I have followed this series with great interest. During the early 90s, one of my duties at the newspaper press where I worked was programming the PLC modules for the newspaper cutters, folders and packaging machines. At that time the interfaces were not so intuitive and we did the programming in IL, more similar to an assembler than a programming language. It has been interesting to see the practical use of ladder logic.
"Increased a lot". What made the Experimenting with Industrial Automation design challenge such a great learning experience was that not every function was built into the PLC. Having to learn how to communicate through the communication hub and with the HMI were what set it above and apart from the basic PLC programming that I learned many years ago. PLC's are expected to do more - and they do. I had to use Structured Text in my Ladder Logic to do data type conversions. I don't think the Y2K SLC500 I learned on could have handled that. All in, great stuff AND I hope what we did will help someone when they build their system. Schneider Electric has a bunch of great tutorials - but it didn't cover everything. I'd like to think that we filled in some of the gaps.
As an embedded systems enthusiast, I never thought that my knowledge of Industrial Automation can be so much increased.
What I did first was take part in "Experimenting with Industrial Automation" using Schneider Electric devices. That increased my knowledge so much that I would expect. I realised that it could be so easy for me to work on Industrial Automation devices.
Then recently, I did Quiz on Industrial Automation. Certainly, these tasks increases my knowledge of Industrial Automation.
