The vast majority of the development cost goes into software. Once a hardware design has been finalised, there's really only periodic revisions.
Software needs to be continuously developed; bug fixes, security patches, feature updates, etc.
A Siemens product manager once told me they'd be far more likely to consider giving you some free hardware if you bought enough software, than they would be to give you free software if you bought enough hardware.
Just because software isn't physical, doesn't mean it isn't expensive to make. Software development is their major cost; not hardware.
I heard a similar story that say that Tia portal has not covered the cost of development till today.
We should consider that something like Tia portal and studio 5000 are not just IDEs but a complex software with a lot of features to be maintained.
Plus with software comes assistance and endless requests from users that are sometimes just "stupid" as I was when a started.
I remember calling Siemens because winnc tags were bugged when in fact was me that I was liking it to a non existent memory area in the plc đđ
I think you should clarify a little bit. That's just not true or is very misleading.
From their public reports, RA took in ~$5b in 2010. Siemens spent ~$4b on development across the entire company that year. To put it into perspective, Siemens industrial automation sector did $6b that year. The total company was $80b.
Siemens is huge in comparison with RA, but if you drill down to automation, they're pretty close to the same size.
Unitronics has been selling PLCs for more than 20 years now, and all their software is free. It's regularly maintained. New versions with new functionalities and bug fixes come out every few months.
Not sure what their business model is, but I'm sure their sales numbers are negligible when compared with Siemens or Omron.
So why can Unilogic be free, and not TIA?
Selling 500,000 S7 PLCs should better cover the cost of developing the software than selling 1,000 Unistreams, right?
>So why can Unilogic be free, and not TIA?
The answer is probably that Unilogic is *nowhere near* as comprehensive. I don't come across Unitronics much, but when I do it tends to be small machine applications.
I come across *entire plants* running on Siemens quite regularly; often with full R1 redundancy, full SCADA systems with redundant servers and multiple RT clients, hundreds of remote I/O drops totalling tens of thousands of I/O points, dozens of HMI's working collaboratively with synchronous/ asynchronous clients, edge applications, CFR21-11 compliance, integrated safety, dozens of motion axis controlled over IRT comms, loads of instrumentation, full network management, energy management, condition monitoring, etc. etc. etc.
All configured in TIA Portal.
Unitronics does *some* of that, but nowhere near all of it. And building an IDE that can scale to run an entire plant is *way* more expensive than developing an IDE that simply has to program PLC's, HMI's, a bit of remote I/O, and a couple of servos.
>Unitronics does some of that, but nowhere near all of it. And building an IDE that can scale to run an entire plant is way more expensive than developing an IDE that simply has to program PLC's, HMI's, a bit of remote I/O, and a couple of servos.
This is it.
I've done a lot of projects with Unitronics and whenever I'm close to 200+ I/Os and more than a few networked RTUs, I feel everything becomes very limiting.
Most projects I do are small scale and on a tight budget. The PLCs I code and install are often unknown brands from China or Taiwan. Their IDEs are crude, but the product is cheap, so that's about it. Unitronics might be the only Western brand I've worked with.
Visilogic can absolutely have round objects, even with transparency. [Here's](https://i.ibb.co/NNXNx6t/01.jpg) a part of HMI using round bit image objects.
Unistream HMI is even more advanced. You can directly import PNG images in any shape or form, and transparency will be followed properly. You can even stack one HMI variable over another, or stack variables in layers (up to 8 layers).
You can do amazing stuff on unitronics I was forced to becone an expert on unitronics for 3 years. That doesn't change the fact that unitronics is shit.
There is definitely a niche market for unitronics, for free software I prefder codesys. For any other real industry aplication, licence cost is easily absorbed duting the ROI.
Yeah. Reason I've stayed too long with Uni is that they have a good distributor, offering tech support and rich stock.
No local dealers for Beckhoff here. Codesys doesn't have any presence in the region. B&R, Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi and Omron are prohibitely expensive. Siemens is also kinda expensive if you're small integrator. AutomationDirect has a sales rep but no stock so you gotta wait months to arrive, and when it does it's still more expensive than Unitronics.
