Take Home PLC unit

Posted on Monday, March 29th, 2021

Client	Algonquin college
Professor(s)	Mauricio Ledon,
Program	Electrical Engineering Technology
Students	Pierce Britton Matthew Felix Jared Shaw Lucas Turner Jianfeng Xie

Project Description:

The PLC project team working with Algonquin College has developed a portable Programable Logic Controller (PLC) unit that will allow students to work on their Programmable Controllers lab work at home without having to always go on campus. It was also designed to work with Modbus communication to allow the device to be used with SCADA systems.

The PLC unit is made up of an Arduino Mega with OpenPLC firmware uploaded to it, lights, switches, and buttons. This allows students to created a ladder diagram project that can be uploaded and simulated on the device.

The PLC unit can also be used with Modbus communication allowing the use of Simply Modbus or pyModbus (Python) to be used to control and read the status of all the inputs and outputs on the unit.

The PLC team has also developed two programs created using Python programming that allows the students to transfer their lab work done on OpenPLC to the Rockwell PLC’s in the Algonquin College lab rooms.