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Hi Everyone. Im hoping for some advice. I am looking to start a project that im hoping to eventually use is an industrial manner. Im currently looking at using the softplc with beaglebone enhanced or biting the bullet and using CODESYS Control SL with a wago field bus. The second option is alot more expensive but seems to be a little more plug and play and is a lot more industrial. While the beagle Board is alot cheaper its still quite expensive when i add up every thing i need and then may move over to the second option. Im not doing anything super complex and there is no life in danger. So i suppose my long winded question is. Is a beaglebone enhanced an actual acceptable industrial controller? and are there enough items to easily connect to the board of an industrial standard.
To give some idea how its going to be used. Switch 8 relays of 24v dc
read inputs of 4-20ma and 0-10v
Take a gyro compass reading and display on the gui. Hopefully using the built in one.
Thanks in advance
Paul
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Using a fieldbus would certainly be quicker. So depending on how long you going to be spending on this it might be cheaper.
I've been told that you might want to wait for the Codesys ARM release for Beagle one projects. Or later migrate to it anyway.
I have done some fiddling and looking into a similar thing. But I am not an expert or engineer.
I do not believe it has much or any protection against EOS. Just an enhanced temperature range.
Also depending on where or how you're using it the board lacks several certifications. You can see what some of those are from their Kickstarter campaign because they failed to meet the stretch goal.
You will probably want to add a safe way to turn the board off that is not just removing power. To shutdown Codesys and shut down the OS.
You'll want to make sure your power supply does not have a voltage spike when it turns on as some do.
Check out the io available from Sequent Microsystems and from Widget Lord's.
Sequent Microsystems dropped official support though and is intended for raspberry Pi so you would need to adapt it. I custom cake that also converts the voltage levels.
Widget Lords do not currently have any drivers for Codesys but have plans to make some for their new WL-MIO line. It will also be capable of being controlled via an external controller via fieldbus. But you should contact them. If you have the skills you could also make use of their Pi-SPI line. I know their parent company does use their boards for some applications in industrial environments but I don't know what.
One possible way to work with either is to do some type of communication between Node Red and Codesys.
I would not use the same board to create and display web visualizations. I've seen people complain about performance when they do that. So if you could run without a GUI that would be best.
Last edit: Morberis 2021-03-15
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Hi Morberis, thanks for the feed back. You covered alot of the things i have been looking at with the Sequent Microsystems and Widget Lord's add ons. While the Rasberry pi and beaglebone are really good options they just dont seem to be quite there for real industrial applications without alot of add on, as much as i would love them to be for the price alone. The only thing i found that was alot cheaper and is an actual plc was the 'Click' range of PLC's that dont support Codesys. They do their own software but i really want to stick to codesys as its such a great piece of software and i love the fact i can use it with lots of different platforms.
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Hi Morberis, you wrote "I do not believe it has much or any protection against EOS". What do mean with "EOS", as I never heard of that. Would you care to explain?
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As I understand it it is the term for electrical overstress where an item is exposed to higher than rated voltages or currents or any electrical condition outside its rated specs. It is in addition to ESD. Voltage spikes from electro mechanical relays would count as EOS if the spikes exceed the datasheet ratings. Induced AC voltage on an analog or digital dc input/output could also count. It might not fail immediately but over time it might fail sooner than it should.
I do think a beaglebone black that
-is in a metal enclosure that is properly bonded/grounded with an external wifi antenna if needed*
-has a script to safely shut it down
-interfaces with the world through something other than the on-chip IO
-A good DC power supply
*I'm just also concerned about static charge built up in moving air. Around here it can be a thing. I don't know about from something like a contactor that switches a high amperage 480v load or something like a 100hp 600v VFD. I just know that using RS485 on that vfd has been devilish even when biased.
Would probably be pretty reliable. A UPS cape that triggers automatic shutdown would improve things. As would protection on the I2C or SPI if they are used. Or fieldbus wiring like ethernet you might want more protection on as well depending on your application.
But yeah none of this will be as simple as normal industrial lego.
Just you couldn't deploy it anywhere like a factory that requires those certifications. If you're making more than a few you are probably going to want to have a discussion with a real expert both about certifications and about value engineering.
Last edit: Morberis 2021-03-16
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It just seems odd to me that for all the advantages the BBB has over the raspberry pi for industrial use, more company’s pick the raspberry pi over the BBB to develop industrial boards for.
Both widgetlords and sequent picked the raspberry pi but I’m yet to find anyone making industrial io for the BBB.
I’m hoping with more development there will be enough company’s making ‘ plug and play’ boards for the BBB more like a plc that can be used with Codesys.
