Industrial PCs Maximize Uptime with Advanced Data Protection and Factory Alert Health Monitoring

Dec. 29, 2008
Pro-face America introduces the APL3000 family of industrial PCs

Pro-face America introduces the APL3000 Series of industrial PCs that deliver enhanced data protection for factory floor applications. The APL3000 industrial PCs feature a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU and expanded memory, up to 4GB of RAM. A built-in Factory Alert System (RAS — Reliability, Availability, Serviceability) monitors PC health and generates instant notifications about excessive heat exposure, impending hard drive or fan failure, CPU or power troubles. Advanced Data Protection uses hot swappable hard drives and RAID-enabled redundancy to protect critical plant data.

WinGP software enhances application flexibility, allowing the APL3000 to operate as an open HMI or as a PC running third-party Microsoft Windows applications. The APL3000 Series industrial PCs are UL Certified Class I Div 2 and CE rated. The product line includes a range of operator interfaces, from 12.1 to 19 inches.

The APL3000's Factory Alert Health Monitoring system takes advantage of Pro-face's Reliability Availability Serviceability (RAS) technology and provides early warning fault detection. RAS monitors PC operation and performance such as voltage, fan speed, internal temperature, touch panels, backlight and hard drive failures. Instant notifications are generated via sight, sound, on-screen and remotely, or can be digitally output to a PLC so it can automatically switch to safe operations mode. The hot swappable hard drive increases reliability, is ideal for fast field replacements and ensures that production lines remain operational. RAID-enabled back-up with soft mirroring provides redundant data storage and ensures data is recorded and stored safely across arrays.

The APL3000 Series of industrial PCs includes a range of operator displays, from 12-inch to 19-inch mounted keyboard or panel touchscreen interfaces. A choice of Microsoft XP or Vista operating systems are offered, along with a choice between high performance and standard class Intel processors: the high performance, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo 2 processor or the midrange 1.86 MHz Celeron M processor.
 
The APL3000 Series offers solid state and standard hard drive options, including maintenance-free, 8 GB bootable, compact flash or standard 6 GB hard drive, two or four expandable PCI slots for plug and play functionality and two independent Ethernet ports. The APL3000 is CE approved and UL certified for Class 1, Div 2 hazardous location applications. Custom configurations are available. 

The APL3000 Series is optionally available with WinGP or Pro-Server EX software. WinGP is a runtime option for Pro-face America's GP-Pro EX HMI development software. WinGP allows the APL3000 PCs to run as a Windows-based Open HMI communicating with a variety of external devices, including PLCs, motion, vision barcode readers and RTUs. The software can also communicate with third-party Microsoft Windows based applications, including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and C#.
 
Pro-Server EX is easy-to-use enterprise data management software for data collection and process monitoring with APL3000 Series industrial PCs. Pro-Server EX includes a range of connectivity options to link the APL3000 Series to virtually any system via MES, DDE, DLL, Active X and OPC
Server.
 
The APL3000 Series is interoperable with other Pro-face operator interfaces and is cutout compatible to the company's Xycom industrial PC systems, reducing complexity and configuration time and preserving existing IT investments in one common Pro-face platform.