Every time that discussion leads to the argument for ladder, that the maintenance personnel can understand it more easily.

I wonder where you all work… What customers do you have that own the plc software and have the code?

Why do I ask that? For our company it’s a no go to give the source to the customers. They also don’t want to spend the money for the expensive workshops to be able to buy and register the software. That is also not cheap. And even when they get the software and connect to a plc from us, they can’t get around the user/password protection.

Maybe it’s a thing of the PLC Bubble I live in… We do all programming in ST. I think it’s superior to ladder because it’s more compact and easy to read when you come from embedded systems like me.

We build machines and everything the customer maybe wants to change is accessible through the HMI. When we have to troubleshoot the code, we login through our remote Gateway.

So in wich industry do the customers/ maintenance can access the plc code?

Diagrams are good and all, but maybe you have some tricks up you sleeve which could help better understanding and learning

I'm the main software dev on a project where there's a combination of components speaking Ethernet/IP, but also plain computers I'm hoping to have TCP sockets open, which the PLC will talk to.

The problem I'm facing is, I don't know how hard or easy it is to build and maintain complex, parallelized executions on a PLC. I could offload a good amount of complex code to the peripheral components and thus keep the PLC code minimal, or I could essentially say "the PLC will do it all".

Are there any guidelines here? My tendency is to offload as much as possible, but that may simply be because it is something I personally know, versus the black box the PLC (and its capabilities) is.

Hello fellow sufferers!

I am puzzled regarding the fact, that our engineering company needs to preserve intellectual property and I am not sure how to smartly do it.

Currently we are designing all of our machines on Delta controllers and HMIs for different sorts of production, with thousands of hours put into testing and etc. And to be fair, almost all projects were designed and written by just me, and I myself don't really want it to be stollen by other people and sold as theirs.

However, I don't really have much experience in security section (or how to call it). The only solution I have on mind is to set-up a somekind of password for PLCs and HMIs download/upload function, which is going to be different for every type of machine (or even for every machine), write it on a piece of paper and put into companies safe: password itself is going to be known only by me, CEO and chief engineer (who was the only programmer before I was hired).

Thanks in advance

Edit:

Got a small talk with all needed people regarding this topic after I wrote this thread and actually everything is written inside buy agreement regarding our machines: every buyer gets the mass production machine as-is with no source code included, but. After that they can do whatever they want with it, plc itself is not locked for rewritting with something different.

If our company "disappears" - it is their risks buying those machines, but as soon as there are currently no competitors in the market right now, we are not bothered with providing other terms at the moment. But otherwise, everything, including complex algoritms, is already patented and so on. Think about it like this: does Apple provide anything if they disappear? No, you are going to be left with a brick instead of your phone using which you read this thread right now.

Regarding people who are saying that "your code is not special" and so on: yes, everyone decent can write one and I am not saying that my or any others projects are something impossible to duplicate. But for company who tries to make similar machine - it is time and money, nothing comes out of thin air. And while having a source code they can simply buy same brains (because all schemes are provided) and start thinking about other problems, without it they also have to bother with this not so small problem too!

Anyways, thanks to everyone for participating in discussion and for all the points you made. This community is really competent and fun to engage with!

I would like to share my experience with Rockwell fair hands-on training that might help someone.

I have attended 5 training sessions which includes motion control, Stratix switch, integrating safety Logix controllers, AI person detection. Here are my favorite sessions : -

Motion control with Kinetix 5700drives : - I had two sessions basic and advanced. It does include from setting up drive, testing, programming, tuning, safety, etc.

Stratix advanced session: - I used Stratix 5800 and 5200 switches. The session includes Routing, Nat, VLAN, Security, etc.

Logix Integrated Safety controller:- This includes performing safety using latest Guardlogix PLCs using different safety functions safe homing, safe speed monitoring, etc.

Overall, I say it was an excellent experience, I work with different brands of products and having little bit experience with Rockwell certainly helped me during the training.

On top of this, I made a really good connection with industry experts and received free advice from Rockwell engineers on my ongoing projects. 😉

I hate how the commercial SCADA platforms are dependent on GUI. I don't like how they make me navigate through menus to set things up. For me, "everything" should be in pure text, the same as web development experience. Maybe it's because of my CS background. Am I the only one who feels that way?

Over the past 7 years I've used all major SCADA platforms but was never satisfied with the development experience, so I started building a Python framework. I'm very happy with the result and I was wondering if there's any interest here to start a open-source framework out of this?

Right now, it's using Python backend, React Frontend, and it's supporting OPC UA, ModbusTCP, and Serial communications. Most importantly, it's designed to be easy to understand (for humans and AI copilots). Think of something like Django, or FastAPI.

Where do I start? Function blocks are horrible! Just use SCL, which is readable at least and more suitable for complex applications!

I need to extend and rework a plant that is programmed with a Siemens plc in the awful function block diagram language. I am struggling really hard to understand the existing implementation, which is a convoluted mess of hundreds of strangely wired function blocks and many input and output variables. There are no comments at all. For some unknown reason the thing works somehow. However, it is a very bloated and finicky design. I am afraid that the thing will dramatically break and collapse if I only change the slightest details in this project!

