Advice rugged hardware-connection to Industrial-Bricklets

[yvo]

Dear list

I am using several Industrial-Bricklets in a rough environment. Well protected by an IP68-metal-box. But still exposed to vibrations. All the bricklets are very well supporting the environment since +12 month.

As connection to a local Industrial-PC (IPC), I am using a Master-Brick and a USB-C cable. The entire setup is installed using a Rail Mounting Case . The software using the bricklets is running on the IPC and uses localhost as address. All other sensors used by the IPC are connected by LAN-connections using RJ45. The power-supply of the IPC and all the attached sensors is using 24V DC.

The USB-C connection of the Master-Brick turned out to be the weak-point of the setup. The connection has to be protected by using silicon-glue from loosing.

I would like to get a mechanically better connection between the IPC and the bricklets.

Question:

• Would a ESP32 Ethernet Brick using a ESP32 Power Supply a reasonable replacement?

The  ESP32 Ethernet Brick could be attached with available LAN-connections and the software would address the defined LAN-address instead of localhost.

Looking forward to your advice and suggestions.

Cheers. Yvo

[MatzeTF]

Quote

The USB-C connection of the Master-Brick turned out to be the weak-point of the setup. The connection has to be protected by using silicon-glue from loosing.

You could use a USB-C cable with a 90 ° angled plug and use a cable tie to strap it to the Master Brick.

Quote

Would a ESP32 Ethernet Brick using a ESP32 Power Supply a reasonable replacement?

That should work just fine. You only need to make sure to add some kind of strain relief (like a cable tie) on the LAN cable so that the cable doesn’t pull too strongly on the Ethernet Brick’s LAN port. You could also add a cable tie around the LAN port and PCB to push the port onto the PCB. That would otherwise be the weakest link of your setup, I think.

[yvo]

Dear MatzTF

Great. Thank you very much for the advise. I will go for trial with the ESP32-Ethernet-Brick, learning something new. As soon as I have the setup, I will post an image.

Cheers. Yvo