Farnell has signed a franchise agreement with Industrial Shields, the. manufacturer of industrial automation devices (PLCs and Panel PCs) based on open source hardware from Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

The use of open source hardware provides many benefits to design engineers, including the opportunity to bring industrial products to market at a lower cost and in less time than designing with proprietary processor boards.

The new partnership strengthens Farnell’s industrial automation and control portfolio by providing more options to customers developing monitoring, control or automation solutions based on single board computers (SBCs).

The addition of this new range of PLCs, Panel PCs and the Open Mote B ultra-low-power communications board for the Internet of Things (IoT) will enable customers to revolutionise the way that control systems are designed.

As a leading global manufacturer and supplier of SBCs, Farnell is championing the use of SBCs in industrial automation systems with customers and the element14 Community.