A Refreshing Experiment in DIY PLC Design
Dip your toes into the world of industrial control and automation. It won’t take long before you’re appalled at the cost of a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). A new Allen Bradly PLC can easily cost you more than $1,000 and that’s basically just a fancy Arduino, right? We’ve all had that thought process, but element14 Presents' Clem Mayer actually put his assumptions to the test. He built his own PLC to find out if the high costs are justifiable.
PLCs come in many forms and with a wide range of different capabilities, but they’re all input/output devices intended for use with machines and other industrial equipment. An automatic heat press, for example, might have a PLC to monitor a temperature sensor, activate a hydraulic pump, and then reverse that pump at a set force threshold.
Any MDB (microcontroller development board) can do the same thing — often for less...
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