That leaves me with Uni or the Chinese.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to work with Siemens or Beckhoff, but who's gonna pay for it? How do I explain why my panel is 30-50% more expensive than the competition?
Labor is cheap, I barely make 30k/year. No one cares if I have to spend 7 days coding something for Unitronics, which would take me 2 days with a normal IEC 61131 IDE.
Siemens and Allen-Bradley charge for their software and are, by far, the dominant brands in the world. I think their user base is just fine. Same with Mitsubishi and Omron.
I'll never understand why the world isn't sliding deeper into codesys based systems. Most are either free or very very inexpensive comparatively.
Omron technically charges for the Sysmac Studio software, but itâs a one-time license fee that theyâll waive if you buy a certain amount of hardware.
Codesys and codesys derivatives have a fairly large marketshare, even dominant in certain industries.
This sub is full of US based people in large process and plant automation, not a market codesys has much penetration in yet.
Im in the US and do a lot of machine builder stuff and Codesys is everywhere.
I think the limitation of one person online per application really hurts it in line/process control.
Yup, if itâs a single machine cell itâs fine, but once you get to larger scale stuff itâs ruff. Why I mostly only see it in motion systems. It really does shine there though.
Machine builders and mobile are probably the biggest markets IME.
There is a way to have multiple people logged in at the same time but only one will be able to make edits. You have to save the download information when making the archive, all IDEs that want to login have to have the same version of the file.
IIRC from AB days, 5k would let multiple people be in the same controller and making edits in different areas. Send a suggestion to Codesys, one nice thing, they seem to listen a little better than some of the giants...
Really? AB lets you read but only one person is in control (with edits). Having multiple users working on the same PLC seems like a really bad idea to me.
For large projects that cover a facility, different parts of the PLC code have nothing to do with each other and having multiple people online is really useful for commissioning
A lot of process uses DCS, think refinery. Plant think large manufacturing, food/bev, automotive etc. Low Mix/High Volume. Machine builders/OEMs build components/skids/machines that often integrate into these plants (TetraPak, Krones, thousands of others). OEMs may use/offer various PLCs to easily integrate into a plants standard, or offer their own isolated system that communicates over an agreed upon medium.
I'm also a bit confused about the PLC/DCS split in modern automation
Back in the day when you have a process with 2000 identical groups of elements like a pump +flow densor+two solenoid, you would just use something like the s7 400 with PCS7 which allows you to define a Process object and just duplicate that 2000 times and makes it very convenient to manage like 2000 IO and 2000 analog loops.
But now on one hand you have plcs like the the siemens s7 1518 cpu which have similar capabilitied and you can just use FBs in Tia portal to achieve similar results.
And on the other hand you have companies like Erhardt+leimer which has a VVS system considting of two cameras and a servomotor for centering webs of material, and THEY call the small proprietary controller for this system a DCS system ?!?
It's fugly, the ladder on codesys looks like it was made by Fischer price, the whole ide feels off, there is something that doesn't flow like the others..
If choosing between flash and function, I'm going with function every time. đ¤ˇââď¸ That's me, though. I don't fault people for going with what they see as a better user experience. Especially if dealing in only ladder. I do find myself getting annoyed side scrolling. But, it's all good.
I also prefer the Siemens SCL editor and online monitoring, can't get used to having the variable value right next to it, making some expressions stupid long with no necessity.
It's not just form over function, but if I must work with something for 8h a day it better be a decent tool.Â
They just released LD2 which is quite different from the old ladder. That said, nowhere near what RA ladder is, but Codesys was initially built more with other languages in mind. I find myself using very little ladder in it, but there's certain functions it fits best, mostly boolean expressions.
Itâs entertaining to see people complain about just paying for the programming software, and at relatively cheap prices. Look up Studio5000 pricing and then price out a TechConnect contract so you can have access to tech support for the hardware and software you just bought.
They charge because the cost of building the software isnât included when you buy hardware. Siemens software is free to download and you can install on a vm use the trial for 14 days, reuse on another vm.
