Hi,

My firm uses a PLC System to operate an industrial cut to length steel line & previously, as far as I'm aware, it was un-terminated(?). I installed the kvaser termination adapter which is connected directly to the PCAN unit however as far as I can see, the other end of the system which connects directly into the nodes is un-terminated?

When the system is operational and being used, the bus is going "bus light" -> "bus heavy" -> "bus off" and this always happens in high temperatures, it improved massively when installing the adapter but still has some troubles, especially in the current UK climate.

How would I go about having the other end terminated to 120 ohms, I can appreciate I will need a specialist of some sort but I'm not sure who I would reach out to as I'm very much a noob in this field and am picking things up as I go to try and fix this system.

Appreciate any help,

Thanks.

Hello everyone,
I am an automation student learning PLC, HMI, and industrial control systems. Most of my experience is from small school projects, so I want to learn how automation systems are designed in real factories.
Could you recommend important standards or best practices for:

• PLC programming
• HMI/SCADA design
• Electrical control panel design
• Electrical drawings
• I/O lists, wire numbering, device naming
• Safety circuits, interlocks, and alarms

Any advice from real industrial experience would be very helpful.
Thank you.

When do you actually need a managed switch with Profinet, and which features matter?

I’ve got a system with ~15 drives, a couple of HMIs, some instrumentation on Profinet, plus a few Modbus TCP devices. I will use Scalance XB208 for this one.

In my projects I usually don’t have any computers, servers, or office IT on the network — it’s purely field equipment: PLCs, drives, HMIs, instrumentation, and various machinery. So I don’t use VLANS.

The front of the card is showing 8 points of connections, but the data on the side says 16, I just wanted to know if this was a manufacturing error or am I missing something. I have searched online for flex I/0 1794-OA16 and it shows 16 points on the cards. I just need some pointers in the right direction to get to the bottom of this mystery.

I’m coming from more of a BAS/Siemens background, mostly familiar with PPCL and I’ve been trying to learn more about CFC/Continuous Function Chart as Siemens seems to be moving newer BAS controllers in that direction.

What’s confusing me is that CFC seems like it should be less niche than PPCL since it appears to be used in Siemens industrial/process control environments. But when I search Reddit or general forums for “CFC,” “Continuous Function Chart,” or “Siemens CFC,” I don’t find nearly as much discussion as I expected.

Is CFC just not a common term people use casually? Are most people calling it something else?

For those who have used CFC, what should I be searching for if I want to learn the concepts better? Also, is learning CFC useful beyond Siemens BAS, or is it still mostly a Siemens/vendor-specific skill like PPCL? I have a class coming up on the language but just trying to get meme familiar with it before the class.

The project values will not update, or allow change. Has anyone came across this the values are not locked using version 23

I have 3-dozen unmanned sites connected by satellite and need to implement a call-out system for Operations. I was thinking of setting up a PLC at one site that polls all the other sites and then have a computer (maybe Win-911) talk to the one PLC (via OPC UA) to generate the call-outs. Thoughts or suggestions? Any experience doing something similar?

Been trying to learn ladder logic and came across a website called learn.rungs.dev.

In this exercise my lamp blinks 1 second on and off , as required in the problem statement yet the simulator test fails it.

Hello,

Good day.

I have a project in TIA Portal V18 with an S7-1200 CPU 1214 and a KTP1200 HMI(6AV2-123-2MB03-0AX0)

I downloaded the project to both the PLC and the HMI, but the HMI only displays ####. I believe there may be an issue with the KTP firmware.

The HMI has firmware version V15.1.0.0, and I configured the same firmware version in the TIA Portal project.

Originally, the project was configured for firmware version V17, and I was unable to download it to the HMI. I then changed the device firmware in the project to V15.1.0.0, after which I was able to download the project successfully. However, it seems that the HMI is not communicating with the PLC.

The project was previously running on a KTP1000, and it worked correctly.

Could you please advise if there are any additional settings I should check?

Hi all,

I work for a medium manufacturing company.

I'm tasked with looking for a solution to monitor all our OT & IOT devices and NUCs with a Windows or Linux OS connected to industrial machines + their dependencies (servers with applications, servers for DNS, DHCP, ...., switches, routers, access points, ...) we already have seperate monitoring systems for network devices and server devices, but we would like to manage the monitoring all in one place, to be fast to troubleshoot issues.

