6 ms·

I don't get the market position of this. A number of Chinese companies produce DIN rail mounted PLCs which already cover this market, cost virtually nothing an

by gw98 4y ago

I don't get the market position of this. A number of Chinese companies produce DIN rail mounted PLCs which already cover this market, cost virtually nothing and actually emulate Mitsu GX ones so work with existing off the shelf tools and have the same real time guarantees as the commercial units. If you're going to cheap out, these are fine. But this isn't the problem. The expensive bit of a PLC is the dude perma-welded to the cabinet. Last thing people want to do is rock the boat by expanding the risk to a vendor like Arduino, which quite frankly doesn't have a great reputation or history of tested industrial or reliable hardware. It's better to pay 3x as much for a well established vendor.

mbanzi 4y ago
Arduino has a very good reputation for reliable hardware. Obviously this applies to official products. Shitty chinese clones have bad reliability issues... Even some of those chinese clone PLCs are not spectacularly reliable... This is a professionally made device, developed in partnership with Finder which is a company with 70year of experience in making relays and other mission critical industrial equipment..
- gw98 4y ago
  No the current Arduino ecosystem does not have a good reputation for reliable hardware at all. It does in your product echo chamber but quite frankly it's laughed out of the building in many professional settings and for good reason. The Chinese PLCs have somewhat more credibility there. The current hardware has little to no protection, poor power management, the software ecosystem is quite frankly dangerous in a lot of cases and the IDE only recently gained feature parity with tools we had 30 years ago. I'm quite willing to entertain that you are trying to get into the market and that these issues may be resolved with this product but you have a large reputation mountain to climb first. You have to build reputation not try and add it afterwards. To note I use Arduino projects usually for one off simple bench automation but nothing further than that. I tend to use them as a host for flat avr-libc / avr-gcc projects though, mostly because the old IDE and toolchain was absolutely dire.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    True or not, "reliability bordering on childproof" can be a compelling sales pitch. And reputation is bound by recall, of whuch Arduino has plenty: brand X might have the best reputation imaginable amongst those in the know, but if you aren't in the know and you haven't ever heard of X all that reputation won't affect you. For all you know, X could be terrible. If there's another brand Y you have heard of, and only half of what you heard was negative, brand Y has at least some reputation (the non-negative half) positively affecting you. That's the basic mechanism of why so much advertisement is just about brand awareness, not talking about quality at all: "I've heard a lot about them, and not everything has been bad" is less bad than "never heard about them, even if they were really terrible I wouldn't know"
    - gw98 4y ago
      I don't think you understand the industry. Reliability is qualified through testing, certification and support. It isn't a function of marketing. Marketing gets you to the testing table. But better not have any skeletons in the cupboard. Edit: I suspect you're confusing engineering for the niche sector of makers, the latter of which are driven by fads and marketing (sorry if I piss anyone off there).
      - usrusr 4y ago
        “The industry" isn't a single uniform group. Sure, people who spent their career procuring industrial controllers won't look at Arduino even once when they introduce a non-maker form factor, and chances are they wouldn't be impressed if they did. But I can easily imagine that there's an underserved space between the extremes of the maker juggling dev-boards not really intended for him and the career specialist who goes to all the right trade shows. Some company for example that has barely enough controller needs to set aside full time staff for that, but does not want to outsource either. It's possible that Arduino fantasizes about taking over large fractions of the industrial PLC market and if that's the case I'll chuckle agreeingly with everybody ridiculing them, but I believe that there could far more reasonable and realistic opportunities for them to stretch a little in that direction.
    - 4y ago
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  A professional level device would have ESD protection, power filtering, and EMI controls. Something you'll never find on an Arduino product.
- isatty 4y ago
  Atmel yes, idk about Arduino.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Arduino has a terrible reputation for hardware and software from a professional, reliable point of view. It's fine from a easy, hacked together hobby project point of view, but that's an entirely different thing. It's like Python vs Rust. I wouldn't introduce a beginner to programming with Rust, but I also wouldn't program my manufacturing line (or whatever) with Python.
liminalsunset 4y ago
I'm thinking (but can't confirm) that the intended market for these is companies that are too small to care about things like "well established vendors", where budgets are measured on the magnitude of hundreds of dollars and not thousands, and things are built from scrap or misc parts. I'm guessing that in some countries other than EU/Americas/etc, where things are done by "I know a guy that can figure it out", and people wearing safety sandals, this device would be convenient. I have reason to believe this market segment is both invisible and massive. For a small scale industrial process, even a really hacked together setup can work surprisingly well, and while you have a chance of running into some show stopping problem, there's an equal chance of the hacked together setup continuing to function for the required time. If labour to fix stuff and/or small enough scale to temporarily have a little downtime are effectively free, this can work out positively. I can see that things like these would be a good step up for those who were originally not even using PLCs. I think it provides a good "entry point" from Arduinos to something at least DIN rail mounted, and it's a way to experiment with ladder logic and whatnot. I personally would consider using it just for the convenience of that option.
- uoaei 4y ago
  I've watched someone in my social circle building a company around pre- and post-workout snacks and your line > even a really hacked together setup can work surprisingly well Is exactly right. Now that they got those three machines working, efforts go mostly into marketing, not into engineering.
- gw98 4y ago
  That market is already covered by the cheap dev boards, arduino clones and Chinese PLCs at considerably less cost than the officially branded parts. You can't even buy an Arduino Uno for the price these guys are selling PLCs for: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004887420307.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004887420307.html
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  > I can see that things like these would be a good step up for those who were originally not even using PLCs I agree that that's what Arduino thinks the market is, but I disagree that their conceptual market will buy this. Arduino-branded hardware is typically 5x the cost of the clones (remember, it's OSH) at no noticeable improvement in quality. DIN-rail mountable arduino clones and modules with I/O isolation that run on 24V power already exist at very reasonable price points, and from reputable dealers such as Automation Direct. I've used ruggedized modules such as Industruino (although their prices have definitely gone upmarket) and they're nice. IME, the only people who buy actual Arduino hardware are either beginners who don't realize that the much less expensive clones are every bit as good, or business buyers who don't really care, because it's not their money. But maybe I'm wrong and there's enough of a price-insensitive market to make this a success. I certainly hope so. I'm a freelancer, so the bigger the market, the better for me :-) I have designed & built an arduino clone-based product that mounts on DIN rail because the hardware it communicates with also does. Multiple installations running large machine control applications without a hitch. The clones are fine.
gaze 4y ago
What are some good keywords to search for if I'm looking for some of these knockoff PLCs?
- liminalsunset 4y ago
  You can just go put "PLC" into AliExpress and you will get a bunch of FX01 clones, or you could put "GX Developer" since all of these seem to be compatible. Unfortunately GX Developer doesn't appear to be free, but apparently Delta makes PLCs too (with actual UL certs too) which sell for about 130 USD on AliExpress and the software appears to be free (unsure). They also have reasonably (~80$) priced HMI LCD touch screen displays.
theamk 4y ago
I think this is an attempt to break monopoly of those traditional PLCs. There are definitely going to be good use cases for ladder logic and "tried and true" programming model which was hasn't changed since 1990's. And in this case you are correct, the new Arduino makes little sense. But sometimes you want something more modern, that you can program in the same language your main product is in, and apply the same expertise and tooling you already have. I am not sure Arduino is the best option, given that their ecosystem is often very low quality, but there is definitely space for regular MCU in rugged case with protected I/O.

