Open source in industrial automation

"If you are good at your job, you don't need to learn from others".
This is what I read in a recent post about the state of using open-source software in industrial automation. There are so many misconceptions about open-source software amongst PLC-programmers, I decided to go through some of the misconceptions that were stated in the post.
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0:00 Introduction
1:12 "You don't need to learn from others!"
4:00 "Just as Facebook never does open-source, neither should I!"
6:35 "No code from unknown source thanks!"
8:04 "You can't force me!"
8:55 "I want to keep everything for myself!"
10:29 Ending words
#plc #opensource #programming

[@WilmerAriza]

Critics are the same people that pay Rockwell to give them technical support.

[@osmozinho]

And same for boomer people who are stuck with Siemens devices since 1995 😅

[@foxtrot978]

You can't buy more expensive than Rockwell. But you can buy better😂

[@bcar456]

I don't understand why Rockwell is so expensive, but whatever you go you will find them. Maybe they offer a longtime guarantee of their devices.

[@foxtrot978]

They have a large market share in north America. And they were were much present in my college (Canada). I guess that would bleed into the industry

[@pawelwojdaRTIQG]

I loved the last comment. Ones I worked in a company that underwent cyber attack so most of the IP was stolen including the PLC source code. My first thought was that this is going to be embarrassing when someone opens the PLC code and finds out how badly it was written ;) Anyway, I think that open source sounds great and at some point I am planning to share some of my library ideas, but first I need to make sure I will not ridicule myself by doing it.

[@ryanfitzgerald409]

Great topic! Clearly many of commenters you highlighted need a dose of humility! I manage a team of industrial automation developers and engineers and no one is expected to write code from scratch. We all learn based on examples of good and bad programming. Depending on our customer, we may use the customer's code library or our own code library. We have loosely termed our code library non-closed source: open to the customer, not shared outside. Developing our library has taken years and we would never start from scratch unless there was a fundamental shift in technology. Open sourcing , at least within the sector, might be possible. Who knows?

[@CodeX787]

This video is Gold ❤️❤️ "Open source is about collaborating; Not competing"

[@vfryhn2]

Wow this is amazing, I'm coming from web development where there are lots of open source versions for almost everything you can imagine and that helps thousands of new people to get better knowledge it really surprises me how closed is everything here in the industrial automation field

[@jacobchan4697]

me from web development too, totally agree with the opinion that how closed is industrial automation

[@andrewkibor9581]

Yes, I remember coming across that post. Being pro opens-source, I was not too happy with some of the comments I saw. Glad you put out this video to clarify some things.

[@mirosawboniewicz6793]

A programmer, who said, that everything can do himself using logic only should use keyboard with only 2 buttons: "1" and "0", because language, IDE and libraries were written by someone else. This is a peak of "Mount Stupid".

[@andrearichetta_Arduino]

Great video as usual, and the topic is very important . You know my take on this, I don't have to explain ;) but you pointed out most of the daily fears of the industrial world we face... the nice parta is that the Open Source revolution is started, now the only thing we must do is keeping the ball rolling.

[@ahuca117]

1:32 "Build your knowledge, not your ego" is the most fitting feedback I could think of to give to the person who made this comment. I think you have done a great job in this video in clearing up the myths and misconceptions about open-source. A concept and practice that is clearly still very alien to too many people.

[@JakobSagatowski]

Giang, I'm happy you liked the video. Good quote! And thanks for supporting this channel 😊

[@ahuca117]

@@JakobSagatowski It's my pleasure Jakob. This channel and you have done a lot to the automation community, and any bits of recognition are well-earned!

[@Hudyvolt]

Hi Jakob. I love your videos, thank you for making them. I am not a full time developer, but a process engineer which works with assembly machines. I need to debug and fix the bugs quite often because the machine is not working as it should. And rarely it is an easy task due to poorly written code. So I think the last comment is the most true.