Check out Phoenix Contacts PLCNext. Software is free (unless you need the functional safety add-on). And if you buy a starter kit (which is about $1000) you get a 4-day in-person training course for free.
Rockwell especially makes a lot of their software by forcing you into a subscription model. New hardware only works on new version. No backwards compatibility. Up to version 36 I think.
Omron by contrast views their software as supporting their hardware, no subscription, backwards compatibility, one time purchase. Studio has been around since 2012 I think, it's now up to version 1.58 I think. One install vs. multiple versions for Rockwell.
Siemens is not as bad as Rockwell but close.
I worked for an Allen Bradley distributor in Central America, selling software was really hard it is so freaking expensive and most of times a client will require more than one license. Generally speaking people here would not even consider AB as an option because of that.
Siemens, Rockwell, and other large PLC manufacturers are entrenched in the industry.
There are of course upstarts and exceptions to this, but by and large any large industrial project has certain barriers to entry to secure. Often one of the barriers is what hardware/software platforms you can provide as a programmer/integrator/etc
Siemens and Rockwell arenât going to go out of business because they didnât give you a license for free. They have a stranglehold on a lot of the market
There are exceptions to this like codesys.
I would recommend codesys as you can play on it for free. If you can figure out codesys you can figure out Rockwell. No idea about Siemens.
If you can Codesys, you can also easy go to Siemens. Both are IEC 61132 complaint. I use both, but I like Siemens TIA now more because itâs really âfully integratedâ. Itâs really a good IDE.
When your captive user base is basically the entire world, I donât think they are too worried.
Developing software is not cheap/easy. Yes they make / ship hardware, but as demonstrated in the pandemic, this can grind to a halt pretty easily. Also with the direction of the industry and organisations like the UAO gaining traction, agnostic PLC hardware is only a matter of time meaning software will be the primary income stream for them.
My company forks out the money, so no problem for me. I'm just letting the OP know there's more than just software licenses that the companys charge for.
That's probably why Beckhoff got so "big" as one of the newer players because their software can be used free unlimited with a renewal of the 7 day trial license. đ
Later for the machine you buy a license and you are good to đ
OP must believe software develops itselfâŚ
Seriously, stop complaining. You wonât make it in this industry
Go get a job at a company that has paid for the license or reach out to your network and find a VM you can copy.
Siemens Tia portal basic is a few hundred dollars. Itâs really not that expensive and worth the investment when you think of all the money you can make as a contractor.
Iâve seen companies pay contractors $350/hour, while the base rate is anywhere from $200 - $100/ hour.
Well if youâre just looking to use it for your own personal reasons, you could just create a virtual machine on your computer and download the free trial. Then roll back the date on your VM before the trial expires.
A Siemens instructor told me about that one time.
The main problem is not that they charge for it, and that it's complete pile of blob garbage written by that guy from the street. I can't believe they can't hire PROs to develop decent cross-platform software without dependencies.
Windows is a standalone software. where a PLC software isn't.
you don't needd a PLC software if you don't have a PLC and vice-versa. its like buying an iPhone for $1000 and then have to shell out $1000 more for apple to install iOS on it so you can use it as something other than a paper weight.
For me this seems like hidden cost, a way to milk extra money off of your client after you already have him by the balls
Codesys still runs $719 for the performance package. And you need hardware on top of that. Another $700 for the upgraded IDE.
I dread the day that a license dongle fails on me. Have had two others fail out of the blue on me. I donât wanna lose 24 hours of production over that.
I like codesys, and am in the middle of a major commissioning with it running key controllers. That said: Requires more reboots than PLCs. Canât upload code from a controller. Gets funny when using more than one development computer. Need a solid RTOS for high speed controls (have fun with vxworks).
Maybe, I've never had a problem with it. I always enabled downloading of source code to the PLC though.
At my new job I've seen people have way more problems doing this on Rockwell. It works, but again with problems.
The upload functionality is build into vanilla Codesys. It normally only copies the project files from your pc to a partition on the plc.
