Can you use an Arduino in Commercial and Industrial Applications?
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- Most people would say you can't use Arduino in Industrial applications. The people at rugged-circuits.com say otherwise with their rugged line of Arduino compatible boards and industrial shields.
- Наука та технологія
Great Video! Great channel.
The Rugged MEGA inputs are rated up to 24V max. Power input is 3.5V-30V.
The 24V Industrial Shield will also work on all Uno based micro boards. The Rugged MEGA happens to have a selectable jumper which allows use of Mega based boards or Uno based hence the compatibility.
That's really interesting. I really like the PLC board, and I think people would be interested in testing it with a cheap UNO clone and then moving to a more expensive Rugged board after testing. That's all great info!
Thank you for ckarifying!
I work as an Industrial electrician / electronics tech for a manufacturing plant and I've often said I, as well as a few others, that we could replace a PLC with a microcontroller. Not only Arduino but other micro controller name brands as well. This often becomes the discussion as well as other cheaper PLC options such as Automation Direct's PLC line's. Yes PLC where created to replace relay logic, they also provide a far more convenient way to "reconfigure" a machine to perform a new or different task. What used to take days, weeks, months or even years to reconfigure a machines operational behavior is now minutes, hours and for a full redesign a few days. As far as the ladder logic, the programming language of PLC's, it was created to mimic relay logic as a visual programming method. Basically a electrician of the time could see the program and quickly understand what was going on as it followed a relay logic print layout. Its not really hard to understand or program ladder logic however its the insane cost the "top" PLC providers charge that becomes the issue. We will take for example Allen Bradley, you want be build a small PLC using SLC500 parts and you don't want to use old parts off eBay.
We will build a 32 input and 32 output, 16 sourcing and 16 sinking PLC, can'tplussoftware. If your starting fresh and new your looking between $5641.32 to $9051.32 just to get what I would consider minimum functionality. This is when Microcontrollers really start to look like a good option.
Yeah. I hear people talk about the high end PLCs is basically being cost prohibitive for the little guy. Obviously industrial is a pretty wide range so whether it's a good option for people or not depends on the application... Like most things
but can this micro controllers can perform complex logic as done by plc ladder logic ? I have a 4 dc output and 3 ac output small project pplus 7 dc input, with washing machine type logic.
That's where PLC direct comes in there controllers are as good as anybody's when it comes to Old PLC 2 stuff it's the only option then there was Mitsubishi I don't know where they're at anymore but guess again we just don't use that stuff anymore
@@AnotherMaker it was a company called Mitsubishi that made some really cool eight in and out 16 in and out 32 in and out 64 in and out under 400 hundred bucks I think the 8 in and out we're under $200
That's the magic of buying similar item from automation direct.
Biggest issue with real companies they want somebody to Sue or at least point to and hold accountable when all hell breaks loose so they can get parts and get back running quickly 20 years from when the machine was built.
@@chauvinemmons yes, that’s the biggest reason, reliability, accountability and long term serviceability. For most industrial applications the cost of the downtime far outweighs the 10k you spend on the “expensive” PLC system.
These industrial ruggedised boards would have been handy. Never having built an industrial factory floor machine in my life ( I was only officially employed initially as a factory worker an subsequently as a maintenance guy ), I used my previous hobby Arduino knowledge and engineering know-how to help my company of 10 people with a small factory to single-handedly build three successive incarnations of a human operated, floor standing industrial machine in around 2012. My control choice in the first machine were two Arduino Duemilanove. The final incarnation replaced these with a single Arduino Nano. My boss kept on at me about using industry standard PLC's of which I had some knowledge of at the time but I had to go with what I knew best. I also argued that using a PLC would be like using a very expensive sledgehammer to crack a nut given the relative simplicity and standalone nature of the machine. In addition, my company would have had to have given me training in PLCs which could have cost as much as the machine build itself...! In an effort to build a professional looking machine, I used all industry standard enclosures, buttons, switches, rack mounted 24V power supplies and solid state relays to get me that 5V to 24V conversion interface so you'd never know just by looking at the machine that it wasn't PLC controlled. On the first machine I had problems with electromagnetic interference which kept crashing the microcontroller. I was using it to drive a 3 phase motor via an inverter drive as well as a stepper motor and pneumatic cylinders all in close proximity. After consulting with various electrical experts I learnt a lot about electrical shielding and that EMI shielding is a bit of a black art..! On the subsequent machines I'd learnt my lessons and took heavy precautions. All throughout the first machine build I kept getting raised eyebrows by various "experts" as why I was using a microcontroller and not a PLC, the implication being that it was an "amateurish" route to be pursuing and "dangerous" from an H&S aspect. I fended them off but these encounters always left me in some doubt as to whether I was doing the right thing. In the end my machines quadrupled production capacity at a fraction of the cost of the PLC route. If I'd had access to a ruggedised and industrial interface readied Ruggeduino at the time, the EMI problems and interfacing to standard industrial equipment would have made things a hell of a lot easier. At the end of the day, in my opinion it's a "horses for courses" argument, yes you don't get well established industrial safety standards, equipment and integration to rely on, but you do get the open source flexibility, immediacy, availability and vastly reduced costs that microcontrollers offer. Maybe the new Arduino Portenta will start to change what I feel is a legacy mindset in the industrial automation field, one that likes to wag its finger and beat you over the head for not complying...
