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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

They are heavily invested into using GPIO: https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started...

I wonder if industrial-strength RPi clones / variants exist. The demand is certainly there.

The pi foundation supports this in the compute module, which has an emmc variant. However that requires that you make a supporting PCB. (Or buy one from someone else)

If you are buying loads of them they will also customise the pi for you (although I think that's contracted out)

As I said in the other comment, there are already industrial PCs equipped with GPIO, and some models even include an integrated screen

SBCs are good in conditions where reliability is not the primary concern - scenarios where frequent restarts are needed, change sd card, room temperature etc.), but in a boat? I don’t know anything about marine conditions but having a malfunctioning in SD cards and overheating is not uncommon in robotics and especially in drones (where it’s harder to use full fledged PC), few times actually the SD card died midair, no crashes thankfully.

I agree that a proper ruggedized industrial PC would fit better (and cost only a few hundyed more). If their software could work on it, or could be adapted / ported, that would be a great choice. But I suspect that what they have now is mostly married to Pi.

Power is also a concern (at least for sailboats). While there are certainly other 12v computers, that is one of the pluses for rPi in this.

I've worked extensively with NXP's IMX6 hardware installed on carrier boards from a few different vendors. If you're looking for something bulletproof for long-term installation, I'd definitely recommend looking through their product lines.

Seco: https://edge.seco.com/usa/ and Variscite: https://www.variscite.com/products/system-on-module-som/?cpu... are two of the vendors I've worked with and had great experiences with.

There are multiple sources of industrial-strength RPi-based systems for different environments. Including railway-certified devices, industrial controls, etc.

Often coupled with RPi "hat" interface used to attach isolated industrial I/O (24V/analog/4-20mA, etc) or other interfaces.

OnLogic Factor.

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