I've seen or participated in many a thread over the years discussing the use of Arduino as a machine controller, and the soundest advice most often given, is that it's not a great idea. Arduino is not rated for the rigors of industrial control. It can't be relied upon like a PLC can. It hasn't been torture tested the way PLCs are. It doesn't have native support for the signals used in industry. It's a kludge at best. Well AutomationDirect went and changed that. They beefed up the Arduino and stuck it in a DIN-rail mountable package with a backplane that interfaces with their line of Productivity 1000 I/O modules. You can now connect hardened 120VAC, 24VDC, 4-20mA, et. al. industrial I/O modules "Directly" to arduino, as well as shields from wherever. Best thing is, they stuck to the open source theme that Arduino embodies. Even their IDE is open source and available on GitHub (you can still use Arduino IDE if preferred). Schematics and gerbers can be downloaded for their CPU module and their shields (but not for the I/O cards which were developed for another PLC line, and predate arduino)
https://www.automationdirect.com/open-source/home
I'm putting together a shopping list for a huge project at work, and I'm slipping a little bit of this into it for evaluation. Below is the configuration I'm ordering; just a little of everything. I might use it to automate my smoker so it will smoke delicious meats without constant oversight. Once I've had a chance to dabble, I'll come back and post a review. Until then, I just wanted to put the word out there; this is pretty exciting for me; it is one of the only times my professional and personal interests have converged without me forcing them to. Total nerdgasm. I've not been paid or requested to post this, and if it turns out to be crap, I will be sure to rag on it without mercy.
I hope I'm not late to the party; this info is a couple weeks old by now. Was anyone else in the know?
https://www.automationdirect.com/open-source/home
I'm putting together a shopping list for a huge project at work, and I'm slipping a little bit of this into it for evaluation. Below is the configuration I'm ordering; just a little of everything. I might use it to automate my smoker so it will smoke delicious meats without constant oversight. Once I've had a chance to dabble, I'll come back and post a review. Until then, I just wanted to put the word out there; this is pretty exciting for me; it is one of the only times my professional and personal interests have converged without me forcing them to. Total nerdgasm. I've not been paid or requested to post this, and if it turns out to be crap, I will be sure to rag on it without mercy.
I hope I'm not late to the party; this info is a couple weeks old by now. Was anyone else in the know?
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