September 3, 2015 - Harting releases IIC MICA, a modular platform of open hardware and software that can be adapted to many industrial application areas.
The platform consists of a compact, economically priced and extremely robust computer suitable for scenarios in industry and rail systems that has been tested in accordance with EN 50155 and other industry and railway standards. Built upon this is the Virtual Industrial Computing software platform, which is based on a combination of established Linux technologies. This platform enables the virtualization of applications on field devices without the overhead typically seen with virtualization.
All applications run in sandboxes in virtual containers that hold all required libraries and drivers for the particular application. As a result, package dependencies and incompatibilities are things of the past.
Thanks to this combination, MICA offers far more than just an enhanced industrial equivalent of a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone. Specifically, it provides a complete infrastructure for the rapid integration of intelligence into existing manufacturing systems, data collection and the rapid and cost efficient implementation of future-proof small and medium-sized Industry 4.0 projects and Proofs of Concepts.