Yeah. Arduino is putting a lot of effort into the "Pro" stuff. I don't know that anyone will use it, but I think it's a worthy investment. These rugged boards are great. I have one going in an industrial setting soon. The quality is incredible.
@@AnotherMaker The Ruggeduinos sound like the business. Unless I'm simply unaware, I've never seen advertising for EMI protection on any microcontroller product so I'd be particularly interested in how well they ( and the Arduino Pro for that matter ) perform for protection against high voltage spike EMI in the "noisy" industrial environment. Does the Ruggeduino address this? Personally, for potential future projects, I'd be doing a side by side bench test, an ordinary Arduino and a ruggedised version, running some simple sketch on both and introducing a variety of controlled EMI sources in the hope that the ruggedised version would be better able to weather the storms. I do know that long lengths of wire into and out of a microcontroller can act as aerials for EMI making them particularly sensitive in this regard. Experimenting with different standard shielding techniques could be part of the plan if problems arise. This would be my only concern in terms of industrial safety when using microcontrollers as it is not something you can easily control for and is difficult to track down. Otherwise, apart from arguments about how "Ladder Logic" is "safer" than procedural languages, I see no convincing argument for not using microcontrollers.
Very nice to hear what you went through and looking at other ways instead of the traditional way of using PLCs. Thanks for sharing your comment was interesting and informative 😀
Great video. Good content. Right to repair is only way to go. To many stories of farmers hung out waiting for repair techs for weeks.
Arduino just announced their “Arduino Opta” their first Micro PLC. it’s gonna be available this December.
They have definitely been expanding their product line although I'm not sure how popular a lot of the new stuff is.
Heyyyy glad to see the views going up! Keep on going bro
My channel has been all over the place the last couple of months. Thanks so much for watching.
So many new possibilities with rugged-circuits!
Absolutely. I have an upcoming video where I'll be putting their claims to the test.
I was like "But you need 24v to do most industrial IO..." Then the 24v shield was presented! ;)
I have used Arduinos in the wild a few times now. They do work ok, but I found certain additions and precautions do help. These are things I learned in the 1990's replacing PLCs with Z80 boards but they work for non-industrial controllers as well.
Decoupling caps are your friend! Use isolated power when you can. Have a well-shielded enclosure, but have your Faraday cage building material at the ready if you have an extra bad EMF area.
If you are placing the controller in an enclosure on the outside or in a high-moisture area, you may want to use lacquer on the tin covers like on the USB or ethernet jacks and use only non-ferrous pins and headers as they will rust quickly. I would also place the board in a moisture-tight box as well.
If you are switching a contactor or other high voltage relay/switch, add a free-wheeling diode to live to switch another day! :) Use real-pulls/down resistors on digital IO lines (internal may work but...) Use OPTO isolators when needed.
When connecting to older serial-based equipment, it will usually not be TTL, but RS232, 485, or 422. You can find converters for each. A lot of the older sensors (pre-Modbus) will be current loop-based and will require more than just the Arduino to read.
Fantastic information. Obviously this is way more your area of expertise. I did a lot of PLC stuff a while ago, but I was installing them, not programming and designing the enclosures.
I came across the Arduino (pro) Portenta Machine Control unit yesterday, and that seems to tick a lot of boxes too. Check it out.
@@drheaddamage but can this micro controllers perform complex logic as done by plc ladder logic ? I have a 4 dc output and 3 ac output)0.2 - 9 amp) small project plus 7 dc input, with washing machine type logic.