by gw98 4y ago

mbanzi 4y ago

Arduino has a very good reputation for reliable hardware. Obviously this applies to official products. Shitty chinese clones have bad reliability issues... Even some of those chinese clone PLCs are not spectacularly reliable... This is a professionally made device, developed in partnership with Finder which is a company with 70year of experience in making relays and other mission critical industrial equipment..

gw98 4y ago
No the current Arduino ecosystem does not have a good reputation for reliable hardware at all. It does in your product echo chamber but quite frankly it's laughed out of the building in many professional settings and for good reason. The Chinese PLCs have somewhat more credibility there. The current hardware has little to no protection, poor power management, the software ecosystem is quite frankly dangerous in a lot of cases and the IDE only recently gained feature parity with tools we had 30 years ago. I'm quite willing to entertain that you are trying to get into the market and that these issues may be resolved with this product but you have a large reputation mountain to climb first. You have to build reputation not try and add it afterwards. To note I use Arduino projects usually for one off simple bench automation but nothing further than that. I tend to use them as a host for flat avr-libc / avr-gcc projects though, mostly because the old IDE and toolchain was absolutely dire.
- usrusr 4y ago
  True or not, "reliability bordering on childproof" can be a compelling sales pitch. And reputation is bound by recall, of whuch Arduino has plenty: brand X might have the best reputation imaginable amongst those in the know, but if you aren't in the know and you haven't ever heard of X all that reputation won't affect you. For all you know, X could be terrible. If there's another brand Y you have heard of, and only half of what you heard was negative, brand Y has at least some reputation (the non-negative half) positively affecting you. That's the basic mechanism of why so much advertisement is just about brand awareness, not talking about quality at all: "I've heard a lot about them, and not everything has been bad" is less bad than "never heard about them, even if they were really terrible I wouldn't know"
  - gw98 4y ago
    I don't think you understand the industry. Reliability is qualified through testing, certification and support. It isn't a function of marketing. Marketing gets you to the testing table. But better not have any skeletons in the cupboard. Edit: I suspect you're confusing engineering for the niche sector of makers, the latter of which are driven by fads and marketing (sorry if I piss anyone off there).
    - usrusr 4y ago
      “The industry" isn't a single uniform group. Sure, people who spent their career procuring industrial controllers won't look at Arduino even once when they introduce a non-maker form factor, and chances are they wouldn't be impressed if they did. But I can easily imagine that there's an underserved space between the extremes of the maker juggling dev-boards not really intended for him and the career specialist who goes to all the right trade shows. Some company for example that has barely enough controller needs to set aside full time staff for that, but does not want to outsource either. It's possible that Arduino fantasizes about taking over large fractions of the industrial PLC market and if that's the case I'll chuckle agreeingly with everybody ridiculing them, but I believe that there could far more reasonable and realistic opportunities for them to stretch a little in that direction.
  - 4y ago
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
A professional level device would have ESD protection, power filtering, and EMI controls. Something you'll never find on an Arduino product.
isatty 4y ago
Atmel yes, idk about Arduino.
IshKebab 4y ago
Arduino has a terrible reputation for hardware and software from a professional, reliable point of view. It's fine from a easy, hacked together hobby project point of view, but that's an entirely different thing. It's like Python vs Rust. I wouldn't introduce a beginner to programming with Rust, but I also wouldn't program my manufacturing line (or whatever) with Python.

