HARTING Technology Group has launched IIC MICA, a modular platform to facilitate entry to Industry 4.0 and enable companies to move into Integrated Industry by implementing their own individual solution. IIC MICA stands for Integrated Industry Computer Modular Industry Computing Architecture and is a modular open hardware/software platform. It was designed from the ground up as a robust modular platform for industry that can be adapted rapidly to many different industrial applications.

The MICA Computing Appliance serves as a hardware platform and is a compact computer, tested according to EN 50155 as well as other industrial and railway standards. The platform offers interfaces consisting of fieldbus standards and USB up to RFID and BLE via custom function boards. It combines a dustproof/splashproof aluminium die-cast Housing with outstanding vibration and shock resistance. All Components are designed for an extremely long service life in harsh industrial environments. Thanks to its compact dimensions and the default built-in Industrial connectors as well as the 24V power supply, the MICA Computing Appliance is ideally suited for integrating computer intelligence into manufacturing plants or retrofitting existing plants, by mounting one or more MICAs and developing or installing apps for special applications.

The MICA Computing Appliance not only forms the basis of the MICA platform. In many cases, the comprehensive package of a 1GHz ARM processor, a 1GB of RAM, up to 32GB memory and multi-tasking capability via HARTING Virtual Industrial Computing can replace one or more industrial computers at an attractive price and with minimal maintenance costs.

The basis of the MICA software environment is a Linux System that is optimised for embedded applications. HARTING Industrial Virtual Computing is then layered over this, Making it possible to virtualise applications on a field device without the overhead of traditional virtualisation. All MICA applications run in LXC containers in separate sandboxes. The required libraries and drivers are all contained in the respective container. This leaves dependencies among packages, incompatibilities and negative side effects between applications behind.

In brief:

* Modular, quick, user-friendly
* Decentralised communication between machine components
* Freely scalable via large portfolio, and
* Robust and industry-adapted.