Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2026-11-04 Origin: Site
Four projects, one sentence repeated in each kickoff meeting: we need a PC in there, and there is no room left. The cabinet was built in 2016, the machine is staying, and nobody is cutting a hole in the door for a tower case.
The Meetneng NANO-I is 178.4 × 127 × 60 mm and weighs 1 kg. Inside that box sit two gigabit LAN ports, two native serial channels, six USB ports and one of several Intel boards, from a Celeron J6412 or an N100 up to a Core i7. It is one of the industrial mini PCs we build for exactly this situation: a machine that needs its own computer and has nowhere to put one.
What follows is how the unit is used in four real deployments, what it has to survive in each, and where it stops being the right answer.
A rack-mount industrial PC wants 300 mm of depth for the chassis and another 100 mm behind it for cables. A desktop tower is worse. Both are fine in a new line; both are why retrofits stall in week one.
At 60 mm tall, the NANO-I goes where the alternatives do not: on the inner side wall of a 600 mm cabinet, on a shelf above the contactors, or on the machine base under a guard. Mounting is a wall bracket or desktop, with a DIN-rail kit available where the cabinet is already on rail, so the fixing is a bracket and four screws rather than a cut-out and a fan kit.
The detail that catches people is clearance in front of the connectors. Two RJ45 plugs, two DB9 shells and a VGA connector all protrude 40 to 60 mm once mated, and the cables need a bend radius on top of that. Budget 80 to 100 mm between the panel and the door. A unit that fits and cannot be cabled is not installed.
This is the most common case we see. A parts line or an electronics assembly station gets a data collection requirement, usually because the plant wants machine-level output in the MES instead of a clipboard at the end of the shift.
One NANO-I per cell, mounted inside the existing cabinet. LAN1 goes to the machine network with the CNC, the PLC and the torque controllers. LAN2 faces the plant network and the MES server. That split is the reason for the second port: no managed switch to buy, no VLAN argument with IT, and a clean boundary when the customer's security team asks what this device can reach. Both ports are Realtek RTL8111H with wake-on-LAN, and an Intel I226 plus I219 combination is available if your IT standard asks for Intel silicon.
The serial ports usually end up on a gauge, a barcode scanner or a torque controller that only speaks RS232. Both DB9 ports ship as RS232 and both can be switched to RS485 with an internal jumper, which is what you want when a drive chain shares one bus. Native UARTs matter here: USB-to-serial adapters work in the lab and then fail in the field, because a driver update or a stalled buffer turns into a line stoppage at 2 a.m.
What runs on it: an MES client, an OPC UA or Modbus gateway, a printer driver and the vendor tool for the machine. None of that is heavy; what matters is that it restarts by itself after a power cut and keeps running.
An inspection station is a different workload. A camera, a lighting controller that may want serial, a reject signal to the PLC, and two screens: one for the operator, one for the line lead or a legacy VGA panel that is still in service.
The NANO-I covers the display side without an adapter, because HDMI 1.4 and VGA run at the same time, in mirror or extended mode. Four USB 3.0 ports sit on the front panel where the camera will actually be plugged in, which matters when someone swaps a cable without opening the cabinet.
On compute, be realistic. A Celeron J6412 or an N100 board handles rule-based inspection at modest resolution: presence checks, dimension measurement, OCR on labels, one camera at a few frames per second. A Core board gives headroom when the recipe gets heavier or the line runs faster. None of the options is a platform for multi-camera deep learning, and a supplier who says otherwise is selling you a support case. If that is the requirement, the answer is a bigger chassis with a discrete GPU, not a smaller box.
On a mobile platform the constraints change. There is no mains socket, the enclosure is the vehicle body, and the computer has to survive being switched off at a charging station without warning.
The 12 V DC input matches what an AGV already distributes. At 1 kg the unit adds little to the payload and little lever arm to the mounting plate. The mini-PCIe slot takes a WiFi or 4G module, which is how a vehicle keeps talking to the fleet manager across aisle handovers where a cable run was never going to happen.
