Compact or din rail mount PC

dwoodlock

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Nov 2012
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Just wanted to check and see if anyone can suggest an image storage method for vision systems.

I have done some of this before with FTP to a desktop pc which has a massive HD. One of ours has 3.7 million images from cognex cameras, and if you want to view one specifically, you better have some time to burn.

Just wondering if someone can suggest a compact and better solution for this?

I contemplated switching the HDD out for a SSD, but hoping someone else has fought with this before and can offer some insight(cognex pun?).

Thanks
 
Why not use a networked cloud drive Western Digital has a good selection to chose from
you ca even setup mirrored storage system if you are concerned about data loss.
As for view an image they should have a time and date stamp on every file select the sort order when you open the file.
You need to figure out some type of origination method for your storage. maybe a folder for each day, month or what ever works for you
 
With the 3.7M project I had to work with the IT department, which obviously creates some obstacles.

For this one I am trying to find a better way, which perhaps we can apply backwards in the future (if I can convince them of its merits).

Thanks for the suggestion.
 
How critical is it that you keep the pictures? Seems to not be overly critical as they're on a single disk on a desktop PC. If this is an area you want to improve, then perhaps a network attached device that employs RAID. Lots of them out there to choose from.
 
Not overly. Basically we just want to be able to look back 6 weeks or so in the event we have an issue.
 
Not overly. Basically we just want to be able to look back 6 weeks or so in the event we have an issue.

If all you want is a DIN rail mount computer to stuff a hard drive in, I'd bet that most IPC vendors could sell you one. I know for sure Siemens can. I'm sure you could set it up as an FTP server/shared drive, and then have a service that deletes files in a specified folder older than X weeks. I know WD has 2.5" hard drives in the TB range. Right now SSDs max out at a few TB (for 10x the $ of the same size HDD), which should do the job as well.

I doubt too many small form factor IPCs would have RAID, but some larger 19" rack units no doubt do.

There are also a lot of home/SMB NAS products out there. I have a low end Synology unit at home, and it makes it really easy to set up and maintain a file server. They definitely aren't industrial rated, and I've never seen one that would mount in a panel.
 
How about a din rail mountable Raspberry Pi?
https://www.pilz.com/en-US/eshop/0010300213715780SJ/Revolution-Pi-Core

You can stick a 32GB SD-card in it or thumb drive.

Probably crude in modern times with the cloud and such, but if your company is like mine and doesn’t like clouds then it would be a cheap and simple option for you.

You could go even cheaper and purchase the Raspberry Pi by itself and purchase a din rail mount for it.
 
A local network cloud drive can be setup to look like a local drive on any PC
so you can grant access to anybody with a pc it can even be setup to be accessed from the anywhere with internet access. you would just need pc connected to the vision system to upload them to the cloud but I expect you already have that now.
Minimum cost easy to setup and manage, unlimited storage
 
We use Netgear's ReadyNAS NV for our small image archive projects, but use a big gnarly HP rackmount SANs for our big ones.

Not rail-mounted, but compact and fairly durable, with 120V AC power (the ReadyNAS).
 
If you did not need RAID then I like these in the link below.

Another option to consider would be to have a small simple PC like the Zotac and store the images local but also back them up to a shared storage device like the Ready NAS that Ken Roach mentioned or a Synology NAS which are my personal favorite.

Doing a local PC with NAS storage gives you local speed and will work if there are issues with the network or shared storage but also gives you a backup of your images.

You could also use Storage Craft Shadow Protect or Acronis True Image to make a daily and weekly system image backup of the local PC making it easy to restore/replace/fix if there are ever any issues with it.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...y1TaXARkEt1eLwdJWl0aAkDaEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

They are not industrial rated but they are very small and fairly cheap IMO and you can pack a ton of memory and storage in them for a small footprint.

They are VESA mount but I have on many occasions fabricated a VESA to DIN rail mounting bracket for similar projects.
 
I have done similar archiving of images and trend data files with FTP to both computers and NAS (I think from QNAP?) with raid that had an FTP server.

Windows network drives randomly get disconnected and then require human intervention to reconnect. good luck troubleshooting that.

FTP is simple and reliable.

I wrote a program that stores the image files on the FTP server in a folder structure of
YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD so it is easy to find the files for the day you want.
 

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