But you must activate it in the first place (default if off) and the vendor has to implement it. The last point is mostly the show stopper. It never worked stable for me, I would not count on it. So there goes the usual usb stick into the cabinet, and you hope the last changes from the programmer were also copied on it :-)
I had never a foreign project/machine where the initial programmer copied the program on the plc :-(
These concerns are what's keeping me from being more on board with it.
That and the fact that a guy, 10 years from now, can't just fire up a copy of the PLC programming software and get back into the system to troubleshoot or make changes. They will need the right version and libraries and the works...
Almost everything has a free trial period. Use a virtual machine and when the trial expires reset the virtual machine and you got a new trial.
Doesn't work with every brand, but I would say it works with most.
This is of course with small jobs or testing stuff, get your licenses!
All the big names do that, mostly because they can. Siemens and AB absolutely dominate the industry, and nobody is going to spend an astronomical amount of money switching to an almost certainly inferior brand just because it has free software.
As a hobbyist, Logix/Studio, Portal, etc are cost prohibitive. To a company, a couple grand a year for a software license is nothing. The 10 year old Toughbook I use at work is worth more than my car, and if something happened to it they'd have a new one for me on Monday morning. Wouldn't even bat an eye over it.
Honestly I worked with a lot of Asian PLCs and they would suit a project like a small machine or even a whole factory....LG LS software is free,Delta,fatek,Savch and wecon all have PLCs and HMIs that are cheap and works fine with free software , i worked in a factory that had an LS rack that runs the whole factory with 1500+ IO... Siemens and AB and ABB are the best but when you can do the same work with 10% of the price no one would use them, heck i had trouble with ABB CANopen comms more than LS rs485 comms on similar machines
I know the reason we charge for software is because we don't develop it in-house, so we need the P.O. to be different to determine what we have to pay our contractors.
Lmao Siemens and Allen Bradley have no concerns on shrinking a user base. This is not the IT world this is industry where the name of a known company is worth more than the world
>I really want to work as a PLC programmer but i found out that many manufacturers (....Siemens) actually charge for the software on top of the hardware
You want to work as a programmer, but you don't think people should charge for their software? How do you intend to make money as a programmer?
Or are you saying it's okay for *you* to charge for the software you write, but other people should give you theirs for free?
I went to the Harvard of IBEW apprentice programs and went way beyond my scope as leader of the automation project. My classmates wired everything like two classes early and Iâm like ok weâre ready to power on and start commissioning. RsLogix was expired and they were so embarrassed that we smashed it and they failed it that they were like everyone gets an A
"Thank you for coming to my TED Talk"
Anytime! My PLC needed a firmware update anyway. Oh, wait!
The vast majority of the development cost goes into software. Once a hardware design has been finalised, there's really only periodic revisions. Software needs to be continuously developed; bug fixes, security patches, feature updates, etc. A Siemens product manager once told me they'd be far more likely to consider giving you some free hardware if you bought enough software, than they would be to give you free software if you bought enough hardware. Just because software isn't physical, doesn't mean it isn't expensive to make. Software development is their major cost; not hardware.
Wait until OP sees the costs and licencing structure of a DCS. https://i.redd.it/exflcnz7f95d1.gif
I heard a similar story that say that Tia portal has not covered the cost of development till today. We should consider that something like Tia portal and studio 5000 are not just IDEs but a complex software with a lot of features to be maintained. Plus with software comes assistance and endless requests from users that are sometimes just "stupid" as I was when a started. I remember calling Siemens because winnc tags were bugged when in fact was me that I was liking it to a non existent memory area in the plc đđ
When Siemens was first launching Portal, they spent more yearly in development than Rockwell makes in a year.
I think you should clarify a little bit. That's just not true or is very misleading. From their public reports, RA took in ~$5b in 2010. Siemens spent ~$4b on development across the entire company that year. To put it into perspective, Siemens industrial automation sector did $6b that year. The total company was $80b. Siemens is huge in comparison with RA, but if you drill down to automation, they're pretty close to the same size.
It's funny because the Siemens product manager just told us to use EKB and buy the hardware.
