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> Like a lot of Arduino products, it must be targeted at people who don't know any better and whose sole exposure to electrical engineering or systems engineeri

> Like a lot of Arduino products, it must be targeted at people who don't know any better and whose sole exposure to electrical engineering or systems engineering is what they see in make videos. Industrial automation is exactly this. If you look up the history of the PLC, Dick Morley, founder of Modicon, specifically designed it to hide the computer part. The reasons were twofold: partly for marketing as in ye olde days computers were big, expensive and required costly engineers, and to enable plant electricians and other maintenance personnel the ability to program them using ladder schematics which is why we have ladder logic. So from the beginning the PLC has been targeted at non-technical personnel. > Automation direct PLCs are cheaper than whatever they're hawking here and almost certainly way more robust (having used a few, they were surprisingly good). Indeed, though I only like the Click. I have two Clicks at home and used them at work for all sorts of little projects. I haven't bothered with their Productivity line as I dont think it's a very forward thinking platform as its stuck in the 90's with parallel busses on backplanes with proprietary expansion (literally a clone of their Koyo DL series). Then there is their legacy Direct Logic series from Koyo which is solid as hell but long in the tooth. Now they are selling LS Electric which makes me feel they are all over the place PLC wise. For bigger automation projects I use Beckhoff gear which is very modular and their EtherCAT protocol is very well designed and thought out - deterministic structs over Ethernet. My only gripe is the big shitty Visual studio shell IDE that tends to fall over but every automation vendor has big shitty IDE's. Thankfully they have a FreeBSD runtime alternative to Windows Embedded for the controller side. I can write real-time PLC programs in C/C++ and whatever on the Windows/BSD side. Or stick with IEC 61131-3 languages. > Anyone who is using PLCs in a remotely serious industrial fashion is almost certainly going to keep buying Rockwell or Siemens anyways. That is more of an industry trope: "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" but replace IBM with AB for the USA or Siemens in Europe. Basically, Enterprise grade automation with all the associated enterprise goodness: high cost, licensing, price gouging legacy support, and poor technical decisions. I stay away from it.

fluorinerocket 2y ago
Beckhoff is so awesome. I bought at least 100 of their EP series modules, which are IP65 and can be mounted anywhere and use M12 and M8 connectors, so with the right sensors you can just connect with an off the shelf cable, no wiring connectors. No running endless sensor and actuator cables back to a central cabinet. And you get fast deterministic control with etherCAT no problem. Don't sleep on beckhoff
petsfed 2y ago
There's also this really weird fear in that industry of open-source anything. A while back, I was investigating security options for PLCs (in the light of e.g. stuxnet), and while Siemens and Rockwell do ultimately feature such things, there was always a lot of "you can trust our security schema, but you can't trust that open-source stuff, anybody could put anything in there". There are very good reasons to use PLCs, that the Arduino PLCs completely fail to address. But I'll bet that a lot of criticism within the industry will come down to "its open source, so you can't trust them!".
- MisterTea 2y ago
  > There's also this really weird fear in that industry of open-source anything. The weapon of choice of enterprise anything: FUD.
willglynn 2y ago
Seconding Beckhoff. EtherCAT is a fantastic protocol, TwinCAT/BSD works great, reliability is excellent. It's super nice to run realtime PLC code on specific processor cores with µs of jitter while other cores run a normal OS with normal applications (e.g. VictoriaMetrics) on the controller itself. I have a construction project involving several buildings with overlapping infrastructure. Everything gets connected to EtherCAT as quickly as possible. Electric generation: solar panels, batteries, inverters. Energy management: branch circuit monitoring, weather forecasts, solar forecasts, load control for things like EV charging and water heating. HVAC: heat pumps, buffer tanks, circulation pumps, valves. Building automation: lighting, access control. I just add I/O wherever, connect over Ethernet, and glue all the signals together in software. I wouldn't dare approach a project like this with Arduino.
- doobiedowner 2y ago
  How is procurement process with Beckhoff? I am tempted to make the jump from mostly AB.
  - willglynn 2y ago
    It's… fine? Unlike certain other brands, I've encountered no network of frothing, territorial, gatekeeping dealers with Beckhoff. For my project, I reached out to sales.usa@beckhoff.com, got a rep, asked for a quote, and went from there. Secondhand can be viable too. Some of my "jellybean" EtherCAT terminals came from eBay. I won't get help from Beckhoff if they break, but given that I already have replacements on hand, I'm really not worried about it. Beckhoff also lets you download almost all the development tools, runtimes, and PLC libraries without paying. In their words: > Trial licenses can be generated in the TwinCAT 3 development environment (XAE) for many TwinCAT 3 functions for a validity period of 7 days. This can be repeated any number of times. An internet connection is not required for this. In this way, these TwinCAT functions can be used simply and cost-effectively in laboratory operations, e.g. in the education sector. This is obviously useful for development and experimentation. It can also be an escape hatch in production if you need to substitute controllers. Beckhoff wants you to pay for what you use, sure, but their licensing scheme goes out of its way to avoid kicking you when you're down.