[@user-hf4db6sb5r]

I think that's so true. Thank you for share this subject

[@PTKu]

Thanks Jakob for this... I did not have strength to go through that thread on LinkedIn... it was so painful to read... you made it so funny and entertaining! I really enjoyed it!

[@JakobSagatowski]

My pleasure!

[@codingplc]

Great video. I'm glad that you touched on the topic. Waiting for more videos.

[@JakobSagatowski]

More to come!

[@yassinebouchoucha]

fortunately I quit mechatronic and industrial automation (I never worked in though), I learned web development by open-source and open-minded developer, I have my own start-up now with high-grade Saas product and I am moving to other project even more complex... I would never expect such career in the mechatronic world !

[@xKrantzzy]

Great video with a great subject. Keep it up!

[@TradieTrev]

Oh I know my code sucks! I'm just happy when it works lol! Had a great childhood experience learning BASIC sharing our game code; And it's still something I do to this day when things break. It's amazing how another's insight can improve a project!

[@Peter_S_]

This video contains a huge misconception by 30 seconds in. Open source is already prolific in process control. IFM Efector which is a huge player in automation worldwide with AS-interface and IO-Link uses open source code in their gateway products and they are not the only ones.

[@avejst]

Good points Totally agree with your points Thanks for sharing 🙂

[@JakobSagatowski]

Thanks for watching!

[@mezzer34]

The venn diagram of people who refuse to try ST, and who refuse to use Open source is a perfect circle. Just saying.

[@hydragyrdragon516]

still wondering why such people like that even hired and work on this field

[@obscuresc1699]

Also those who think Modbus RTU is effective at scale.

[@niclash]

One of the brightest Java developer I have ever worked with said basically the same thing as the "elephant in the room", when I asked him to open source a platform. "NO. It is horribly written." and it ended up with us re-designing the basic idea and re-implementing the design more than once.

[@TohidAlizadeh]

Well said Jakob, good job.

[@pkszub944]

On point! Great video! 👍

[@JakobSagatowski]

Hey Piotr! Happy that you liked it! Hope everything is fine with you 😀

[@Bluecoldcaffe]

My personal experience from the packaging machine world is that there is just a lot of secrecy. The portfolio shown on the fancy company website is just a small part of the entire solution offered on any given project. On a given project, we would come up with our best solution, and we'd have just some vague ideas on what our competitors would be offering. This leads to secretive behavior, and a somewhat tense atmosphere on the Interpack. This mindset tends to naturally spread throughout the company, especially to the software side of things.

[@gmanonDominicana]

It's easier to write your own code than to build on top of others. The problem is that we alone can only advance so far.

[@BretWrightSTUFF]

I like building a basic panel, PLC, or control unit, use its modbus table to visulize data..happy to outsource or use a pre-written code.

[@tejonBiker]

I think is more cultural, this is raised by paywalls for any service in industry, I really like idea of Open Source Hardware & Software for PLC, can bring more options and better profits for the enginners.

[@MrCristiBV]

I think it's not about the simple programs but about the reuse of the more optimized ones and the ones that are at the programming limit of the PLC without using much built in blocks. Very good topic, there was a community for Siemens S7 that made a library called OSCAT publicly available and I used it a few times back in the days. Of course you can check the code. Is there a portal of plc open source that is constantly updating?

[@dwing5006]

Hello Jakob! I think the open source variant is good and i really like your video! my question to you below! What do you think about Siemens and their PLC:s? Have you been working with Siemens and their hardware/software? I can see that you are working a lot with Beckhoff and know that software/hardware really good.

[@bitcarpenter8646]

I'm an industrial automation and controls engineer and the source of many problems in the industry that I have noticed (at least in the US) is the general personality type of controls engineers. The experienced controls engineers got to where they are likely because they were a technician that showed enough aptitude for fixing the problems on the plant floor then went back to school for their engineering degree. From my observation they are motivated only by solving interesting problems in isolation. The prevailing training method is trial by fire and there is a sort of defacto fraternity built in that environment. Additionally most controls engineers are extremely adverse to impediments to progress on their projects including any kind of corporate or democratic process.

