0X0xEF·Nov 3, 2025
> Well at the moment you have to power, house and protect an entire Windows PC...
In the case of this specific product, the customer supplies their own PC and we supply the software for it. No matter how you cut the mustard, it's not an ideal setup in my eyes. It's rare to see them us an existing PC that serves more than one purpose on these machines. What I usually see them do is buy a cheap Windows laptop and have that running next to the machine. So, as I mentioned, if I can eliminate the need for a separate PC at all, that's a step forward.
I'm currently exploring the Pi 5 idea, too. I've only been with the company for a few years, but this design was made about 15 years ago? The speed of getting them to change anything, especially when what they've been doing has been working, is glacial, at best, even though they're a small company
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with the potential to be pretty agile. I have a Pi 5 in-house right now with Windows 10 on it (courtesy of https://github.com/Botspot/bvm) as a sort of proof-of-concept that we would not even have to port our software to work on a different platform, but it's in the corner of my workroom collecting dust due to their lack of interest. Some days, I'm not sure why I try.
I see another commenter pointed out some Seeed boards that was not aware of, so I guess it's not that the options never existed, but more so the higher-ups aren't all that interested in changing something for the sake of future-proofing or being more efficient and cost-effective. This is, unfortunately, an extremely common problem in industrial automation. That and, as much as I try to keep up, I'm also admittedly not fully cognizant of all the SBC/microcontroller options out there, so I appreciate discussions like this.