Edge Device Application

General PhidgetSBC Discussion.
midenginecrisis
Fresh meat
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed May 13, 2026 5:01 am

Edge Device Application

Post by midenginecrisis »

Hi!

I have a potential industrial OEM application that I am wondering if the Phidget SBC is a good fit for.

Current Application: Former machine was G-Code programmed on an industrial HMI, now is a "Conversational" data table on an industrial HMI and PLC (same PLC).

Current Setup:
Red Lion Flexedge HMI communicating via ModBus to a Yaskawa MP3300 PLC.

Current Operation:
Red Lion HMI handles the database/recipe functions via its own C-Style Script and saves/loads them to/from the thumb drive. It is not well suited for this, and now headless HMI they want to use does not allow a connection of both Mouse/Keyboard and Thumb Drive...I know, ridiculous.


So, I am looking for a device that can take that thumb drive with CSV recipe files and be able to load/save, etc to the HMI or PLC.

The recipe is a data table consisting of a series arrays 0-99 that the program executes one row at a time. 4 arrays are floating point/real, 9 are Signed Integer, and one string (program name).

It would need to do this over Ethernet/IP or ModBus. I could make this happen over OPC/UA, if I want to further open this can of worms...I really don't.


What do you think? Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Also, don't buy Red Lion products.
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burley
Human-Cyborg Relations
Posts: 31
Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:37 pm
Location: Calgary

Re: Edge Device Application

Post by burley »

Unfortunately, our hardware isn't compatible with PLC operating systems. You'd have to have a separate system (like the SBC or a Raspberry Pi) handling the Phidget components and then write a bit of connector code that communicates between that and the external PLC. Not really a viable solution I would say.
Brian Burley
403-282-7335 ext. 6003
support@phidgets.com
midenginecrisis
Fresh meat
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed May 13, 2026 5:01 am

Re: Edge Device Application

Post by midenginecrisis »

Thank you for the reply.

It is not the hardware I am interested in, but rather the SBC as the interface between the UBS thumb drive and the HMI.

Red Lion does not have a dedicated recipe/database function so I have to use their C-style script which is not great for this.

I was thinking the SBC could have SQLite to handle the recipes/arrays as a data table and then only feed the HMI the programs that it calls for.

Regardless, I was a bit short-sighted as this will need to meet industrial requirements, which the SBC will not be able to do anyways.