Hi!
Selfie with the VLT
My name is Jakob Sagatowski and I work as a software engineer. Born in Poland, raised in Sweden, currently living in Germany. I’ve been working on various projects with embedded platforms for quite some time, and one day I discovered the world of PLC-programming, more specifically PLC-programming in TwinCAT. Unfortunately, with TwinCAT I’ve noticed that it can be quite tough to find information/examples for various problems in this development environment. As someone who is used to development in the standard embedded languages (C/C++/Ada), there is quite a road to walk when entering the world of TwinCAT and PLCs. Words as EtherCAT, TON, bExecute and Structured text are a few new users pretty quickly come across. Going from programming in Ada/C/C++ to 61131-3/ST had its differences! Still, with a PC-based PLC it was possible to do much of everything I was used to from other projects. As years are passing, experience grows so I thought it would be a good idea to create a blog about TwinCAT development. So now instead of just complaining of the lack of information on Internet regarding this, I’m sharing some of the tips & tricks regarding TwinCAT! Usually you work to solve a problem for some time, problem gets solved and then you acquired new knowledge. Thought this channel would be a good place to publish that knowledge. Despite the name AllTwinCAT, I’m also publishing other things I find interesting on this blog. I guess the name AlmostAllTwinCAT or MostlyTwinCAT just wouldn’t sound as catchy!
New posts will be published here anytime in my (decreasingly amount of) spare time. I’m not in any way affiliated with Beckhoff, nor do they in any way sponsor me. I just happen to work and spend a lot of time with their products. Fact is, you don’t have to spend a single cent to learn TwinCAT as the development environment and (time-limited) runtime is free.
Need help with your software/automation project? Want personal TwinCAT 3 training? I’m running my own consultancy company Sagatowski GmbH.
Enjoy!
Hi Jakob
I wanted to just say we appreciate your blog at our company. You gave us some really good inputs.
We have internally developed a unit test framework where we use javascript language to send test cases and steps to the plc over OPC UA and read out the result. We develop also Code for Siemens plcs, therefore we can use the same script for both platforms.
I would like to make it open source but my boss does not allow it :-(.
You could make an article over code formatting. Beckhoff has no internal code formatter like other languages. Stweep is new this year and provides a formatter for TwinCAT, but i don’t like the licence model. There exist also TcBlack a open source formatter, but i haven’t tried it yet.
Greetings
Florian
Hi! I’m happy you find this blog useful.
Sounds like a really exciting unit testing framework platform that you have built. Shame it’s not possible to share the code, I would love to see it. This is a big issue with the whole industry, there is very little open-source initiatives. Probably due to cultural differences of “traditional” software companies versus. automation companies.
I’ll consider the article for code formatting, but I think it’s important that other start to write articles/blog posts as well. Maybe you could write about it?
Hello Jakob,
Nice web. I also programming in TwinCAT but mostly in our company on older version TC2. I agree with you that there is lack of information about TC at all.
Hi Jakob, I just discovered your blog and Videos today while checking LinkedIn. I’ve been working as automation engineer for about 4 years (mainly Rockwell) and I have found Beckhoff really power full and costly efficient, and with your blog I found out some New stuff. I had seen its capabilities and it is pure magic! (sorry for my english) greetings from México!
Hi Abraham! Thanks for the feedback, it makes me very happy that you find my blog and videos useful!
You are just great! You just don’t share your wisdom but you also gave some advice of good practices in coding. You are indeed a helping hand for those who are in the stiff learning stage and we really appreciate your efforts doing this. I find myself smiling while attentively watching your videos.
Thanks for this nice message on Christmas eve Dennis, it also makes me smile 🙂
i listen you just now at Beckhoff Live from Hannover Messe 2022…great!!!!
Thank you for your work Jakob.
Jakob thanks for TC3 tutorial, this is best training material that is widely available on internet !!
Do You have Polish roots ?