Two features matter more here than on a fixed machine. The hardware watchdog resets the board if the application stops responding, in steps from 0 to 255 seconds, so a hung process does not leave a vehicle parked in an aisle until someone walks out to it. And wake-on-LAN lets a fleet manager bring a vehicle out of sleep without touching it. Two LAN ports still earn their place: one for the lidar and drive network, one for the vehicle-to-WMS link.
The failure mode to design out is mechanical, not electrical. Every connector on a moving vehicle needs strain relief, and the DC feed needs a fuse. We have seen more AGVs down for a loose barrel jack than for a dead CPU.
Dispensing cabinets, sample handlers and automated pharmacy robots are built around serial peripherals, and the OEM usually wants to keep the control PC inside the machine envelope. Two DB9 ports cover the dispenser head and the label printer, with either channel switched to RS485 for a longer device chain; a third device usually arrives over USB.
These machines also live in clean, temperature-stable rooms, which is the easy end of the environmental spec. What they do need is quiet operation, a small footprint inside the cabinet, and a supply chain that will still ship the same board in two years when the machine goes into series production. A retail mini PC fails on the last point more often than on the first two.
Windows or Linux both run here, and the datasheet lists Windows 7, Windows 10 and Linux. In practice, pharmacy OEMs tend to be on Windows for the audit trail and the proprietary dispensing software, while lab instrument makers lean toward Linux. Confirm your OS image and drivers at quotation rather than at commissioning.
The NANO-I is an aluminum chassis with fins on the side walls and a field of machined slots across the top. Air moves through that slot field, driven by a small dual ball-bearing fan, and heat leaves through the fins. Call it what it is: active cooling in a metal case.
That is worth being blunt about, because "fanless" is a popular search term and this is not a fanless computer. If your specification says no moving parts — a cleanroom, a washdown area, a sealed stainless enclosure — this unit is the wrong choice and we will tell you so. If your specification says the box has to survive a dusty shop floor at 45 °C without throttling, a fan with ball bearings and a filter schedule is the more reliable engineering answer than a sealed block of aluminum.
The rating is -10 °C to 60 °C ambient, -20 °C to 70 °C in storage, 5 to 95 percent humidity without condensation. Read "ambient" as the air around the chassis, not the air inside a closed cabinet with a 3 kW drive. A sealed cabinet can run 15 °C above room temperature, which turns a 45 °C summer floor into 60 °C at the intake with no margin left. Mount low and away from drives, keep the filters clean, and measure with a logger for a week before you ship.
Maintenance comes down to two items: the fan and the slot field. Put both on the quarterly walk-round. A fan that is still spinning but sounds different is a fan that is about to stop, and a slot field packed with machining dust is a heatsink that has stopped working.
Item | NANO-I |
processor | Compatible with Intel Celeron N100 / Core i3/i5/i7 processors |
Memory | DDR3, DDR4 · 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB |
Display | Integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400 · 1 × VGA and 1 × HDMI · synchronous or asynchronous display |
Network | 2 × Realtek RTL8111H gigabit, supports Wake on LAN/PCIe; or 1 × Intel I226 + 1 × Intel I219 |
Storage | 1 × 7-pin SATA 3.0, up to 6 Gb/s · 1 × mSATA 3.0 |
Audio | Onboard ALC897 7.1 channel HD audio controller, MIC/Line out |
Expansion | 1 × Mini PCIe slot, supports WiFi/4G modules |
Rear I/O | 1 × HDMI, 1 × VGA, 2 × USB, 1 × DC 12 V, 2 × RJ-45 gigabit |
Front I/O | 4 × USB, 1 × line out and MIC 2-in-1, 1 × HDD indicator light, 1 × illuminated switch button, 2 × DB9 RS232 (both support RS485 via jumper) |
BIOS | 64Mb Flash ROM |
Watchdog | Hardware reset, 256 levels, 0–255 seconds |
Operating system | Windows 7 / Windows 10 / Linux |
Power source | DC 12 V |
Operating temperature | -10 °C to 60 °C |
Storage temperature | -20 °C to 70 °C |
Working humidity | 5%–95% relative humidity, no condensation |
Dimensions | 178.4 × 127 × 60 mm |
The chassis is the constant; the board inside it is not. That is why the NANO-I comes in three tiers.