You can of course replace PLCs with Arduinos. You may need 24 relay shields for the I/Os and depending on risks of the application you may need to manually add redundancies and good coding practice. But they can absolutely be used in place of PLCs.
Awesome!
construction electrician here, super interesting topic. I definitely want to learn more about industrial automation and home automation
This one is fantastic. Another one to consider in industrial applications is ua-cam.com/video/O3-UaSKSFuc/v-deo.html
They can all be powered remotely by the ethernet switch that connects them. But you won't go wrong with either of these
Cool video, thanks :)
Thanks for watching!
One of the companies I worked for we did project where they built a custom PLC to take a hydro mechanical device and convert it to an electromechanical device their initial bid to create this was $50,000 per spindle x 100 spindles per site. The customer needless to say wasn't too anxious to sign up for that they actually ended up doing it themselves over a course of a number of years whether they have the control or not who knows.
I ended up going back to the same plants but for another employer years later that's the only reason I know that they managed to get it done.
The company I work for previously that made these machines the newer electrical mechanical devices were Rock solid the control was insane you could actually make a lot more of the process than what was being used not to mention much faster much more accurate the price of the machine wasn't any more expensive the problem is taking the older machine and make it like a newer machine meant removing the entire electrical system top to bottom front to back sensors everything 100% had to go that's part of why it's so much for spindle to upgrade the machine.
For factories and things like that, downtime can quickly add up to millions of dollars lost, so it's often worth paying for the expensive stuff...depending on the risk/reward ratio. Other times, the cheaper option is great because it's just not that important.
-40 to +85c. Great! It will survive the basic weather here in southern Alberta. ;)
Haha. I lived in Alaska, I definitely get it :)
I just heard about the Portenta. What's difference between this and a Portenta for PLC application
Sorry I wish I was more help, but I've never used the portenta.
I’ve made a test rig that test filters for pressure drops and flow rates, the system I made uses two Arduinos. Over a thousands units have been tested and will be invoiced soon.
That's really awesome. These things are really great for repetitive tasks.
Great but in high-speed operation i think that has not able to perform very fast operation...in generally inside the plc have STM 32 microcontrollers..it has more faster than arduino
Why not? We do it in a water treatment system, we also have a big portal milling machine with an EstlCAM board, which uses an Arduino nano.
Yeah. Absolutely. Obviously depends on the application.
ATMEL's are pretty solid ,but you're right when it comes to thorough testing and safety features. At the very least you would want to develop your own board and power supply. The EMF from industrial motors are the biggest issue. If your IO lines are not shielded enough and your power supply is not properly designed. You are going to have serious issues. We had some freezing because of high voltage spikes, even the MCU watchdog was no match. A custom well tested solution can be created with those chips, just design you own board. Create software libraries with failsafe's built in. Also have a backup on board if the main controller fails and for goodness sake don't use those Arduino modules. They are of a horrible quality and design. Some of the chips are fake eve., only fit for prototyping. I have personally used an Arduino Nano and other off the shelf stuff to control a machine that consisted of a fridge compressor, dehumidifier compressor, temp and humidity sensor, 2 thermistors to monitor refrigeration coil temps, 2 speed control of a fan, a segment LED interface display and logging on a SD card. I modified an existing board by making a break out board form the microcontroller socket. Lots of resistors ,ICL, and RC circuits. Only a prototype ,but works perfectly.
Yeah The application matters.
Can't you just use a workstation grade laptop, pair it with a virtual machine to run the software?
How reliable is this board? When I use a arduino uno or nano, I always run into the problem that it crashes wenn I use it in 220v applications. I need a board that doesn't crash when I'm putting on a heating element or an electric motor.
I'm wondering why that would be. I found this thing to be crazy reliable. If you are doing some kind of relay, is it optically isolated from the board?
@@AnotherMaker yes I use the Standard relay boards from ebay, they are optically isolated.
@@duitsland2756 it seems pretty weird. The only thing I can think of is that maybe you need to power the relay board externally. If you are driving the relay board from the Arduino itself you could get some kind of voltage dip... But generally those relays don't care what they are driving
AWESOME
There are some Arduino variants specifically for industrial applications like for example the "Controllino".
I've never heard of that. I learn something every day! Thanks for sharing!
There are also these two companies :
www.industrialshields.com/
norvi.lk/
can it run 24/7?
Also have a look at the industrial shields websites they also manufacture arduino based PLC
I'll check it out. Thanks for the tip.
