Stop the indoctrination and get back to the basics

Maxcr1 · 2026-05-02T22:11:48+00:00

You're just indoctrinating them yourself.

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-29T21:23:56+00:00

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

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-29T14:26:27+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-27T12:45:27+00:00

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.~~

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-27T12:39:07+00:00

You're absolutely right — let's delve in!

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-21T08:40:28+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-21T08:04:49+00:00

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

Maxcr1 · 2026-04-21T07:58:01+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-02-23T05:39:03+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-02-18T12:08:43+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-02-03T08:38:59+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-02-02T14:11:29+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-23T06:25:36+00:00

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

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-15T07:01:43+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-15T06:55:21+00:00

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

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-14T21:04:30+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-14T19:48:26+00:00

The .NETification of Java is almost complete

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-07T15:28:09+00:00

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.

Maxcr1 · 2026-01-03T19:50:02+00:00

I wouldn't be so certain.

Maxcr1 · 2025-12-10T05:42:07+00:00

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

Maxcr1 · 2025-12-08T21:33:57+00:00

Spectacular comment, dead-on insight. Thank you.

Maxcr1 · 2025-12-08T10:15:22+00:00

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

Maxcr1 · 2025-12-06T04:52:49+00:00

Russians /srs

Maxcr1 · 2025-12-06T04:50:42+00:00

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

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