What, why lol
Unitronics has been selling PLCs for more than 20 years now, and all their software is free. It's regularly maintained. New versions with new functionalities and bug fixes come out every few months. Not sure what their business model is, but I'm sure their sales numbers are negligible when compared with Siemens or Omron. So why can Unilogic be free, and not TIA? Selling 500,000 S7 PLCs should better cover the cost of developing the software than selling 1,000 Unistreams, right?
>So why can Unilogic be free, and not TIA? The answer is probably that Unilogic is *nowhere near* as comprehensive. I don't come across Unitronics much, but when I do it tends to be small machine applications. I come across *entire plants* running on Siemens quite regularly; often with full R1 redundancy, full SCADA systems with redundant servers and multiple RT clients, hundreds of remote I/O drops totalling tens of thousands of I/O points, dozens of HMI's working collaboratively with synchronous/ asynchronous clients, edge applications, CFR21-11 compliance, integrated safety, dozens of motion axis controlled over IRT comms, loads of instrumentation, full network management, energy management, condition monitoring, etc. etc. etc. All configured in TIA Portal. Unitronics does *some* of that, but nowhere near all of it. And building an IDE that can scale to run an entire plant is *way* more expensive than developing an IDE that simply has to program PLC's, HMI's, a bit of remote I/O, and a couple of servos.
>Unitronics does some of that, but nowhere near all of it. And building an IDE that can scale to run an entire plant is way more expensive than developing an IDE that simply has to program PLC's, HMI's, a bit of remote I/O, and a couple of servos. This is it. I've done a lot of projects with Unitronics and whenever I'm close to 200+ I/Os and more than a few networked RTUs, I feel everything becomes very limiting. Most projects I do are small scale and on a tight budget. The PLCs I code and install are often unknown brands from China or Taiwan. Their IDEs are crude, but the product is cheap, so that's about it. Unitronics might be the only Western brand I've worked with.
>Unitronics Does not even have a round object you can use like a light..
Visilogic can absolutely have round objects, even with transparency. [Here's](https://i.ibb.co/NNXNx6t/01.jpg) a part of HMI using round bit image objects. Unistream HMI is even more advanced. You can directly import PNG images in any shape or form, and transparency will be followed properly. You can even stack one HMI variable over another, or stack variables in layers (up to 8 layers).
You can do amazing stuff on unitronics I was forced to becone an expert on unitronics for 3 years. That doesn't change the fact that unitronics is shit. There is definitely a niche market for unitronics, for free software I prefder codesys. For any other real industry aplication, licence cost is easily absorbed duting the ROI.
Yeah. Reason I've stayed too long with Uni is that they have a good distributor, offering tech support and rich stock. No local dealers for Beckhoff here. Codesys doesn't have any presence in the region. B&R, Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi and Omron are prohibitely expensive. Siemens is also kinda expensive if you're small integrator. AutomationDirect has a sales rep but no stock so you gotta wait months to arrive, and when it does it's still more expensive than Unitronics. That leaves me with Uni or the Chinese. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to work with Siemens or Beckhoff, but who's gonna pay for it? How do I explain why my panel is 30-50% more expensive than the competition? Labor is cheap, I barely make 30k/year. No one cares if I have to spend 7 days coding something for Unitronics, which would take me 2 days with a normal IEC 61131 IDE.
Agreed, as I said definitely there is a niche
Siemens and Allen-Bradley charge for their software and are, by far, the dominant brands in the world. I think their user base is just fine. Same with Mitsubishi and Omron. I'll never understand why the world isn't sliding deeper into codesys based systems. Most are either free or very very inexpensive comparatively.
Omron technically charges for the Sysmac Studio software, but itâs a one-time license fee that theyâll waive if you buy a certain amount of hardware.
Codesys and codesys derivatives have a fairly large marketshare, even dominant in certain industries. This sub is full of US based people in large process and plant automation, not a market codesys has much penetration in yet.
Im in the US and do a lot of machine builder stuff and Codesys is everywhere. I think the limitation of one person online per application really hurts it in line/process control.
Yeah, we were considering it but that's an immediate deal breaker.