[@discutiibiblice]

I've worked with controls engineers that were technicians. They were average, but they were by far the most lying, backstabbing, butt-kissing, involved in petty politics individuals. People coming from college are more "nerd" kind of type, more gentle, decent and easy to work with, except they waste their time on videogames instead to be involved. Sometimes ambition is not quite a virtue, by the contrary, it makes these people toxic.

[@bitcarpenter8646]

My main point is that the incentive structures and work environments in industrial settings don't produce or attract the kinds of engineers that are concerned with or have the time for open source contribution.

[@stalkinghawk9244]

@@discutiibiblice hm, here were I am it seemed as the colledge guys were quite disconnected from reality and often didnt know what a machine user needs on a dayly bases. Also they sometimes thought the technicians and their problems were mostly caused by stupidety, not realising its just not intuitivly desined. Though I agree shopfloor technicians can be quite the politicans^^

[@BytebroUK]

This will be a classic case of jumping in with an opinion before I've watched the whole video - sorry! If I do the 10,000 hours thing at maybe 35.5 hour per week as a job, then in 5 or 6 years from now, I should be pretty damned good at whatever that was, but almost certainly not as good as I think I am!

[@N33sWorkshop]

"...it is more efficient to code from scratch..." Ever heard of a standard like VASS? Please tell me why one of the biggest auto makers considers a standard and pre-made blocks are more efficient? I believe, it would be great to find a library for this and that, especially for a big project. But many companies make $$$ off of selling these blocks for their equipment. Like, I encountered recently with a leak tester, the block was given to you based on a voucher that you got with the purchase of the equipment. Price of the block 6-700€, without the voucher. Sometimes you can find blocks and UDTs on the equipment manufacturer website.

[@michah3956]

It annoys me that there is no support for tools for Linux. I want programming for PLC on Linux!

[@discutiibiblice]

now why on earth would you want that? if a Windows machine crashes, you can always restart it; if a Linux machine crashes, good luck, there's nobody in the facility able to put it back. There's a reason why the best engineering tools are on Windows. Linux for networking and for God's sake, lets keep it that way.

[@RoRu87]

@@discutiibiblice You want to feature in the follow up video? ;D More seriously, you want it is because there is a huge software developer ecosystem for almost any language and their tools. There are many command line tools available and you have great package management. Plus most traditional software developers know these tools already, so you can recruit from that talent pool. Beckhoff recently released TwinCAT/BSD which is a unix based operating system. And Rexrorth has cntrlX automation which is completely linux based. So things are improving on that front.

[@prashkd7684]

Its not just in the industry but also within the company. Those who've been working for 30-40 years never share their knowledge with newcomers which makes its impossible to grow within the business.What's worse is that they don't even document their work so in case someone else has to troubleshoot the software, it will confuse the hell out of him.

[@JakobSagatowski]

This industry is very bad at sharing knowledge. Knowledge-hoarding is too common!

[@user-lw3pt7oq1v]

Great video. The world of Industrial Automation has to move to open source. Would be interested in your recommendations for preferred/professional locations to put open source code. Start with the low hanging fruit and the initiative will gain momentum.

[@bingolingo1620]

Great video. Do you know any forums that explore these ideas about open source? I've explored siemens' forum but it seems lacking sometimes.

[@kristian_berlin]

Great video! 😃 The one thing that I sort of missed was a mention of the different licenses used for open source projects. For example if you make changes to some existing project, are you required to make those changes open source? All depending on the license model. I'm far from an expert regarding this though.

[@JakobSagatowski]

Hej Kristian! Thanks for your feedback. I primarily wanted to focus on the comments I saw in the thread. This video was not intended to cover all aspects of open source. With that being said, this was the first video of a series that will touch on this subject, and then I will make sure to cover the different open-source licenses.

