Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
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Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#2I looked at the specs, I didn't see a dedicated processor doing the Ladder Logic / Modules part. Perhaps they dedicate one core to it... but that's a lot more janky than a separate CPU at about a dollar or two.
I wouldn't want WiFi, Ethernet, or any other IO crashing the Controller. It has to be rock solid.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#3I do a lot of PLC work.
The Arduino IDE is totally unsuitable for it. No idea what they are doing about this. It would take an amazing amount of work to fix this.
As for PLC functionality people actually use, the product page says "Optional support for standard IEC 61131-3 PLC languages". This is what folks use for real. I presume this means "we didn't want to pay CodeSys but you can". Or something. That sucks.
Maybe they are relying on MBed support as their basic realtime story but, as mentioned, their dev environment is unsuitable for this kind of work.
There is no mention of expected scan time for ladders or guaranteed latency for anything else
So for the intended market, this doesn't look interesting so far. It seems like it will go the way of the x8 and land with a huge thud.
For a random person wanting an Arduino in a cabinet on a din rail, I can see maybe they'd use it.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#4I looked at the specs, I didn't see a dedicated processor doing the Ladder Logic / Modules part. Perhaps they dedicate one core to it... but that's a lot more janky than a separate CPU at about a dollar or two. I wouldn't want WiFi, Ethernet, or any other IO crashing the Controller. It has to be rock solid.
The STM32 series don't have any BLE/WiFi solutions built in yet. Since it's "Arduino" I assume it's a NINA module or similar from u-blox as a "co-processor" over UART with an AT command interface, which is basically a brandlabeled ESP32 with some firmware enhancements they already use on other products that focus on IoT.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#5I do a lot of PLC work. The Arduino IDE is totally unsuitable for it. No idea what they are doing about this. It would take an amazing amount of work to fix this. As for PLC functionality people actually use, the product page says "Optional support for standard IEC 61131-3 PLC languages". This is what folks use for real. I presume this means "we didn't want to pay CodeSys but you can". Or something. That sucks. Maybe…
The target audience is "industry/professional IoT". I guess this is mainly targeted at prototyping projects or hooking something existing up to the web with some "realtime" I/Os, giving people the opportunity to stick to 61131. Existing solutions that offer you BLE/WiFi in this sector are usually terrible and just branded routers with "industrial grade" components. This is probably not suited for or targeted at automating your next big high-runner molding machine or high-speed motion-controlled application, as you already figured out.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#6I do a lot of PLC work. The Arduino IDE is totally unsuitable for it. No idea what they are doing about this. It would take an amazing amount of work to fix this. As for PLC functionality people actually use, the product page says "Optional support for standard IEC 61131-3 PLC languages". This is what folks use for real. I presume this means "we didn't want to pay CodeSys but you can". Or something. That sucks. Maybe…
I agree. Make this for the typical node programmer personal projects. Normal programmers don’t want to deal with that weird/yucky ladder logic and pid tuning stuff (that happens to run the world).
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#7Is STM32 still in shortage? I remember it being the largest blocker in one of my projects last year. Especially that high end H7 chip.
Oh and we runned a Tensorflow Lite image processing pipeline on that chip. It is probably a few times too powerful for fiddling pins and an IP stack.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#8I looked at the specs, I didn't see a dedicated processor doing the Ladder Logic / Modules part. Perhaps they dedicate one core to it... but that's a lot more janky than a separate CPU at about a dollar or two. I wouldn't want WiFi, Ethernet, or any other IO crashing the Controller. It has to be rock solid.
Being marketed as an IIoT device differentiates it from classical "mission critical/rock solid" PLC modules I guess. Treat it as an Arduino with WiF and Ethernet but with friendly screw terminals and connectors instead of needing a shield for interfacing te traditional sensors and actuators. And with an woefully overpowered microcontroller.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#9I do a lot of PLC work. The Arduino IDE is totally unsuitable for it. No idea what they are doing about this. It would take an amazing amount of work to fix this. As for PLC functionality people actually use, the product page says "Optional support for standard IEC 61131-3 PLC languages". This is what folks use for real. I presume this means "we didn't want to pay CodeSys but you can". Or something. That sucks. Maybe…
My understanding of "optional support" is that you can use these languages, but might decide for other languages too. Can't see why the platform is not suited for real-time too - it would be pretty absurd to release a PLC that is not real time.
To me the most interesting differentiating feature seems to be OTA updates of the firmware really.
Re: Arduino unveils the Opta – “Micro PLC” for industrial IoT
#10Is STM32 still in shortage? I remember it being the largest blocker in one of my projects last year. Especially that high end H7 chip. Oh and we runned a Tensorflow Lite image processing pipeline on that chip. It is probably a few times too powerful for fiddling pins and an IP stack.
> It is probably a few times too powerful for fiddling pins and an IP stack.
Then it'll definitely do the job!