Hi, Habr, we are Advantech



    Are pleased to introduce myself, we - the company Advantech's , producer of a large number of solutions for the automation industry, health care, retail and telecommunications, with headquarters in Taiwan. Our products are used worldwide, including in federal systems in Russia.

    At the end of 2018, we launched a full-fledged representative Advantech in Moscow, and now we are ready to communicate directly with a professional Russian-speaking audience. In the next two years, we plan to launch a vocational training center to train specialists who are ready to solve problems in the field of intellectual production, electric power, logistics, networks and information security. We will be glad to find employees, customers and partners on Habré.

    In our blog we will talk about how our products help solve a variety of problems, from oil production to automation of greenhouses. To show how modern production is organized within the framework of the Industrial IoT concept, industrial protocols and software, as well as arrange independent crash tests of our protected devices.

    We will encourage developers to study modern industrial technologies using hackathons and CTF . We will make every effort to ensure that our publications are interesting and useful to a wide range of IT specialists.

    Under the cut is a brief history of the company, a description of the main areas of activity, and several success stories of our customers.

    Advantech History


    The company was founded in 1983, by three former Hewlett-Packard engineers, and began its development with the production of industrial automatic testing devices. In 1985, the company transformed into a joint stock company and continued to produce various PC-boards for testing. In 1987, the company decides to move from the sphere of system integration and custom development, launches its own production and enters the foreign market. At the end of the year, the first overseas representation of Advantech in the USA (San Jose, California) appears. By the end of 1988, successful sales began in Europe and Asia. In 1989, Advantech bought a factory in Xindian, Taiwan, and began developing its own line of industrial computers (IPC).

    imageIn 1990, the company launched its first industrial computer, the IPC-600. The design of the chassis turned out to be so successful that IPC-610 models are still produced on its basis. In 1992, ADAM-4000 devices were launched, which became a real breakthrough in remote control and data acquisition systems.

    In 1999, a successful IPO takes place. From now on, Advantech shares are traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TPE: 2395). In 2001, the construction of the Advantech Neihu building in Taipei was completed, which still houses the Advantech headquarters. In 2003, the European company AEU (Advantech Europe BV) was launched, as well as the launch of the Kunshan Manufacturing Center production line in China. At this point, Advantech is in Taiwan's top 10 brands according to Interbrand.

    Advantech Headquarters in Taipei

    Over the past ten years, the company has become a world leader in the production of industrial computers, while expanding its activities, including through the acquisition of promising companies such as: Czech telecommunications equipment manufacturer B + B SmartWorx, Inc, a manufacturer of systems for slot machines Innocore Gaming Ltd., and others.

    Advantech today


    Now Advantech is a large corporation with various lines of business and production in Taiwan, China and the Czech Republic. Our representative offices are in China, Japan, Korea, Europe, the USA, Southeast Asia, Australia and Russia.

    Advantech - No. 1 in the world in terms of industrial computer production (IPC) - about 30% of the global share. The company is constantly developing and expanding areas of activity, including through the acquisition of promising companies.


    Advantech ranks first in the world for the production of industrial computers

    Product Categories


    All Advantech products are divided into three large groups by directions. Each group has its own centers for development, production, marketing, and from the inside they look like individual companies. Each group has its own color; it can be seen in catalogs and on the website, in the product description.

    Industrial IoT

    formerly Industrial Automation Group

    This department is responsible for industrial controllers, data acquisition modules, fanless and rack computers, visualization tools, and industrial communications equipment.

    Embedded IoT

    formerly Embedded Computing Group

    The main range is single-board computers, systems on the module, high-performance servers, equipment for trunk telecoms.

    Service IoT

    formerly Applied Computing Group or iService

    Four main areas - medicine, computers for logistics (DloG), equipment for retail (AdvanPOS) and wearable devices.

    Previously, the fourth department was highlighted - Intelligent Systems Group (components and ready-made ATX and PICMG systems, the color of the catalogs is blue). Currently, the department has been liquidated, most of the products have been transferred to IIoT, and less to EIoT.

    Success stories


    Over the years, we have gained experience in implementing hundreds of successful projects in different countries. Some of them are published on the website advantech.ru/success-stories .

    System of automatic collection of transport payments


    Partner: JSC “Corson Technologies Rus”

    The automatic charging system for trucks was built by order of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation and put into operation in 2015. The tasks of the system include tracking the movement of cars along the entire path with the help of video cameras, RFID and laser readers. Car accounting is carried out when traveling through special frames with sensors equipped above the road. By the end of 2017, about 500 such frameworks were installed.


    Frame with installed sensors and cameras.

    To build the system, the integrator chose Advantech industrial managed switches ( EKI-7428G-4CI & EKI-7720G-4FI ) and fanless industrial computers ( AIIS-5410P), developed for video surveillance systems and specially customized for this project. AIIS series computers have built-in Ethernet ports with PoE, which allows you to connect IP cameras directly to the computer, without the use of intermediate PoE injectors or separate switches.
    Several Linux containers for different tasks were launched on one computer: recognition of a vehicle number, processing of data from sensors, etc.

    All processed data is transmitted to the data center over the network. High demands were placed on the network subsystem for reliability and recovery speed in the event of a communication loss. Advantech X-Ring Pro proprietary technology is used for channel redundancy: all switches are combined into a ring topology, and in the event of an ethernet line break, the system switches to the backup direction in 20ms.


    Schematic representation of components of a car accounting system

    Elevator Monitoring


    CloudMonitoring delivers industrial monitoring solutions. One of their clients, a New York-based elevator system integrator, needed a solution to collect data from a remote elevator control system ( REMS ).

    image

    New York Elevator Mine

    It was decided to use a 4G network (LTE). The task was complicated by the fact that the switchboards were located in elevator shafts, where the signal level of the cellular network can be low. The hardware was required to support MQTT and Python, as well as the ability to send the last message even in the event of a complete power outage.

    The Advantech ICR-3211B LTE router with LTE Cat.M1 standard support and backward compatibility with GSM was chosen as a communication gateway . Cat.M1 LTE protocol was specifically designed for M2M-solutions, has a low data transfer rate (375 kb / s), as well as a longer range and increased stability in difficult indoor communication conditions. The router has a built-in high-capacity capacitor, the charge of which is enough to transmit a message in the event of a complete power outage.

    image

    Elevator communication cabinet with ICR-3211B router

    At the moment, the system is actively used, allowing dispatchers to see a complete picture of the status of all nodes of each elevator, receive notifications in case of an accident, and see the last status of the system after a power outage.

    image

    CloudMonitoring Monitoring System Interface

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