Entries for 'Josh Zimmerle'
PROFIBUS is a common two-wire serial communication method and standard for fieldbus communications in automation. Originally developed in 1989, it remains one of the simplest and cheapest communication methods used in industrial automation. However, ...
What is a state machine, and why should I use one? State machines are a way of organizing code into situations, or states, and transitions so that the code is easier to follow and read. A state represents what the code and/or physical machine is curr...
Modern PLCs are fast, but with only a few exceptions, they can only do one thing at a time. This is because PLCs are built around single-core processors. In this post, I’ll go over some of the low-level PLC concepts that both make PLCs versatil...
Whether you’re working with a PLC, a PC or an Arduino, odds are you’re going to need to send and receive signals. In this blog, I’ll go over some basic signal types and communication methods as well as why these signals may be used....
PowerFlex VFDs are very adept drives capable of interfacing with a lot of options for control, configuration, and monitoring. However, this range of capabilities can be daunting and confusing for those unfamiliar with industrial VFDs, or new to Power...
Thanks to TIA Portals development environment, laying out and linking a few objects on an HMI screen doesn’t take very much time. Though, this process starts to become tedious when there are many objects with many individual tag connections for...
Automation and control come in a lot of different varieties and flavors. On the surface, Arduinos, PLCs, and embedded controls all appear to do the same function. So how do you determine which is best for your application?
In this post, I’ll...
Siemen’s TIA Portal provides quite a few useful features that make it very easy to update and maintain code. Updating projects from one version to the next is as easy as opening the project in the newer version of Portal. However, there ar...