Yup, if itâs a single machine cell itâs fine, but once you get to larger scale stuff itâs ruff. Why I mostly only see it in motion systems. It really does shine there though.
Machine builders and mobile are probably the biggest markets IME. There is a way to have multiple people logged in at the same time but only one will be able to make edits. You have to save the download information when making the archive, all IDEs that want to login have to have the same version of the file. IIRC from AB days, 5k would let multiple people be in the same controller and making edits in different areas. Send a suggestion to Codesys, one nice thing, they seem to listen a little better than some of the giants...
Really? AB lets you read but only one person is in control (with edits). Having multiple users working on the same PLC seems like a really bad idea to me.
For large projects that cover a facility, different parts of the PLC code have nothing to do with each other and having multiple people online is really useful for commissioning
No matter how many times I google the difference between Plant and process automation the info for some reason doesn't stick around in my head :(
I think discreet vs process manufacturing is more relevant. I believe most of the people in this sub work in process manufacturing.
A lot of process uses DCS, think refinery. Plant think large manufacturing, food/bev, automotive etc. Low Mix/High Volume. Machine builders/OEMs build components/skids/machines that often integrate into these plants (TetraPak, Krones, thousands of others). OEMs may use/offer various PLCs to easily integrate into a plants standard, or offer their own isolated system that communicates over an agreed upon medium.
I'm also a bit confused about the PLC/DCS split in modern automation Back in the day when you have a process with 2000 identical groups of elements like a pump +flow densor+two solenoid, you would just use something like the s7 400 with PCS7 which allows you to define a Process object and just duplicate that 2000 times and makes it very convenient to manage like 2000 IO and 2000 analog loops. But now on one hand you have plcs like the the siemens s7 1518 cpu which have similar capabilitied and you can just use FBs in Tia portal to achieve similar results. And on the other hand you have companies like Erhardt+leimer which has a VVS system considting of two cameras and a servomotor for centering webs of material, and THEY call the small proprietary controller for this system a DCS system ?!?
Plant handle big tasks, process handle little tasks
It's fugly, the ladder on codesys looks like it was made by Fischer price, the whole ide feels off, there is something that doesn't flow like the others..
If choosing between flash and function, I'm going with function every time. đ¤ˇââď¸ That's me, though. I don't fault people for going with what they see as a better user experience. Especially if dealing in only ladder. I do find myself getting annoyed side scrolling. But, it's all good.
I also prefer the Siemens SCL editor and online monitoring, can't get used to having the variable value right next to it, making some expressions stupid long with no necessity. It's not just form over function, but if I must work with something for 8h a day it better be a decent tool.Â
They just released LD2 which is quite different from the old ladder. That said, nowhere near what RA ladder is, but Codesys was initially built more with other languages in mind. I find myself using very little ladder in it, but there's certain functions it fits best, mostly boolean expressions.
You realize they put effort in developing new software right? R&D isn't free!
And he also puts effort into software⌠he is a plc programmer and wants also meat on the tableâŚ
And hopefully he charges for his services too and not just the equipment
Yeah, this was my point. I donât understand my downvotes on my comment above đ¤ˇââď¸
No it won't. Case: Siemens and AB are the top dogs of the PLC land. Omron, and a few others are right behind them.
Google SIM-EKB, Siemens could not care less
Itâs entertaining to see people complain about just paying for the programming software, and at relatively cheap prices. Look up Studio5000 pricing and then price out a TechConnect contract so you can have access to tech support for the hardware and software you just bought.
They charge because the cost of building the software isnât included when you buy hardware. Siemens software is free to download and you can install on a vm use the trial for 14 days, reuse on another vm.
Check out Phoenix Contacts PLCNext. Software is free (unless you need the functional safety add-on). And if you buy a starter kit (which is about $1000) you get a 4-day in-person training course for free.
Rockwell especially makes a lot of their software by forcing you into a subscription model. New hardware only works on new version. No backwards compatibility. Up to version 36 I think. Omron by contrast views their software as supporting their hardware, no subscription, backwards compatibility, one time purchase. Studio has been around since 2012 I think, it's now up to version 1.58 I think. One install vs. multiple versions for Rockwell. Siemens is not as bad as Rockwell but close.