The actual horror is working with TIA Portal. The blocks have sometimes 30 or more in and outputs, which means you can’t even see the whole block on the crammed TIA Portal screen. The debug view cannot show you the variables at runtime when you scroll the mousewheel. Why is that?! Each click and scroll in TIA is painful and unbelievably slow.

How do you cope with such messy FBD code? How do you work and understand these networks? How do you do this in the crappy TIA Portal software?

I use WinCC Unfield v20 on Windows 10, SCADA displays the status, but I cannot enter values ​​into the io field or switch. Please help me fix this error, thank you.

Got made fun of yesterday for my degree being useless.

They told me only ABET accredited engineering degrees should even be considered real and that I'm dumb and all that Yada Yada for getting a 2 year technical degree from a community College.

I really don't have this desire to be an engineer. I do want to work with technology and stuff though but I could care less about a stupid job title. People seem so obsessed with the job title to the point I'm being told I need a fancy job title to be allowed to try to date women.

In my opinion engineering degrees are expensive garbage. Being told I need an engineering degree over and over again is really annoying. I can't even afford to get an engineering degree, it's just too expensive and isn't worth the small chance at becoming an engineer.

I do want to program machines, I do want to repair machines, I do want to work with computers, electronics and the like. I'm really into programming BTW. But I just feel like the engineering degree is out of the question.

What kind of education should I have to be "competent" in this field?

PLC programmers in this subreddit who are outside the U.S. or Europe: have you managed to land remote jobs with foreign companies doing PLC programming? If so, how did you get the job?

How do you go on about releasing all project files, configurations etc. to customers. I have a particular customer that are sure they can "optimize" my code and have the necessary know-how of the platform in question. I am very dubious about that statement but I am always in for dishing out humble pie.

Because the first thing they will do is modify the machine I am interested in what's the standard for situations like this.

I have a basic agreement in place, no more warranty, no more service calls, But I have to give them offers for anything related to the project if the ask for it so I am not totally severing relations with them.

I will be conducting a day of orientation around the project for the engineers and giving them the full project documents I have. for return I am asking for 10% of the value of the total project for the source documents.

Given how I will lose revenue on maintenance over the lifetime of the machine I think this deal is a steal for them.

Do you give away source files for free? or do you ask for some price ? what about warranties service calls etc.

hey have you found any ways how ai chatbots can help ourselves in our field?

For me I just found it helpful for generating tags or names, but thats all.

Thanks!

Edit:

As I can see there isnt many options. So what? Will be PLC engineering still more expensive, cause we will need to spend a lot of time writing codes by ourselves? Or all other softwares gonna put PLCs away from field, cause it will be too expensive to continue with?

What free online certificates can I take that will add value to my resume as a fresh instrumentation and control engineer?

I'm just looking to expand my career and was just wondering what your thoughts on the 2 subjects were. Do you use them in your job? Do you see a place where they could be beneficial?

In reference to THIS post.

I had been working on this for 3 days. I gave up on using one switch, so I attempted to daisy chain two of them together. This still didn’t work so I knew something was off. I was always Able to ping the VLAN, but not the device itself. Finally after meticulously checking my work one last time, I took a chance and swapped Ethernet cords and BOOM BABY!!! What I saw was the greatest command lines I’ve ever seen in my life when the ping was successful.

A lot of good came out of this because I’m convinced I could network every single house in my neighborhood if I had to REGARDLESS OF IP lmao!!! Thanks for everyone’s help!!!!

OKUMA vt1000

Trying to figure out what “AE1 STD” is.

Because 7 10 11.

I'm a Rockwell man because i like PLCs that are easy to use and i'm also not a psychopath .

But some of my customers are very inconsiderate and run siemens hardware (i nearly threw up the first time i saw the controller).

My question to the cretins Siemens Users , is there an equivalent ONS in TIA Portal ?

I have a MOV instruction that copies over some data when a condition is meet , obviously I only want to send this data once , but i cant find a neat way to do this without adding additional branches using the -(p)- instruction.

Either im really dumb , or this has been pointlessly complicated in TIA portal

If anyone could advise that would be swell , as im pretty close the burning the factory down so we can replace everything with Rockwell.

Hello. I'm in an Intro to PLC class, and I'm going to build my own PLC trainer very similar to the ones we use in class. Now I'm trying to figure out how to power it.

We use Allen-Bradley Micro810 PLCs in class, and I've already ordered one of my own. Now I need to put together a parts list and build my trainer. I peeked inside the junction box on the trainer I've been using for class, and it looks like we are just running power from the AC outlet through an AC/DC converter plug, into a junction box with a fuse, and then to the PLC and buttons and LEDs.

I just need help picking a power adapter and a fuse if I am going to wire up my own trainer. How do I choose the correct fuse and power adapter?

On the other hand, maybe I should buy an actual power supply unit instead of a fuse. If that's a better option, then please suggest a power supply. Thanks.