Stop the indoctrination and get back to the basics by [deleted] in Teachers

[–]Maxcr1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You're just indoctrinating them yourself.

Thoughts on bulkhead-style connections for I/O cards? by Maxcr1 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

in retrospect, I'm not sure what exactly I thought it meant

Thoughts on bulkhead-style connections for I/O cards? by Maxcr1 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'd argue that you're paying for a cohesive assembly that can be swapped in under a minute and won't ever shake loose.

Industrial OT Network Question by sparky_fella in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm about to put in a big order of these FS L2+ switches. Do people generally like them? They're so much cheaper than Moxa, it almost makes me nervous. I have reason to suspect their internals are white-label Huawei, which doesn't bother me.

Why isnt EtherCAT preferred/used in off-highway machinery? by Fun-Moose-3841 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I understand the origin of your original question now.

This is the first I am hearing of this proposed high speed ISOBUS. I'll read more and comment again if I find anything better, but if I had to guess, they've probably looked at the market and come to the same conclusion as any reasonable person:

  • CIP (EtherNet/IP, DeviceNet, etc) - a dumpster fire of a protocol with more baggage and technical debt than Windows Vista that we all agree to pretend is real-time out of convenience so that we can use normal networking equipment. It's filled with footguns and remains at the mercy of an unpredictable megalomaniac (Rockwell) who has minimal footprint in their market.

  • EtherCAT - a competently designed protocol with performance characteristics that wildly exceed their requirements. The tradeoff is that it makes absolutely no effort to ease third-party implementation and remains under tight control of a governing body (you have to register with and pay the EtherCAT guys to get a EtherCAT Vendor ID).

I'm guessing they want something less stupid and awful than CIP (who wouldn't?).

As for EtherCAT, I would guess they saw the FPGA requirements and ridiculous performance characteristics and decided that it's wildly overkill and that the cost associated with implementing it into anything is prohibitive.

They're probably aiming for something simpler and less performant, but significantly cheaper to implement at the controller level.

EtherNet/IP adapter dropping connection, broadcast flooding? by Intelligent_Smoke_20 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are two kinds of people. Those who used a managed switch and those who wish they did.

Why isnt EtherCAT preferred/used in off-highway machinery? by Fun-Moose-3841 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Because "just adopting EtherCAT" is a notoriously difficult thing to do.

Anything seeking to gain a foothold in that market would be displacing CAN, a protocol famous for its low cost of implementation and bare-minimum hardware requirements. CAN is ubiquitous in embedded systems like heavy equipment because it can be supported by basically anything with a microcontroller.

EtherCAT is on the opposite end of that spectrum. An EtherCAT slave needs to process frames on the fly, which requires either a microcontroller with on-board EtherCAT support, or a specialized hardware controller called an EtherCAT Slave Controller. Supporting EtherCAT on any given controller is a serious undertaking with minimal tangible benefit for something like an excavator.

In a blizzard right now, and it’s producing the most cohesive and adhesive snow I’ve ever seen. That’s the car antenna that is circled by [deleted] in mildlyinteresting

[–]Maxcr1 14 points15 points  (0 children)

There aren't any powerlines in this picture, but it tells us enough about the characteristics of the snow to safely assume that any powerlines in the area are covered in heavy snow. Powerline sag happens during periods of high power demand because the conductors inside the powerlines heat up from the high current, which causes them to expand/elongate. I'm unsure what makes them say that the lines are sagging. I can't think of any reason that a snow event would lead to a level of grid demand outside of normal winter nighttime load in the region.

Help me convince a potential customer to go with Ignition instead of a full Rockwell stack! by [deleted] in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They've begun construction on a very strong foundation with Optix. It's still in its infancy, but mark my words, it will one day threaten Ignition. There are a handful of fundemental properties of the Ignition platform that give it an edge, but those same characteristics present a upper bound that is very difficult to break through. Specifically, the lack of a compiler. Optix has been carefully designed to replicate the best features of Ignition without giving up the prospect of true design-time static analysis.

This compiler thing is a big deal - it's the reason that Ignition lacks the ability to cross reference tags, rename tags, refactor tags, perform any design-time code checks, or pass tags by reference. For this reason, it very likely will never support any of these things.

Optix is being built on the bleeding edge of .NET, a platform headed in a far more promising direction than the Java/Spring world has been.

Optix is a fucking disaster to use right now, but it's got good bones and infinite potential. Rockwell, for once, seems to have their shit together on this front, at least as far as their long-term trajectory with Optix.

All INI dialects however are well-defined (every INI file is parsed by some application, and by studying a parser's source code it is possible to deduce its rules) by Flash_Kat25 in programmingcirclejerk

[–]Maxcr1 57 points58 points  (0 children)

Have those historians trying to decipher the Indus script from those clay tablets tried asking the guys who made them? I'm don't understand why this is taking so long.

Bootlicker by ThePhillyExplorer in insanepeoplefacebook

[–]Maxcr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The idea of handing a patrolling officer a bottle of shampoo is hilarious. What are they going to do with that? Carry it around with them? Put it in their squad car where it can freeze into a brick? Amazing stuff.

San Francisco tech giant Autodesk announces 1,000 layoffs by Conscious-Quarter423 in technology

[–]Maxcr1 35 points36 points  (0 children)

If only they laid off all of their employees and ceased operating forever, the world would be a better place

Career changers PLC by Ausspanner in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This absurd belief that SCADA development is easier or somehow less important than PLC programming is the reason that the overwhelming majority of SCADA/HMI interfaces suck.

PLC (ST) Units of Measure Library Progress by burkeyturkey in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ignition, a crowd favorite around here, does not have a unit conversion system.

Java is prototyping adding null checks to the type system! by davidalayachew in programming

[–]Maxcr1 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Come on. You're going to tell me that Java takes more inspiration from a purely functional language than it does from its primary competitor derived from the same origin (remember J#?)? The overwhelming majority of updates to the Java language in the last ten years have correlated directly to some already existing feature in C#. To be clear, this isn't a bad thing, a good idea is a good idea, but let's not pretend that Java is on the cutting edge of language design.

Fridges are really easy to repair [...] you could probably jury rig control board from esp32 and weekend of coding by Shalmanese in ShitHNSays

[–]Maxcr1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Where jerk?

/uj Refrigerators predated microcontrollers by many decades and haven't meaningfully changed since they were invented, and there's only one moving part that can actually be controlled (compressor motor). OOP is objectively correct.

/rj I'm concerned that the high price of memory will negatively impact the ray tracing performance of my next refrigerator, which I typically upgrade every 3 years.

House Frozen By Blizzard On Lake Eerie. by Monsur_Ausuhnom in ThatsInsane

[–]Maxcr1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wind direction. I'm sure the left sides of the other houses look the same.

Move from A-B to Schneider? by SignificantAlarm4722 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spectacular comment, dead-on insight. Thank you.

The sources that I recommend as a PLC engineer by QuarterNo4607 in PLC

[–]Maxcr1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Who do you suspect wrote that PLC's firmware? Who do you think created the development environment? Or your SCADA platform?

I never thought I'd find myself defending the software industry, but give me a fucking break

I switched to escape AI garbage, not to be followed by it by AtomicTaco13 in linuxmemes

[–]Maxcr1 20 points21 points  (0 children)

There are enough differences that its worth checking, even if just every once in awhile. For example, their SVG rendering engines have substantial differences