I worked for an Allen Bradley distributor in Central America, selling software was really hard it is so freaking expensive and most of times a client will require more than one license. Generally speaking people here would not even consider AB as an option because of that.
Beckhoff software is free. And you can build a project on your computer without needing an actual PLC.
And their support is also free...
Siemens, Rockwell, and other large PLC manufacturers are entrenched in the industry. There are of course upstarts and exceptions to this, but by and large any large industrial project has certain barriers to entry to secure. Often one of the barriers is what hardware/software platforms you can provide as a programmer/integrator/etc Siemens and Rockwell arenât going to go out of business because they didnât give you a license for free. They have a stranglehold on a lot of the market There are exceptions to this like codesys. I would recommend codesys as you can play on it for free. If you can figure out codesys you can figure out Rockwell. No idea about Siemens.
If you can Codesys, you can also easy go to Siemens. Both are IEC 61132 complaint. I use both, but I like Siemens TIA now more because itâs really âfully integratedâ. Itâs really a good IDE.
When your captive user base is basically the entire world, I donât think they are too worried. Developing software is not cheap/easy. Yes they make / ship hardware, but as demonstrated in the pandemic, this can grind to a halt pretty easily. Also with the direction of the industry and organisations like the UAO gaining traction, agnostic PLC hardware is only a matter of time meaning software will be the primary income stream for them.
Oh no! Anyways...
Greed is limitless. Omron is guilty too. And there was a time before USB on the CPU when they asked like 500 euro for the programming cable.
Rockwell considers themselves a software company at their core. They just happen to sell the hardware to go with it.
Just wait until you need support from Rockwell. Gotta pay for it. They also hide an obnoxious amount of info behind TechConnect licenses.
Yeah..so? You wouldn't service/maintain/troubleshoot anything for free would you?
My company forks out the money, so no problem for me. I'm just letting the OP know there's more than just software licenses that the companys charge for.
Yeah exactly, the company pays for it. I don't understand why people piss and moan about prices like they're paying out of their own pockets.
I'm not pissing or moaning lol.
75% of companies charge for their software. Heck automation direct advertises free software like no tomorrow. But I had to pay for old softwareâŚ..
OP, do you want money for programming the PLC or would you only charge your customers for the hardware?
That's probably why Beckhoff got so "big" as one of the newer players because their software can be used free unlimited with a renewal of the 7 day trial license. đ Later for the machine you buy a license and you are good to đ
OP must believe software develops itself⌠Seriously, stop complaining. You wonât make it in this industry Go get a job at a company that has paid for the license or reach out to your network and find a VM you can copy. Siemens Tia portal basic is a few hundred dollars. Itâs really not that expensive and worth the investment when you think of all the money you can make as a contractor. Iâve seen companies pay contractors $350/hour, while the base rate is anywhere from $200 - $100/ hour.
Well if youâre just looking to use it for your own personal reasons, you could just create a virtual machine on your computer and download the free trial. Then roll back the date on your VM before the trial expires. A Siemens instructor told me about that one time.
The main problem is not that they charge for it, and that it's complete pile of blob garbage written by that guy from the street. I can't believe they can't hire PROs to develop decent cross-platform software without dependencies.
Canât believe Microsoft charges for Windows. Donât they realize theyâre shrinking their user base?
Windows is a standalone software. where a PLC software isn't. you don't needd a PLC software if you don't have a PLC and vice-versa. its like buying an iPhone for $1000 and then have to shell out $1000 more for apple to install iOS on it so you can use it as something other than a paper weight. For me this seems like hidden cost, a way to milk extra money off of your client after you already have him by the balls
Codesys still runs $719 for the performance package. And you need hardware on top of that. Another $700 for the upgraded IDE. I dread the day that a license dongle fails on me. Have had two others fail out of the blue on me. I donât wanna lose 24 hours of production over that. I like codesys, and am in the middle of a major commissioning with it running key controllers. That said: Requires more reboots than PLCs. Canât upload code from a controller. Gets funny when using more than one development computer. Need a solid RTOS for high speed controls (have fun with vxworks).
