"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.
"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.