fluorinerocket 2y ago

Beckhoff is so awesome. I bought at least 100 of their EP series modules, which are IP65 and can be mounted anywhere and use M12 and M8 connectors, so with the right sensors you can just connect with an off the shelf cable, no wiring connectors. No running endless sensor and actuator cables back to a central cabinet. And you get fast deterministic control with etherCAT no problem. Don't sleep on beckhoff

petsfed 2y ago

There's also this really weird fear in that industry of open-source anything. A while back, I was investigating security options for PLCs (in the light of e.g. stuxnet), and while Siemens and Rockwell do ultimately feature such things, there was always a lot of "you can trust our security schema, but you can't trust that open-source stuff, anybody could put anything in there". There are very good reasons to use PLCs, that the Arduino PLCs completely fail to address. But I'll bet that a lot of criticism within the industry will come down to "its open source, so you can't trust them!".

MisterTea 2y ago
> There's also this really weird fear in that industry of open-source anything. The weapon of choice of enterprise anything: FUD.

willglynn 2y ago

Seconding Beckhoff. EtherCAT is a fantastic protocol, TwinCAT/BSD works great, reliability is excellent. It's super nice to run realtime PLC code on specific processor cores with µs of jitter while other cores run a normal OS with normal applications (e.g. VictoriaMetrics) on the controller itself. I have a construction project involving several buildings with overlapping infrastructure. Everything gets connected to EtherCAT as quickly as possible. Electric generation: solar panels, batteries, inverters. Energy management: branch circuit monitoring, weather forecasts, solar forecasts, load control for things like EV charging and water heating. HVAC: heat pumps, buffer tanks, circulation pumps, valves. Building automation: lighting, access control. I just add I/O wherever, connect over Ethernet, and glue all the signals together in software. I wouldn't dare approach a project like this with Arduino.

doobiedowner 2y ago
How is procurement process with Beckhoff? I am tempted to make the jump from mostly AB.
- willglynn 2y ago
  It's… fine? Unlike certain other brands, I've encountered no network of frothing, territorial, gatekeeping dealers with Beckhoff. For my project, I reached out to sales.usa@beckhoff.com, got a rep, asked for a quote, and went from there. Secondhand can be viable too. Some of my "jellybean" EtherCAT terminals came from eBay. I won't get help from Beckhoff if they break, but given that I already have replacements on hand, I'm really not worried about it. Beckhoff also lets you download almost all the development tools, runtimes, and PLC libraries without paying. In their words: > Trial licenses can be generated in the TwinCAT 3 development environment (XAE) for many TwinCAT 3 functions for a validity period of 7 days. This can be repeated any number of times. An internet connection is not required for this. In this way, these TwinCAT functions can be used simply and cost-effectively in laboratory operations, e.g. in the education sector. This is obviously useful for development and experimentation. It can also be an escape hatch in production if you need to substitute controllers. Beckhoff wants you to pay for what you use, sure, but their licensing scheme goes out of its way to avoid kicking you when you're down.