Cytron IRIV IO Controller – A Raspberry Pi RP2350-based industrial I/O controller

Cytron IRIV IO Controller is an “Industrial Revolution 4.0” (or Industry 4.0) controller based on the Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller that comes with an Ethernet port implemented through the W5500 chipset, and several isolated interfaces such as DI and DO up to 50V, two analog inputs, and RS232 and RS485 serial interfaces accessible through terminal blocks.

Last year, the company introduced the Cytron IRIV PiControl industrial controller based on the Raspberry Pi CM4 module, and the IRIV IO Controller is a much cheaper solution using a subset of the features and a design that looks similar.

IRIV IO Controller specifications:

• Microcontroller – Raspberry Pi RP2350A
  •  CPU
    • Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 @150MHz with Arm Trustzone for secure boot
    • Dual-core 32-bit Hazard3 RISC-V @ 150MHz
    • Up to two cores can be used at the same time
  • Memory – 520 KB on-chip SRAM in 10 banks
• Storage – 2MB flash memory
• Networking – 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 jack using W5500 controller
• USB – 1x USB Type-C port for programming and configuration
• I/Os and serial ports
  • 11x isolated digital inputs (up to 50V)
  • 4x isolated digital outputs (up to 50V)
  • 2x 12-bit isolated analog inputs (0 – 10.56V / 0 – 42.58mA)
  • 1x isolated RS485
• Misc
  • PCF85063A Real Time Clock with CR2032 battery
  • Reset, Boot, and User buttons
  • User LED
  • Status LED for Power, RS485, DIN & DOUT
  • Passive Buzzer
  • Analog and RS485 configuration switches
• Power Supply – 10 to 30V DC (surge-protected) via terminal block
• Dimensions – 140 x 60 x 36 mm (for metal enclosure only, not including the DIN socket and connectors)
• Temperature Range – -20° ~ 70°C

Cytron provides documentation through Google Docs with various links provided on the product/store page (see below). The company mentions C/C++, MicroPython, and CircuitPyhon support, but currently only provides CircuitPython sample code for analog input, Ethernet, Modbus, a pulse counter, and the RTC.

You can refer to the table below for more details about the differences between the Raspberry Pi CM4 and Raspberry Pi RP2350 industrial controllers from the Malaysian company.

Basically, users keep most of the isolated I/Os, and even gain some (digital inputs) when going with the , but lose some advanced features such as WiFi, 4G LTE, M.2 NVMe storage, HDMI output, USB 2.0 ports, one isolated RS232 interface, etc…  In some installations, the IRIV PiControl and IRIV IO Controllers can be combined with the CM4 industrial I/O controller gather data from several RP2350 controllers as illustred below.

Cytron sells the IRIV IO Controller on its online store for $64.90 plus shipping. For reference, the CM4-powered IRIV PiControl goes for $279 and up depending on options.

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