My main software development machine is getting really old and tired so I decided to build a new one. When I was younger it was a lot of fun to build computers, but now that I’m old, boring and grey I haven’t had the time nor the motivation to build a computer but rather just buy one that’s pre-built. This time I have decided I will go back to my roots and build the computer myself. Join me on the journey of building a new software development machine!
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 11 of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
When you start to develop PLC software and you’ve worked for a few projects, you will come to a point where you will notice that certain parts of the software, like function blocks, will be copied between the projects. You’ll either do it by simple rewriting the same functions or function blocks again, or you will simply copy and paste it from one project to another. Also, once a project gets big enough, you will want to utilize something called libraries. With this we can achieve code re-use.
If you want to write TwinCAT 3 software and run it, it’s not obvious how to get TwinCAT 3 to run on your desktop machine, be it directly on the machine or inside a virtual machine. The primary reason for this is because TwinCAT 3 is running in something called kernel space. While I was bored recently on a late afternoon, I discovered that Beckhoff had quietly added some files in the TwinCAT 3 folder in one of the newer releases of TwinCAT 3, that might change all of this.
How you may wonder? Let’s find out!
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 10 of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
When designing and building a control system you will eventually want the control system to actuate something, be it a relay, a motor, a pneumatic system or maybe a complete 6-axis robot. To get feedback of the actuation, sensors are needed. In this part we will cover how we communicate with the environment using inputs and outputs.
Dear developers,
this year there have been a lot of changes, and I guess the end of the year is a time for reflection. This year I have (once again) moved from Sweden to Germany for new opportunities. Every opportunity usually brings its challenges. Moving abroad is always a challenge, and I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say that I miss Sweden every day. This blog and my YouTube channel have been one way for me to think of something else than home.
One of the most anticipated products that Beckhoff has released this year is TwinCAT/BSD, which is Beckhoff’s new operating system which is an alternative to Windows for the PLCs. Did you ever want to play around/learn TwinCAT/BSD, but don’t want to spend the money to buy a PLC with it pre-installed? No worries, it’s entirely possible to run it fully virtualized in a virtual machine. Not only that, it’s also possible to run your TwinCAT 3 software in that virtual machine! I’ve created a step-by-step tutorial where I will show how you can run it locally on your PC. Start the video to join me on an adventure & let’s have some fun!
One of the things that have annoyed me ever since I started using TwinCAT is the fact that if you create an enumeration, it will automatically have a global scope. It will be accessible from all functions and function blocks. What’s even worse is that if you create a library project with an enumeration and include that library in another project, the enumeration will be visible there, too. This pollutes the namespace by creating unnecessary types. But no more.
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 9 of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
In this part we’ll learn how to use one of the most used Beckhoff libraries for various purposes. We’ll learn how to measure execution time of PLC code, how to use a FIFO buffer and how to combine the power of using a TwinCAT real-time program with an application running in user-space (Windows).
Today on this day five years ago, I published my first entry on this blog. These last five years have been an amazing trip, and the number of visitors has seen a steady growth.
Dear existing & future PLC software developers, I have published part 8 of my free PLC programming using TwinCAT 3 tutorial.
As TwinCAT 3 conforms to the IEC61131-3 standard, there are certain things it has to be able to do. The Tc2_Standard library has many of the standard IEC functions such as timers and triggers, which we will look into in this part of the tutorial.