Although automation technology in the form of programmable logic controllers has become an indispensable part of industry, it continues to develop only slowly. Despite having long been established in high-level language development “new” concepts such as object-oriented programming or source code management are only slowly making their way into PLC programming. This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, machines controlled via PLCs have often been running stably for decades. The complexity of the software used is deliberately kept as low as possible to enable fast troubleshooting, stable operation and maintainable code. Nevertheless, it is time to adopt paradigms from high-level language development and make some design decisions in a more conscious, modern way.

I have been working as a software developer and commissioning engineer in special-purpose machine construction for over a decade, and in the course of this time I have stumbled across many head-scratchers. Basic design issues as well as concrete implementations that are only superficially described by the manufacturers. I would like to share these experiences on this blog and invite discussion.

Welcome to this blog!

TcLog - Logging for TwinCAT

Logging in TwinCAT with the on-board means is limited to the output as ADS event. The TcLog library presented here enables flexible logging to the file system.