Job Security

Another thing to consider is to use a potting material or also called an encapsilation material. This is a special plastic that fills in all the airspace around the board and components and hardens. This makes it harder for someone to copy your system. It generally takes destructive measures to find out whats inside.

Choosing the right encapsilant can be tricky and confusing. Most once hardened prevent you from making changes or repairs to the board. However, it does help protect it from moisture, corrosion, shorts, and some temperature conditions. Some mixtures merely pour over the surface, others turn it into a brick.

If you choose the potting material solution you want to make sure you leave access to the critical connection like the Display Cable, Power Cable and communications cable (to program updates). Using this technique makes it easier to do maintenance because you merely arrive at the site and hookup the new brick module. You might be able to interest the company in pre-buying a couple of spare modules in the maintenace agreement so that they never have to wat on repairs or wait for new boards to arrive. :)

aka J