The i3-5005U is the standard recommendation and the one we quote most often. MES client, SCADA screens, gateway duty, one inspection camera at a low frame rate. Problems on this board are usually RAM or disk, not CPU.
The i5-4200U at 1.60 GHz adds room under burst load — the case when an HMI runs a browser engine, or when the inspection recipe changes more often than the line does.
The i7-4500U at 1.80 GHz buys margin rather than a different class of machine. It suits multi-window HMI installations, local video storage with playback, or a box that runs a database and a vision library together during commissioning.
All three are 2-core, 4-thread parts with the same ports and mounting pattern; you are choosing headroom, not features.
Volume projects can specify a Celeron J6412, N97/N100/N150/N305 or a Core board up to 12th gen, suited to gateways and kiosks.
16 GB of memory is worth having once a local historian or a database shares the box with the HMI. Storage splits into mSATA for the operating system and a 7-pin SATA drive for logs. Full configuration detail is on the NANO-I datasheet.
Size the 12 V feed for the peak. The unit draws well under 30 W, but it usually shares a rail with contactor coils and a brake. Check what else switches on at the same moment, or the PC reboots every time the machine starts.
Bond the housing. Anodized aluminum does not conduct through the coating. Use a dedicated earth point rather than the DC jack sleeve, especially where the cabinet is bonded for EMC.
Strain-relieve everything. Screw-lock DB9 shells are standard on the serial ports and should be used. A VGA plug in a vibrating cabinet will walk out otherwise.
Set the watchdog, then forget it. Enable the hardware timer in BIOS and match the timeout to your longest legitimate task. On a kiosk or a vehicle this replaces a site visit.
Fix the power-on behavior at the factory. Ask for restore-on-power-loss to be enabled before shipment, so a line restart does not need someone to walk over and press a button.
Agree the OS before the build. Windows 7, Windows 10 or Linux according to the datasheet. If your IT standard is Windows 11, confirm driver status with us rather than assuming it.
A retail mini PC is cheapest at the counter and most expensive over five years: 19 V adapter, no serial ports, a 0 to 40 °C rating, and no spare part in year three. A full-size industrial PC is the opposite — robust and well supported, and too deep for the cabinet you have.
The numbers that decide the project are rarely on the price list: integration hours saved by native serial and dual LAN, spare units on the shelf because the platform stays available, and the cost of one unplanned stop on a line that runs at a few thousand dollars an hour. For series builds, OEM and ODM industrial PC customisation is worth discussing early, because branding, default BIOS settings and connector choices are cheaper to settle before production than after.
Can the NANO-I run 24/7 inside a cabinet?
It is built for continuous machine-level duty, and the -10 °C to 60 °C rating is an ambient figure. The limiting factor is the cabinet, not the board. Check the air temperature next to the unit during your hottest week before you commit to a sealed enclosure.
Is it fanless?
No. Cooling is active: a small dual ball-bearing fan moves air through the slotted top panel and the aluminum fins spread the heat. If your specification requires no moving parts, tell us and we will point you at the right product instead.
Can it drive two monitors?
Yes, HDMI 1.4 and VGA at the same time, mirrored or extended. That covers a new HDMI display plus an existing VGA panel.
How many serial devices can I connect?
Two DB9 channels, RS232 by default and RS485 on either one through an internal jumper. Both are native UARTs, so no adapter driver is involved.
Will our software run on it?
It is a standard x86 platform running Windows or Linux, so MES clients, SCADA packages and vision libraries install as they would on any PC. Send us the application and we will confirm the configuration and the lead time — our engineers will answer with a spec sheet, not a brochure.
