Control for 10+ year availability, a single deployment can outlast the switchgear it monitors.

Deep dive: Industrial PC Galvanic Isolation →

Usually the trigger is connectors, not the mainboard.

A catalog panel PC gives you IP65 on the front panel and standard connectors on the back — USB-A, RJ45, DB9. Those connectors break the seal. Field-service technicians unplug them, moisture gets in, corrosion follows.

ODM makes sense when you need aviation (M12/M8) connectors integrated into the sealed enclosure, when the customer's mounting requires a non-standard bracket or cutout, or when the alarm/output loop needs an interface the catalog doesn't offer. Our AP-AW1S ODM (10.1" IP65 panel PC for a municipal garden alarm system) is one example — the customer's real requirement wasn't a display, it was a sealed I/O that would survive 5 years outdoors.

See the case: Industrial ODM →

The bottleneck is rarely the CPU or the model — it's camera ingress and network fabric.

For GigE Vision cameras with cable runs under a metre inside a fixed inspection cell, use an 8-port 2.5GbE aggregator (AX-320BT) with LACP link aggregation and isolated serial for triggering.

For cable runs beyond a metre or moving cameras, switch to GMSL2 on Jetson Orin (AE-NJ60BT) — up to 4 cameras over coax, deterministic sync, no host-side USB bandwidth limits.

Choose ingress first, then the CPU / GPU. A wrong ingress choice cannot be firmware-fixed.

Compare: GMSL2 vs GigE Vision →

Coating protects the PCB from condensation and mist; it does not seal the enclosure.

For a genuine washdown line (food, pharma, packaging with high-pressure water) you need both:

• IPC-CC-830B silicone conformal coating (26–38 µm) on the populated PCB, applied after DVT — protects against condensation and salt-fog corrosion even if the enclosure is briefly compromised.
• IP65 or IP69K enclosure depending on cleaning process, plus sealed connectors on every I/O.

Coating alone is not enough for direct water contact. Enclosure alone is not enough for the long-term condensation that always finds its way past a gasket. Both together give a system that survives 24/7 washdown operation.

Guide: Conformal Coating →

• Small integration (1–2 motion cards or DAQ boards) — AX-520EBT with mixed PCI + PCIe slots. Lets you migrate a validated PCI card to a modern OS without redesigning the whole system.
• Dense integration (3+ PCI cards, high channel count) — AX-530EBT with 3 PCI + 1 PCIe x4. Built for the "many cards, high slot count" case.
• Modern fieldbus + AI acceleration — AX-660EBT with 12th Gen Core, dual CAN and PCIe x4 for a GPU or Hailo-8. Bridges legacy add-in workloads with modern compute.

Slot count, card generation and thermal envelope decide the tier — not the CPU headline number.

You cannot prevent silicon EOL; you can prevent it becoming your problem.

Fixed BOM Control locks the exact component list after DVT — no silent substitutions. When an unavoidable component change is coming, we issue a formal PCN (Product Change Notification) at least 6 months in advance with a last-time-buy window. That gives you time to place buffer stock, re-validate the changed part, or plan migration to the successor platform.

For customers running "Copy Exactly" processes (semiconductor fabs, pharma), we maintain platform-specific compatibility records and controlled release notes so your qualification does not need to restart from scratch.

Policy: Lifecycle Management →