Thks again
You're welcome!
good，I would like to buy some for industrial use，how can i contact you？
You can actually get them from www.rugged-circuits.com/
And here I am thinking ladder logic is more simple to understand.
Ran a rock quarry crushing plant with an oldish PLC running on a ruggedized Windows 97 platform... (They're still running it btw) I can't begin to tell all the expensive repairs and thousands of hours of downtime that could have been avoided with a proper PLC or wayyyy better a microcontroller. (Which we had for two different crushers.) The interface/UI was OK, but not really that programmable unless you're the guy charging $2500 for a few hours to reprogram... Lack of reliable sensors, crushers boiling over, belts shredding and smoking, crushers STALLING and then getting to dig them out which is always a riot. I sketched out an improved logic/feedback loop a few times while up there and determined we lost 10% in just plant time, diags, electricians visits, training new employees to do something on a belt they can't see.
PLC upgrade/replacement cost?... $90k
Yeah. The cost of a board is only a fraction of the total cost of ownership with this sort of thing. Thanks for the awesome comment.
but can this micro controllers perform complex logic as done by plc ladder logic ? I have a 4 dc output and 3 ac output)0.2 - 9 amp) small project plus 7 dc input, with washing machine type logic.
@@anandjoshi8554 Probably not one this size, but definitely could use a raspberry pi as enough. The wireless connectivity is great for sending plant reports. 2/3 of the power cabinets (can't remember what they're called for some reason) out in the plant that house the starters are run on LAN anyways, and the 3rd wireless I recall.
You don't get far in commercial electronics without encountering integrity, reliability and safety issues. Using an Arduino shows an attitude from the outset that is primarily inspired by achieving cost cutting. Free software and minimal hardware design with minimal control of quality. Most PLCs use a very strict RTOS scheme to allow the programmer to achieve highly predictable results. The thought of an off the shelf Arduino running hacked free libraries controlling high value plant or anything with a safety critical aspect is enough to make most engineers blood run cold. This is why Arduino commercial solutions are so infrequent in the real world. Yes, technically an Arduino can do the job in many cases but who would want to be in the position of justifying it's use following an issue or accident.
You're absolutely right. It obviously depends on the application.
ATMEL's are pretty solid ,but you're right when it comes to thorough testing and safety features. At the very least you would want to develop your own board and power supply. The EMF from industrial motor's are the biggest problem. If your IO lines are not shielded enough and your power supply is not properly designed. You are going to have serious issues. We had some freezing ,even the watchdog. because of high voltage spikes. A custom well tested solution can be created with those chips, just design you own board. Create software libraries with failsafe's built in. Also have a backup on board if the main controller fails and for goodness sake don't use those Arduino modules. They are of a horrible quality and design. Some of the chips are fake even, only fit for prototyping.
How I can prepare it??
It works just like any other Arduino
as you know arduino based plc produced as controllino. And I am sure that arduino company will also produce arduino based plcs in the future, if they do not produce, then arduino will always be only a hobby based product.
Yeah. Idk that they will ever make a true plc but they say they want to move into more pro/industrial stuff
if im just gonna monitor data with wifi aplications why not use arduino
Exactly.
Yes you can. The real question is, should you?
The problem with using an easy to access/modify system like the arduino, you are basically asking for tinkerers to mess with it.
Including the ones that don't know what they are doing.
That mega rules
It's so nice I can't part with it for a project lol.
There’s a Facebook!? I’ll see you here lol
Noice
Oh no!!! ABB, FANUC, and even Siemens are gonna get pissed!
Lol, I still work with two of those three companies
Condescending tone as he says having to learn how to program in some complicated PLC ladder logic I'm thinking to myself program in C my ass..
Might as well program in machine language whatever the hell that is
There's not one customer of ours that would have ever accepted any of that regardless if it was free
One of the things I love about my clients is that they're all at least partial programmers...so they appreciate the work that goes into what I do.
Interesting 🧐 I most definitely have stuck it to the man with my crane. They wanted $10k for a wireless controller…I’m sure my solution isn’t as robust, but if anything faults I can get replacements from Amazon/etc in 2 days for couple bucks and plug/play replace anything. My plan is to just build extra transmitter and receiver boxes and have them on hand since they’re so cheap
ua-cam.com/video/l-EUqPsLQYg/v-deo.html
Awesome channel. Subscribed. We used them on heavy equipment all the time in Alaska.