Thanks again for info.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi Everyone. Im hoping for some advice. I am looking to start a project that im hoping to eventually use is an industrial manner. Im currently looking at using the softplc with beaglebone enhanced or biting the bullet and using CODESYS Control SL with a wago field bus. The second option is alot more expensive but seems to be a little more plug and play and is a lot more industrial. While the beagle Board is alot cheaper its still quite expensive when i add up every thing i need and then may move over to the second option. Im not doing anything super complex and there is no life in danger. So i suppose my long winded question is. Is a beaglebone enhanced an actual acceptable industrial controller? and are there enough items to easily connect to the board of an industrial standard.
To give some idea how its going to be used. Switch 8 relays of 24v dc
read inputs of 4-20ma and 0-10v
Take a gyro compass reading and display on the gui. Hopefully using the built in one.
Thanks in advance
Paul
Using a fieldbus would certainly be quicker. So depending on how long you going to be spending on this it might be cheaper.
I've been told that you might want to wait for the Codesys ARM release for Beagle one projects. Or later migrate to it anyway.
I have done some fiddling and looking into a similar thing. But I am not an expert or engineer.
I do not believe it has much or any protection against EOS. Just an enhanced temperature range.
Also depending on where or how you're using it the board lacks several certifications. You can see what some of those are from their Kickstarter campaign because they failed to meet the stretch goal.
You will probably want to add a safe way to turn the board off that is not just removing power. To shutdown Codesys and shut down the OS.
You'll want to make sure your power supply does not have a voltage spike when it turns on as some do.
Check out the io available from Sequent Microsystems and from Widget Lord's.
Sequent Microsystems dropped official support though and is intended for raspberry Pi so you would need to adapt it. I custom cake that also converts the voltage levels.
Widget Lords do not currently have any drivers for Codesys but have plans to make some for their new WL-MIO line. It will also be capable of being controlled via an external controller via fieldbus. But you should contact them. If you have the skills you could also make use of their Pi-SPI line. I know their parent company does use their boards for some applications in industrial environments but I don't know what.
One possible way to work with either is to do some type of communication between Node Red and Codesys.
I would not use the same board to create and display web visualizations. I've seen people complain about performance when they do that. So if you could run without a GUI that would be best.
Last edit: Morberis 2021-03-15
Hi Morberis, thanks for the feed back. You covered alot of the things i have been looking at with the Sequent Microsystems and Widget Lord's add ons. While the Rasberry pi and beaglebone are really good options they just dont seem to be quite there for real industrial applications without alot of add on, as much as i would love them to be for the price alone. The only thing i found that was alot cheaper and is an actual plc was the 'Click' range of PLC's that dont support Codesys. They do their own software but i really want to stick to codesys as its such a great piece of software and i love the fact i can use it with lots of different platforms.
Hi Morberis, you wrote "I do not believe it has much or any protection against EOS". What do mean with "EOS", as I never heard of that. Would you care to explain?
As I understand it it is the term for electrical overstress where an item is exposed to higher than rated voltages or currents or any electrical condition outside its rated specs. It is in addition to ESD. Voltage spikes from electro mechanical relays would count as EOS if the spikes exceed the datasheet ratings. Induced AC voltage on an analog or digital dc input/output could also count. It might not fail immediately but over time it might fail sooner than it should.
I do think a beaglebone black that
-is in a metal enclosure that is properly bonded/grounded with an external wifi antenna if needed*
-has a script to safely shut it down
-interfaces with the world through something other than the on-chip IO
-A good DC power supply
*I'm just also concerned about static charge built up in moving air. Around here it can be a thing. I don't know about from something like a contactor that switches a high amperage 480v load or something like a 100hp 600v VFD. I just know that using RS485 on that vfd has been devilish even when biased.
Would probably be pretty reliable. A UPS cape that triggers automatic shutdown would improve things. As would protection on the I2C or SPI if they are used. Or fieldbus wiring like ethernet you might want more protection on as well depending on your application.
But yeah none of this will be as simple as normal industrial lego.
Just you couldn't deploy it anywhere like a factory that requires those certifications. If you're making more than a few you are probably going to want to have a discussion with a real expert both about certifications and about value engineering.
Last edit: Morberis 2021-03-16
It just seems odd to me that for all the advantages the BBB has over the raspberry pi for industrial use, more company’s pick the raspberry pi over the BBB to develop industrial boards for.
Both widgetlords and sequent picked the raspberry pi but I’m yet to find anyone making industrial io for the BBB.
I’m hoping with more development there will be enough company’s making ‘ plug and play’ boards for the BBB more like a plc that can be used with Codesys.
Thanks again for info.