The factory floor is a tough operating environment. A new terminal from QSI Corp., Salt Lake City, the Qterm-G70, is rugged enough for almost any work space and meets full NEMA-4 specs for enduring hose-downs, icing, and salt spray. It is also designed to use Ethernet, with a T10Base-T interface, and TCP/IP and Modbus protocols. The terminal features a resistive touch screen and soft keys for operator inputs. Touch controls can be placed on or around the screen. It can also be equipped with a keyboard.
The screen, a cold-cathode fluorescent backlit LCD, can be read under most lighting conditions and display color or grayscales.
Programming the G70 is done using Qlarity, an object-based terminal programming language. It lets programmers use predefined objects, or create and edit objects, which can be texts, images, or controls. Qlarity makes it fast and simple to develop applications as programmers never need to see or use code.
The G70 costs about $850, and can act as a master controller for equipment or as a slave to a host computer. It can also function as a thin client.