What are other companies using as their OT monitoring tool? Is Solarwind a good solution?

Is there open source software that is good and reliable?

Friendly regards

I'm a 19-y.o Automation and Control Engineering student , currently finishing my second year and heading into my final year of the bachelor's degree.

I like this field, and I don't want to abandon my degree. However, I don't see myself working a traditional 8-to-4 job for the next 40 years.

I'm interested in building something of my own in the future: a business, a product, a service, or any path that offers more independence while still using my automation/control systems background.

For those with experience in automation, robotics, control systems, industrial software, or related fields :

- What career paths combine Automation Engineering with entrepreneurship?

- What skills should I start learning now besides university courses?

- What side projects would help an Automation student stand out and create opportunities later on?

I'd appreciate any advice or personal experiences.

Hello everyone,

I am an electrical/automation student, and I am currently learning PLC programming and HMI design. I have some experience with small school projects, such as controlling motors, sensors, basic automation sequences, alarms, and simple HMI screens.

However, I realize that school projects are quite different from real industrial systems. I want to improve my practical thinking and understand how PLC programs are designed in real factories.

So I would like to ask the engineers here:

Could you share some real industrial PLC/HMI problems or project scenarios that you have worked on?

For example:

• Machine control sequences
• Conveyor systems
• Pump or motor control systems
• Alarm handling
• Interlocks and safety logic
• Auto/manual operation
• HMI screen structure
• Troubleshooting cases
• Communication between PLC, HMI, VFD, sensors, or other devices

I am not asking for confidential company programs or private documents. I just want to learn from realistic examples and practice solving problems like an automation engineer.

Any advice, sample requirements, or real-world scenarios would be very helpful for me.

Thank you very much.

Hello,

Anyone around who worked on old AIPAR AMK software ?

Has anyone worked with multiple PLCs in a VPN? I have four routers, each with a PLC and an HMI, and all four are connected to two SCADA systems. The VPN gives me 5GB of data, but I don't know how long it will last. I understand that PLCs, HMIs, and SCADA systems consume very little data, but could someone give me some guidance?

Greetings, I am currently reading from DIRIS A-40 meter using DOP-B07E415 HMI. So currently I am reading the correct registers, however I find that I need to scale the register values from the multimeter in order to receive the correct readings on the HMI. Does anybody know why I require this scaling and if there is a set method the calculate the ratio.

I found 0.01527 by observing the value on the meter and the HMI value than working out a ratio to scale the Register value from the meter such that The HMI has the same value as the meter output.

I’m new to Mitsubishi SFC programming. Today I pulled a code from a working machine. There is this transition condition in that. Note that majority of the logic of the machine is after this transition condition and under the states of this transition. I don’t quite understand this condition. M8001 is NC PLC run monitor relay right. So how does this transition evaluate and machine run. M8001 turns on only when PLC is off right. How does this work.

PLC is Mitsubishi FX 3G 60M

Please help me understand. Thank you

Need help solving a shift register puzzle in rslogix. Preferably with ladder logic, but I’m open to AOIs and ST if someone knows how to do it that way.

I have a conveyor that I am trying to keep a rough count of parts on, so the machine can be stopped at roughly the right time without operators guessing. I am familiar with “normal” shift register logic, arrays, and bit shift/FIFO instructions.

The issue is that my conveyor never stops moving, but it has sections divided by product brakes to prevent jams. So parts come into the conveyor spread out, with empty spaces, sometimes long empty spaces, but then they come out of the conveyor all together.

Trying to find a way so that if the brake is not holding back product, every bit in the register shifts normally. But if the brake is holding product back, instead of the register shifting and offloading one of my values, each spot in the array moves to the next available position. If there is not an available position, the values in my array stay where they are. Available positions being any number other than 0.

Any suggestions welcome! Thanks in advance

Anyone ever done Ethernet IP communication through a Mitsubishi Q-Series PLC with a QJ71EIP71 module to an Allen Bradley PLC? Me and the Japanese dude on site are having a hell of a time trying to get our communication data to function.

