Kontron's Fanless Data Concentrator for SCADA and Control Room Systems Impresses with Its High Electromagnetic Immunity

Kontron presents the new Kontron Passau II, a fanless, intelligent data concentrator for SCADA and control room systems. The 2U rackmount server, which can be extended on a modular basis, is designed to meet the highest requirements in electromagnetic immunity. It furthermore excels with its scalable number of protected GbE LAN, CAN and galvanically isolated serial interfaces for surge protection.

These features enable its deployment in heavy current environments while also allowing for the direct control of devices with live current. The server is also equipped to protect all surrounding IT equipment against potential voltage surges on its test and control interfaces.

Typical applications areas are, for example, in substations and SCADA systems in the fields of power generation and distribution as well as in the process industry and in utility management. Further application scenarios are to be found in technical facility management or in passgenger information systems at train stations as well as on trains.

With its fanless chassis, the robust and long-term available Kontron Passau II is not only protected against dust and moisture infiltration, it is particulary low on maintenance. By using PCI (short) and PCI104 extension components, it can furthermore be very flexibly configured to meet individual application needs.

Kontron’s new fanless intelligent data concentrator Passau II delivers reliable 24/7 performance in a working temperature range of 0 to 50 °C over an operating period of 10 years which deems it particularly suitable for applications with long-term service life.

The feature set in detail
The Kontron Passau II (350 mm x 430 mm x 89 mm = 2U) comes fitted with either an Intel Celeron processor 827E or an Intel Core i3 processor 2310E and offers a perfect balance between computing performance and fanless energy efficiency. The up to 20 galvanically isolated serial interfaces (RS232/422/485) are protected against surges of up to 2500 volts.

The data concentrator can be equipped with up to 10x 1GbE LAN interfaces, 2x USB 2.0 and ports for two independent displays (DVI + VGA or DVI + DVI) and thus offers a rich and scalable selection of interfaces for communication nodes in the process industry.

Via a PCI slot (short) or via a PCI104 socket with support for up to three PCI devices, flexible extensions can also be carried out. For this purpose, the entire ecosystem of PCI104 extension components is available which, for example, makes it possible to extend the systems with isolated CAN controllers.

For data storage, two 2.5” SATA 3.0 HDDs or SSDs, a CompactFlash disk as well as disk-on-modules can be integrated. Front panel indicator LEDs provide information about the status of all the communication interfaces. In addition, separate reset and boot switches are provided as well as two USB 2.0 ports. Rounding off the feature set, a wide-range voltage power supply unit simplifies the power connection.

The Kontron fanless intelligent data concentrator Passau II is now available in EMEA and will be available in America and APAC in Q2 2013. It offers operating system support for Linux, Windows XP Embedded, QNX and VxWorks.