Book Image

Mastering PLC Programming

By : Mason White
Book Image

Mastering PLC Programming

By: Mason White

Overview of this book

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a new feature of PLC programming that has taken the automation world by storm. This book provides you with the necessary skills to succeed in the modern automation programming environment. The book is designed in a way to take you through advanced topics such as OOP design, SOLID programming, the software development lifecycle (SDLC), library design, HMI development, general software engineering practices, and more. To hone your programming skills, each chapter has a simulated real-world project that’ll enable you to apply the skills you’ve learned. In all, this book not only covers complex PLC programming topics, but it also removes the financial barrier that comes with most books as all examples utilize free software. This means that to follow along, you DO NOT need to purchase any PLC hardware or software. By the end of this PLC book, you will have what it takes to create long-lasting codebases for any modern automation project.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Part 1 – An Introduction to Advanced PLC Programming
6
Part 2 – Modularity and Objects
10
Part 3 – Software Engineering for PLCs
14
Part 4 – HMIs and Alarms
19
Part 5 – Final Project and Thoughts

Final project – temperature unit converter

Often, as PLC programmers, we are asked for our software to monitor temperatures. These temperatures could be inside the housing of a control panel, the temperature of a part we are fabricating, or many other applications. Now, it is quite common to need to be able to convert between temperature units, especially when the program is deployed to places around the world.

Temperature converters are prime examples of functions as they can be used across multiple projects and the code never has to change. As such, we want this code to be able to be inserted into multiple projects with minimal effort. For our function, we are going to create a state machine to trigger our conversion from one unit to another.

Our program will need to perform the following operations:

  1. F -> C
  2. F -> K
  3. C -> F
  4. C -> K
  5. K -> F
  6. K -> C

Our state machine will have six states. Therefore, create a function called...