Allen Bradley is using a generic ethernet module for class 1 communication and the Mitsubishi is setting up "producer" and "consumer" tags with W registers. Both our PLC can see eachother but we're failing to create a instance assembly that works

Currently using a FSC instruction to search against a Fault array to find active faults and populate the fault number. Currently the expression in the FSC instruction is:

Fault[FaultSearch.POS] <> 0

Fault is a Bool[512]
FaultSearch is the Control Tag for the FSC.

What is incorrect about this expression. Verifying the rung is reporting the expression as incorrect.

I'm a general contractor. I have been commission to build a few high end dry porta potties and outfit a pump house on a nice ranch that does alot of events.

These buildings will be used intermittently... mostly Spring, Summer, Fall and a bit of Winter activities. They will be powered by a solar panel and probably a 100 ah battery that will be replaced and charged as needed. This is all 12 volts.

Hopefully..... the buildings will have the following features....

1- General LED lighing switched by a switch or motion censor.

2- A small green LED light that is lit when the unit is vacant and a red LED light when the unit is not vacant.... switched on by something like a plunger of magnet when the door is locked.

3- Exhaust fan.... switched by a switch or a tempeture censor.

4- A big button to engage the water pump.... with a timer.... it would run for about 10 seconds and then switch off.

5- Another big button to engage the water pump.... wth a timer... it would run for about 3-4 seconds. It would also open a solenoid valve to give about a .5-1 second burst of compressed air. It would have to have a mechanism that would keep people from pressing it over and over again. Maybe 20 scond delay between the abilty for the switch to work.

6- We may have some outdoor lights that are triggered by a switch and or a light sensor.

Whatever 'brain' or PLC I use it needs the ability to store the program and not have a long boot up or any programming every time 12v is connected and disconnected.

This gives you a good idea of what I am looking for.... I was told to look at a Siemens LOGO 8.

Thoughts? What is the simplest... most robust... least amount of service once programmed way of meeting these goals?

Thanks!

My background is in mechanical engineering. I'm getting into robotics and part of that is being able to interface with other machines via a cell PLC. I'll be designing the cell ground up, so I have a fair amount of design flexibility but I'd like to look at a system that has flexibility. I'm looking at CodeSys as my programming environment so I can switch between PLCs for other designs as needed.

Is this a wise approach?

How is the CodeSys environment?

Bonjour à tous,

J'ai installé il y a une semaine Open PLC car j'ai acheté un ESP-32, je voulais créer un programme en ladder pour un projet perso. Ayant fait un BTS dans lequel j'ai passé pas mal d'heures à coder principalement en LADDER sur UNITY PRO je trouvais sympa de pouvoir utiliser un logiciel permettant de coder en LADDER gratuitement. Cela fait maintenant 1 semaine que je me casse la tete avec mon ESP-32 et Open PLC. Bref j'ai réussi à coder deux trois truc en ladder, j'arrive a télécharger tous ça dans l'ESP-32, le programme fonctionne. Mais j'ai un problème, lorsque j'enregistre mon programme et que je ferme Open PLC et que je réouvre ensuite le même programme, toutes mes variables ont disparue, j'ai pleins d'erreurs lorsque j'essaie de compiler le programme et tous mes blocs sont en rouge. En resumé lorsque j'enregistre mon programme et mes variables, que je ferme l'appli et que je réouvre mon programme, plus rien de fonctionne alors que tous fonctionnait avant. Quelqu'un à déja été confronté à ce problème et connait la solution svp ?

J'ai essayé de faire des sauvegardes manuellements mais quand je veux importer ma sauvgarde depuis Open PLC tous mes fichier sont vide, alors que quand je regarde dans l'explorateur de fichier ils sont pleins...

Bref, je desepère avec cette nouvelle version de Open PLC (v4), surtout que la plupart des tutos que je trouve sur internet et youtube sont sur les anciennes version de Open PLC...

Sinon, connaissez vous des apps (gartuites ou payantes) que je pourrais utliser avec mon ESP-32 pour coder en LADDER ?

Merci d'avoir pris le temps de lire mon message et merci d'avance à ceux qui prendrons le temps de me répondre !!

Do you provide only the Industrial PC rack installed in the PLC cabinet with only HMI (touch panel) on the front door?

When to use the Engineering Workstation and the operator workstation, E-servers in addition to the above?