Future outlook

Hardware extensions

The major perks of using a server/PC/rugged PC for industrial control are:

• Possibility to add to your control logic ANY functionality available in Linux/Windows such as SQL DBs, OpenCV, complex numerics, interpolations, etc.
• Having virtually unlimited CPU, RAM and disk resources which avoids any tricks and workarounds commonly used in PLC world.

However PCs do not usually have relay outputs or GPIOs. This makes a machine with Control Logic deployed a fairly limited tool in real applications.
We are currently engineering and testing hardware extension modules for a PC that will act as an array of relay outputs.