Yes, it is. All the siblings might talk a lot about "but ruggedized!", "but realtime!", "but supported!". But in many cases, it is just a case of vendor lock-

Yes, it is. All the siblings might talk a lot about "but ruggedized!", "but realtime!", "but supported!". But in many cases, it is just a case of vendor lock-in. Ruggedized is just a casing and decoupled I/O-ports, you can get that for your Raspberry Pi. Realtime is a concern, but modern PLCs aren't really realtime anymore. Those are usually some big multicore non-realtime ARM, plus some small realtime-capable I/O-processors that do the really time-critical stuff. Or even just a CPLD to implement some trivial ladder logic cycles. Support matters, but if your PLC vendor goes bankrupt you've drained a few millions. Might be better to get something cheap where you can just stock up a few hundred replacement parts for cheaper. That's why actually, a lot of smaller PLCs are Raspberry Pi CMs now. The vendor won't tell you, but if you open them up, you'll see. And the big customers also wised up to the PLC scam and are now moving towards putting their control tasks on standard x86 hardware in the shop floor basement plus realtime ethernet with cheap I/O extenders on the shop floor. Which is why the big PLC vendors now try to sell "virtual PLC" to those customers, so they get at least a little money instead of none ;) https://www.siemens.com/en-us/products/simatic/s7-1500v/ https://www.siemens.com/en-us/products/simatic/s7-1500v/