What "Pane" Refers To in Industrial Computing
"Pane" is most commonly shorthand for panel PC — an all-in-one industrial computer built around a touchscreen display, where the computing hardware, storage and I/O live behind the panel rather than in a separate box. Instead of pairing a standalone industrial PC with a monitor, keyboard and mouse, a panel PC mounts directly into a machine, kiosk, cabinet or wall cut-out, so operators interact with the screen itself. This makes it the natural choice wherever a display and a computer need to occupy the same footprint on a factory floor, a control room or a self-service terminal.
How a Panel PC Is Built
A typical panel PC combines a flat capacitive or resistive touchscreen with an embedded motherboard, soldered or socketed memory, and flash storage. Because these units are often sealed into enclosures, they are usually fanless, relying on the metal chassis and the display's rear housing to dissipate heat. That passive design matters: no fan means no intake filter to clog, no bearing to wear out, and no airborne dust being pulled across the electronics. Connectivity is brought out to the rear or underside of the panel, commonly including multiple USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet (often dual-port for separating a control network from an office network), HDMI for a second display, and serial ports such as DB9 for legacy machinery, PLCs, weighbridges and barcode equipment.
| Attribute | Typical Panel PC / All-in-One | Typical Box Industrial PC |
|---|---|---|
| Display | Integrated touchscreen (often 21.5" or 23.8") | External monitor required |
| Mounting | Panel cut-out, VESA, wall or arm mount | DIN rail, cabinet shelf, VESA |
| Cooling | Usually fanless | Fanless or fan-cooled |
| Cabling | Minimal — power and network only | Video, USB and power to display |
| Best for | Operator stations, kiosks, HMI | Machine control, edge compute, data logging |
Where Panel and All-in-One Systems Are Used
Panel PCs and all-in-one industrial computers appear wherever a person needs to see data and act on it in a rugged setting. On production lines they serve as HMI terminals for PLC-driven machinery. In logistics they run as warehouse station terminals for picking, labelling and dispatch. In retail and hospitality they act as point-of-sale and self-service kiosks. In healthcare and laboratories they become sample-tracking or instrument-control stations. In building management they sit in plant rooms monitoring HVAC, access control and energy meters. Across all of these, the requirements repeat: a stable operating system image, enough RAM to run several applications at once, flash storage that tolerates vibration, and a wide-input power supply that copes with an industrial 12V rail.
Choosing the Right Configuration
Start with the workload. A single HMI screen or a thin-client session needs modest resources; a station running SCADA, a database client, video feeds or multiple browser tabs benefits from a modern multi-core processor and 16GB or more of memory. Next, decide on storage — 128GB to 256GB of SSD is ample for a locked-down terminal, while 512GB or 1TB suits local logging and imaging. Then choose the operating system: Windows 11 Pro for standard commercial software, Windows 11 IoT for long-lifecycle deployments, a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu for open stacks, or a minimal embedded image where the device should do one job and nothing else. Finally, count your interfaces — serial ports, Ethernet ports and USB ports are the details that most often decide whether a unit fits an existing installation.
Thinvent's Panel and All-in-One Range
Thinvent builds industrial computers, mini PCs, thin clients and all-in-one PCs for deployment worldwide, with configurations spanning Intel Celeron and Intel Core processors, fanless chassis designs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, multiple USB and HDMI outputs, and options for Windows 11 Pro, Windows 11 IoT, Ubuntu Linux, embedded Linux or no operating system at all. Storage and memory are selectable at order time, and serial-equipped variants are available for machinery that still speaks RS-232. For panel-style deployments, Thinvent's all-in-one models pair a 21.5" or 23.8" display with the same industrial-grade internals used across the IPC family.
