Industrial Engineer · phase 7 of 16
Soft PLC
PLC runtime hosted on an industrial computer or virtualized platform instead of dedicated controller hardware.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- A soft PLC is the controller runtime running on an industrial PC or a virtual machine instead of on dedicated controller hardware. The logic is the same, the box is different.
- Example
- A CODESYS runtime on a fanless industrial PC controls a test stand. The same PC also runs the HMI and logs data to a database on the side.
- Why it matters
- It brings PC power and PC problems, since operating system updates, disk failures and shared CPU time all reach the control loop. Real time behaviour depends on how the runtime is isolated, and that has to be measured rather than assumed.
- Hook
- The controller is now an app.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 7: PLC Related Automation Systems
The neighbours a PLC lives beside on a plant floor, from operator panels and SCADA up to the motion and batch systems it hands work to.
