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For what it is worth... you can buy industrial PC/PLC from Beckhoff with FreeBSD installed. PLC= programmable logic controller. Run control system logic on th

For what it is worth... you can buy industrial PC/PLC from Beckhoff with FreeBSD installed. PLC= programmable logic controller. Run control system logic on the PLC hard-realtime runtime and run your sophisticated logic and numerical stuff on the FreeBSD OS... soft-realtime communication between FreeBSD and the PLC runtime is pretty straight forward. https://www.beckhoff.com https://www.beckhoff.com https://www.beckhoff.com/en-us/products/ipc/software-and-tools/operating-systems/c9900-s60x-cxxxxx-0185.html https://www.beckhoff.com/en-us/products/ipc/software-and-too...

Tomte 6y ago
Industrial PC, not PLC. FreeBSD is replacing WinCE there. I was looking forward to such a PLC, but it's still interesting.
- cpach 6y ago
  Cool!
- cashsterling 6y ago
  Maybe we are arguing semantics here... but read up about the Beckhoff TwinCAT system and how it works. I would say Beckhoff systems are both an IPC and a PLC in one. Beckhoff system run two OS'es... the PLC runtime is hard real-time and runs at the chipset level (so even if the windows or freeBSD crashes the PLC still runs). You program the PLC using IEC-61131 languages (structured text which sort of between BASIC and Pascal, ladder logic, sequential function chart, cyclical function chart, etc.) and also have the option to run C/C++ code (with no dynamic memory allocation). For what it is worth, newer Omron PLC's run PLC code on top of QNX, B&R automation uses a very similar approach to Beckhoff. Overall, the B&R and Beckhoff PLC's are, I think, under-appreciated.
  - Tomte 6y ago
    Thank you, that's very interesting (and it wasn't obvious to me from the web site). Especially that Omron uses QNX, that's even cooler.
ollran 6y ago
There was a webinar on TwinCat/FreeBSD: https://www.beckhoff.com/en-en/support/webinars/webinar-detail_264752.html https://www.beckhoff.com/en-en/support/webinars/webinar-deta... The Embedded Windows version didn't have that web console. Also, ZFS copy-on-write snapshots could be quite useful for quick backup/restorement when working on-site.

Tomte 6y ago

Industrial PC, not PLC. FreeBSD is replacing WinCE there. I was looking forward to such a PLC, but it's still interesting.

cpach 6y ago
Cool!
cashsterling 6y ago
Maybe we are arguing semantics here... but read up about the Beckhoff TwinCAT system and how it works. I would say Beckhoff systems are both an IPC and a PLC in one. Beckhoff system run two OS'es... the PLC runtime is hard real-time and runs at the chipset level (so even if the windows or freeBSD crashes the PLC still runs). You program the PLC using IEC-61131 languages (structured text which sort of between BASIC and Pascal, ladder logic, sequential function chart, cyclical function chart, etc.) and also have the option to run C/C++ code (with no dynamic memory allocation). For what it is worth, newer Omron PLC's run PLC code on top of QNX, B&R automation uses a very similar approach to Beckhoff. Overall, the B&R and Beckhoff PLC's are, I think, under-appreciated.
- Tomte 6y ago
  Thank you, that's very interesting (and it wasn't obvious to me from the web site). Especially that Omron uses QNX, that's even cooler.

ollran 6y ago

There was a webinar on TwinCat/FreeBSD: https://www.beckhoff.com/en-en/support/webinars/webinar-detail_264752.html https://www.beckhoff.com/en-en/support/webinars/webinar-deta... The Embedded Windows version didn't have that web console. Also, ZFS copy-on-write snapshots could be quite useful for quick backup/restorement when working on-site.