Dear TwinCAT’ers
I’m very happy to announce the release of TcUnit version 1.3.
TcUnit 1.3 released
ChatGPT and PLC programming
ChatGPT… ChatGPT… It’s been on the news every day for the last two months. I’ve seen it being used for traditional IT-oriented languages/programming, but the question is: can it be used to do PLC-programming? Let’s find out!
Arduino PLC ❤️ Beckhoff PLC
Can an Arduino PLC talk the same language as a Beckhoff PLC? Absolutely yes! In this video we will make an Arduino PLC talk to a Beckhoff PLC using Modbus TCP. The Arduino PLC will act as a Modbus TCP client, and the Beckhoff PLC will act as a Modbus TCP server. By utilizing two function blocks, we will make the Arduino both read and write registers in the Beckhoff PLC.
Arduino PLC
The Arduino PLC and the Arduino PLC IDE… there has been a lot of buzz around it since it was announced recently. I’m a long-time user of the Arduino eco-system and have been using their IDE for over 10 years for various projects. Guess if I was surprised when they released their new IDE aimed at the industrial automation industry! The Arduino PLC IDE only supports one board right now, the Arduino Portenta Machine Control, and luckily I had just been using one of these boards for another project recently, so I could try the new PLC IDE that Arduino have released.
I thought I’d share my initial impressions, findings, praises & complaints with all of you by making a YouTube video where I go through the complete process of installing the IDE and configuring one Arduino board to run a simple PLC program.
Merry christmas & happy new year!
Hey all readers! Another year has passed by, and I thought I’d just share some thoughts.
There haven’t really been many blog posts this year (as in pure blog texts), but rather blog posts with links to my YouTube videos. As you might already have guessed, all my spare-time went into finishing the free “PLC programming using TwinCAT 3” course on YouTube. I promised myself that I would finish this course this year, and I’m very happy to have delivered the last part just a few days ago. Now I know that it takes 720 hours to make what might be the world’s most popular PLC programming course.
The response to this course has been well beyond my imagination. I’ve on average probably received two dozen messages every week saying thank you from people all across the world. Many have started their careers thanks to my course, some have learned something new (for example, what TDD is). A few have written very angry/hateful e-mails stating that I’m destroying the automation industry and the job-market by putting out my course for free. I’ve realized you can’t make everyone happy.
PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial – part 18
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published the last part of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
So we’ve come to an end. For the last two years all my weekends, holidays, summer/winter vacations and basically every free-moment I’ve had, went into the creation of the free “PLC programming using TwinCAT 3” course on YouTube. It’s been the biggest hobby-project I’ve ever commited myself to, and I together with my wife would like to finish by saying a few words.
PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial – part 17b
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 17b of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
TDD is the practice of writing tests before writing the implementation code. Writing software using the practice of TDD is something that has been around in the traditional software development industry for a while, but only recently has gained attention in industrial automation. In this series of videos, we will look at the theory of TDD, and then see how it’s done in practice. In this episode, we will implement the code that we wrote tests for in episode 17a.
PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial – part 17a
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 17a of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
TDD is the practice of writing tests before writing the implementation code. Writing software using the practice of TDD is something that has been around in the traditional software development industry for a while, but only recently has gained attention in industrial automation. In this series of videos, we will look at the theory of TDD, and then see how it’s done in practice.
PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial – part 16
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 16 of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
Ever wondered what challenges you face if you want to develop PLC software for the worlds largest optical telescope? In this episode we are going to talk about the TwinCAT automation interface, which you can use if you want to automate the configuration, development and deployment process of your PLC software.
Simply stated: automate the automation!
PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial – part 15
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 15 of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
The Automation Device Specification (ADS) is Beckhoffs middleware to communicate with Beckhoff PLCs. It’s used for all kinds of use cases, as software deployment, reading/writing of variables and for internal communication of software modules. In this part we’ll go through the theory and also write some C# software to communicate with a PLC. We’ll also do a simple C++ program running under Linux that talks to the PLC!