liminalsunset 4y ago

I'm thinking (but can't confirm) that the intended market for these is companies that are too small to care about things like "well established vendors", where budgets are measured on the magnitude of hundreds of dollars and not thousands, and things are built from scrap or misc parts. I'm guessing that in some countries other than EU/Americas/etc, where things are done by "I know a guy that can figure it out", and people wearing safety sandals, this device would be convenient. I have reason to believe this market segment is both invisible and massive. For a small scale industrial process, even a really hacked together setup can work surprisingly well, and while you have a chance of running into some show stopping problem, there's an equal chance of the hacked together setup continuing to function for the required time. If labour to fix stuff and/or small enough scale to temporarily have a little downtime are effectively free, this can work out positively. I can see that things like these would be a good step up for those who were originally not even using PLCs. I think it provides a good "entry point" from Arduinos to something at least DIN rail mounted, and it's a way to experiment with ladder logic and whatnot. I personally would consider using it just for the convenience of that option.

uoaei 4y ago
I've watched someone in my social circle building a company around pre- and post-workout snacks and your line > even a really hacked together setup can work surprisingly well Is exactly right. Now that they got those three machines working, efforts go mostly into marketing, not into engineering.
gw98 4y ago
That market is already covered by the cheap dev boards, arduino clones and Chinese PLCs at considerably less cost than the officially branded parts. You can't even buy an Arduino Uno for the price these guys are selling PLCs for: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004887420307.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004887420307.html
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
> I can see that things like these would be a good step up for those who were originally not even using PLCs I agree that that's what Arduino thinks the market is, but I disagree that their conceptual market will buy this. Arduino-branded hardware is typically 5x the cost of the clones (remember, it's OSH) at no noticeable improvement in quality. DIN-rail mountable arduino clones and modules with I/O isolation that run on 24V power already exist at very reasonable price points, and from reputable dealers such as Automation Direct. I've used ruggedized modules such as Industruino (although their prices have definitely gone upmarket) and they're nice. IME, the only people who buy actual Arduino hardware are either beginners who don't realize that the much less expensive clones are every bit as good, or business buyers who don't really care, because it's not their money. But maybe I'm wrong and there's enough of a price-insensitive market to make this a success. I certainly hope so. I'm a freelancer, so the bigger the market, the better for me :-) I have designed & built an arduino clone-based product that mounts on DIN rail because the hardware it communicates with also does. Multiple installations running large machine control applications without a hitch. The clones are fine.

gaze 4y ago

What are some good keywords to search for if I'm looking for some of these knockoff PLCs?

liminalsunset 4y ago
You can just go put "PLC" into AliExpress and you will get a bunch of FX01 clones, or you could put "GX Developer" since all of these seem to be compatible. Unfortunately GX Developer doesn't appear to be free, but apparently Delta makes PLCs too (with actual UL certs too) which sell for about 130 USD on AliExpress and the software appears to be free (unsure). They also have reasonably (~80$) priced HMI LCD touch screen displays.

theamk 4y ago

I think this is an attempt to break monopoly of those traditional PLCs. There are definitely going to be good use cases for ladder logic and "tried and true" programming model which was hasn't changed since 1990's. And in this case you are correct, the new Arduino makes little sense. But sometimes you want something more modern, that you can program in the same language your main product is in, and apply the same expertise and tooling you already have. I am not sure Arduino is the best option, given that their ecosystem is often very low quality, but there is definitely space for regular MCU in rugged case with protected I/O.