· Industrial Hardware · 2 min read
Industrial Raspberry Pi: From Toy to Mission-Critical Controller
Don't just put a standard Raspberry Pi 5 on a DIN rail. Learn to harden the hardware and software (OverlayFS, Watchdog) for 24/7 industrial environments.
The Raspberry Pi is an engineering marvel, but taking it out of its plastic box and sticking it into an industrial control panel is a recipe for disaster. Between SD card corruption, lack of surge protection, and high temperatures, a standard Pi will eventually fail.
However, if you use the right hardware and configure the OS for industrial resilience, you have a high-powered Edge PC for a fraction of the cost of a traditional IPC.
1. The Hardware: Forget the Standard Pi
If you’re serious, use the Compute Module 4 or 5 (CM4/CM5).
- eMMC instead of SD: eMMC memory is much more robust and reliable than a standard MicroSD card.
- Industrial Carrier Boards: Use boards like those from Revolution Pi (Kunbus) that comply with the EN 61131-2 standard, support 24V, and have galvanically isolated I/Os.
2. Disk Protection: OverlayFS
The #1 enemy of Linux in embedded systems is power failure. If the system is writing a log when power is lost, the filesystem gets corrupted.
The Solution: OverlayFS (Read-Only Rootfs). This technique mounts the root filesystem in read-only mode and uses a RAM layer for writes. When powered off, everything temporary is erased, but the physical disk remains intact.
👉 Config Repository: industrial-rpi-config
How to enable it?
In Raspberry Pi OS, it’s as simple as:
sudo raspi-config nonint enable_overlayfs3. Watchdog: The Life Insurance
If your application locks up or the kernel enters a panic state, you don’t want to travel 200 miles just to power cycle the device. The Hardware Watchdog is a physical timer: if your code doesn’t “tell” it that it’s alive every few seconds, the chip automatically resets the power.
4. Thermal Management
A Pi 5 at full tilt consumes a lot of energy and generates heat. In a closed enclosure without ventilation, it will enter Thermal Throttling (slowing down to avoid burning out).
- Passive Cooling: Use aluminum cases that act as a large heatsink block.
- Monitoring: Install a script that sends CPU temperature to your SCADA via MQTT.
Conclusion
The Raspberry Pi is only industrial if you make it industrial. With OverlayFS, a good Watchdog, and eMMC memory, you have a device that can run for years without intervention.
Technical Sources:
- Raspberry Pi Foundation: Compute Module 5 Datasheet
- Revolution Pi: Technical Documentation (EN 61131-2)
- Linux Kernel Docs: Overlay Filesystem