[@Flamechr]

Allways think that you arent the best and strive to become better 😊

[@chudchadanstud]

My previous comment got wiped by KZbin. Not sure why. To summarise it, I said Open Source PLC code is hard because of expensive hardware and terrible tools by manufacturers for modularising and sharing code. Basic functions like TCP/IP and Serial Coms must be licensed meaning the end user will ultimately have to pay for a license to use open source code, which is against my personal principle for open source.

[@SimoneBorile]

Hi Jakob, I would like to ask for your opinion: After absorbing all the information that one person can find on the internet, where should start to find a project to work on as a freelancer? Is there any way to take on freelance work to gain experience and work on it in one's free time before looking for a full-time job in a company? What do you suggest? Where one person should start looking for work with PLC?

[@ukaszjancarz3210]

I fully agree with you. Do u know any websited where can I find code/program examples made in TIA portal ?

[@eplaninanutshell]

Thanks Jakob very inspiring

[@JakobSagatowski]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@aaqilkhan]

Very well said and agree 100%

[@vivianr1184]

Beautiful said ,. If you have long experience the attitude changes(maybe),..! ...luv U ,.. Gruß aus Stuttgart

[@bcar456]

What about if the company doesn't want to share the code ?

[@JonathanBeri]

Can you share (or do a video) on the open source initiatives for industrial automation?

[@JakobSagatowski]

Hey! You can check my blog for some initiatives. I'll also do a video about it.

[@OVCA96]

@ep5BAS Could you link the project?

[@Flamechr]

After making my first HelloWorld in Twincat I can already see something that can give me a head egg if I am right. Here it goes. When I tried to build and then run the code it asked for a license "Yes a free one for 7 days" I see that as a massive hindrance in CI/CD. If I have a system that has like 3000 tests I would like to maybe split it up over serval instances that each run maybe 30 tests but on 100 virtual machines in the could to get fast feedback. Do I really need to maintain or even worse buy 100 Licenses for that ?. And I am looking forward to try and compile the solution from the commandline since I am starting in a new company the 1 of September and they do not have a build pipeline for compiling, static code analysis, unittest and integrations test. which is very uncommon for me. My background is the wind turbine industry and generator control. We used C# and C++ and understand that the place I am going wants to develop PLC mostly in C# and C++ and some Structured text so they can use many of the build tools from Microsoft as possible. I really understand why they want it due to the modern software development process.

[@JakobSagatowski]

You will need a license to run PLC code unless you want to re-generate a trial-license every 7 days, which I don't think is a big problem. I've setup several CI/CD pipelines like this and it works just fine.

[@XYang2023]

It could also mean people doing industrial automation live in their own world.

[@viktorgaponenko8243]

Sacred truth

[@VaragornX]

Let's be honest here. The industrial automation field is lightyears behind IT in almost every regard. The code that I see from other PLC-developers most of the time is just bad and basically unmaintainable trash. And they think they are smart, because it's so convoluted, that only they can understand it. They proof the saying, that your own farts always smell great. Global variables everywhere, no separation of concerns, unindented code, no version control, no testing, unreadable variable names... a group of my "colleagues" once told me, that they don't want to use a simple Statemachine pattern, because it is to complicated. I could go on all day.

[@bcar456]

Anyone here have worked with Kinco PLCs? They are pretty good and cheap.

[@pcwalter7567]

Just having a copy of the book written doesn't mean that the author got rid of his brain. Open source is really the right thing to do. I come across many situations where people who "hoarded" their knowledge and code, actually cause harm to the companies that make use of their systems for plant automation. I can guarantee you, those hoarders are not seen as heroes and they are quickly replaced when systems fail.

[@browaruspierogus2182]

I don't remember what great programmer said once - eventually all software will have to be free and all code shared or everything will be lost as last of guarding code engineers are gone... This is more of a matter of what system we live in - right now it is money oriented and selfish

[@aronmotta8093]

Why is Davie504 commenting on automation?!

[@TimVloeberghs]

So you don't make your own wheel ;-)

[@rob8823]

Stuxnet anyone? closed source?

[@paulfreed6394]

Use my code, just don't laugh please🙈

[@zer001]

know that i know nothing