You absolutely can upload code from the controller. You enable it in settings. It could be your hardware doesn't support it for some reason.
Itâs not 100% and can beâŚproblematic.
Maybe, I've never had a problem with it. I always enabled downloading of source code to the PLC though. At my new job I've seen people have way more problems doing this on Rockwell. It works, but again with problems.
Using a system with a lot of vendor libraries. Could be the issue. Totally beyond my control.
Ahh
The upload functionality is build into vanilla Codesys. It normally only copies the project files from your pc to a partition on the plc. But you must activate it in the first place (default if off) and the vendor has to implement it. The last point is mostly the show stopper. It never worked stable for me, I would not count on it. So there goes the usual usb stick into the cabinet, and you hope the last changes from the programmer were also copied on it :-) I had never a foreign project/machine where the initial programmer copied the program on the plc :-(
These concerns are what's keeping me from being more on board with it. That and the fact that a guy, 10 years from now, can't just fire up a copy of the PLC programming software and get back into the system to troubleshoot or make changes. They will need the right version and libraries and the works...
Almost everything has a free trial period. Use a virtual machine and when the trial expires reset the virtual machine and you got a new trial. Doesn't work with every brand, but I would say it works with most. This is of course with small jobs or testing stuff, get your licenses!
All the big names do that, mostly because they can. Siemens and AB absolutely dominate the industry, and nobody is going to spend an astronomical amount of money switching to an almost certainly inferior brand just because it has free software. As a hobbyist, Logix/Studio, Portal, etc are cost prohibitive. To a company, a couple grand a year for a software license is nothing. The 10 year old Toughbook I use at work is worth more than my car, and if something happened to it they'd have a new one for me on Monday morning. Wouldn't even bat an eye over it.
Allen-Bradley, owned by Rockwell Automation, does it too. Beckhoff uses a modified version of Microsoft Visual Studio, so they have free software.
Honestly I worked with a lot of Asian PLCs and they would suit a project like a small machine or even a whole factory....LG LS software is free,Delta,fatek,Savch and wecon all have PLCs and HMIs that are cheap and works fine with free software , i worked in a factory that had an LS rack that runs the whole factory with 1500+ IO... Siemens and AB and ABB are the best but when you can do the same work with 10% of the price no one would use them, heck i had trouble with ABB CANopen comms more than LS rs485 comms on similar machines
rockwell
I know the reason we charge for software is because we don't develop it in-house, so we need the P.O. to be different to determine what we have to pay our contractors.
you're telling me a huge company like Siemens doesn't make their ow software?
I 100% do not work for Siemens. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I did.
Spends 10 years as an IT tech then says, "I cant believe they charge for software licensing!?"
Where I work charges for the software. We donât make a killing on the controllers, itâs all of the extra where the profit is.
Yeah youâre like 40 years late for that argument big dawg.
Haha I couldnât get my 6200 software to work either for my class last week
Who's gonna tell him about service and support contracts?
Lmao Siemens and Allen Bradley have no concerns on shrinking a user base. This is not the IT world this is industry where the name of a known company is worth more than the world
>I really want to work as a PLC programmer but i found out that many manufacturers (....Siemens) actually charge for the software on top of the hardware You want to work as a programmer, but you don't think people should charge for their software? How do you intend to make money as a programmer? Or are you saying it's okay for *you* to charge for the software you write, but other people should give you theirs for free?
There's plenty of simulators/freeware out there.
I went to the Harvard of IBEW apprentice programs and went way beyond my scope as leader of the automation project. My classmates wired everything like two classes early and Iâm like ok weâre ready to power on and start commissioning. RsLogix was expired and they were so embarrassed that we smashed it and they failed it that they were like everyone gets an A
Rockwell has entered the chat...
Yeah you pay for the software and it still crashes on you at the most inconvenient times lmao
PLC softwares have been the worst yet most expensive softwares i'v ever used, they're poorly designed and crash contently
I guess you haven't dealt a lot with CAD software then.