Mr. Bark, you are to be commended for writing a blog that is not a blatant advertisement for your company's products. You've provided a good description of PACs, compared them to PLCs, and not once mentioned your own company's name or product. Your blog informs without advertising, and that makes the company name under your byline stand out.
I'm amazed at the number of options and variations there are on machine controllers. Plus with all of the advanced communication and data handling needs in addition to the control functions, there is really a need for more sophisticated software solutions.
While this article provided some useful information about the power of Programmable Automation Controllers, the constant criticism of PLCs was abolutely out of place and totally unneeded. In addition, while they are more powerful it is very unlikely that any PAC is easier to program than the PLC devices that I have programmed, AB and Automation Direct.
So describing the capabilities of these packages is fine, and knowing that they can include a VS drive and other programmable motion controls is fine, but it is quite likely that the language will require quite a few hours to learn, if it is that much different from what I have used fr several years. So unless the language comes with a very good functions and applications manual there may be quite a few challenges. One more thing is that in those plants that don't have the budget for full time IT staffing, it was often common for a maintenance person to actually understand enough PLC programming to make those needed adjustments. That would probably be much harder with a new type of device running some "wonderful new language".
The legacy endpoint devices that control our critical infrastructure (utility systems, water treatment plants, military networks, industrial control systems, etc.) are some of the most vulnerable devices on the Internet.
In a switched-capacitor filter, capacitors and switches take the place of resistors and accurately reproduce the characteristics of continuous-time Bessel, Butterworth, and elliptical filters.
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