Opto 22 announces the addition of international standard IEC 61131-3 programming options in its groov EPIC edge programmable industrial controller. Adding these new programming options to the existing flowchart and custom user-written options in groov EPIC gives control engineers the ability to program using a variety of languages they already know, whiletaking advantage of the EPIC’s extended capabilities for automation and industrial internet of things (IIoT) applications. All IEC 61131-3standard languages are supported by groov EPIC, including Function Block Diagram (FBD), Structured Text (ST), Sequential Function Charts (SFC), and Ladder Diagram (LD).
Adding the IEC 61131-3 option gives engineers several key advantages. First, they can pick the best software tool for their specific application. Second, they can mix and match several software tools to build control and IIoT solutions on one unified platform. And last,companies can continue to leverage existing employee knowledge in IEC 61131-3 programming methods, including decades-old ladder logic.
The PC-based CODESYS Development System V3 is used to create and compile IEC 61131-3 programs for download to a pre-installedCODESYS Runtime running on groov EPIC. The CODESYS Development System is available at no charge from the CODESYS Store at https://store.codesys.com. The CODESYS Runtime on groov EPIC is enabled by a free software license available from Opto 22.
“As the world’s leading manufacturer of independent IEC 61131-3 software,” stated Markus Bachmann, President of the U.S. subsidiary of the CODESYS Group, “we are excited that CODESYS has been chosen to boost Opto 22’s groov EPIC to the next level in industrial automation products, integrating state-of-the-art industrial control with new IIoT and Industry 4.0 applications.”
In addition to IEC 61131-3, groov EPIC can also be programmed using Opto 22’s native PAC Control™. Field-proven, flowchart-based PAC Control with optional scripting offers 400+ plain English commands for analog process and digital sequential control, complex math,conditional branching, string handling, and other complex functions.
Other programming options include using software languages supported on the Linux operating system through secure shell. This access—along with toolchains and interpreters for Java, C/C++, Python, JavaScript/Node.js and more—allows developers to create custom applications. In addition, groov EPIC includes Node-RED as another programming option. Node-RED uses a flow-based development environment optimized for edge data processing and communications.