Industrial Engineer · phase 4 of 16
Byte / SINT
Eight-bit data quantity, interpreted as bits or as a small integer according to its data type.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- A byte is eight bits handled as a group. As a SINT it is a small signed integer from minus 128 to 127, and as a byte it is eight flags side by side.
- Example
- A drive status byte carries eight bits, ready, running, faulted, at speed and so on, in one value. The program reads the whole byte from the network and picks bits out of it.
- Why it matters
- Bytes are how compact devices talk, so reading network data usually means unpacking them. Treating a bit mapped byte as a number gives you a value like 37 that means nothing until you look at its bits.
- Hook
- Eight switches in one pocket.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 4: PLC Memory, Tags, and Instructions
The data a program moves and the instructions that move it, from a single true or false value up to a structured array.
