A system includes a programmable logic control (PLC) module, an input/output (IO) network bus coupled to the PLC module and provided at facets of a mainframe. A first process chamber attached to a first facet of the facets. A chamber interface IO sub-module is attached to the first facet and coupled to the IO network bus and to a process chamber IO controller of the first process chamber. The chamber interface IO sub-module is to: convert interlock relay signals, received via dry contact exchange with the process chamber IO controller, to digital signals; combine the digital signals into network packets adapted for communication using a protocol of the IO network bus; and transmit the network packets to the PLC module over the IO network bus.

A method for training an operator of a spray drying plant, the spray drying plant including a plurality of plant elements including pre-processing elements, a spray drying element, post-processing elements, powder recovery elements, and a programmable logic controller, PLC. The method including the steps of: obtaining a transient model of the spray drying plant, wherein the transient model includes transient sub-models of the plurality of plant elements; calculating repeatedly simulated sensor data based on the obtained transient model, using a processing unit; displaying on a display a training human machine interface, tHMI, configured to communicate with the transient model of the spray drying plant, and to display the simulated sensor data and control data for the transient model; and updating the transient model based on operator input on the tHMI, for controlling the transient model of the spray drying plant.

A communication module (100) for monitoring a machine (200) includes a serial interface (110) connectable to a serial interface of the machine (200); a telecommunications interface (120) connectable to a telecommunications network; and a control unit (130) configured to transmit data received via the serial interface (110) to a monitoring server (300) via the telecommunications interface (120). The module (100) provides network connectivity to industrial machinery, thereby providing a means of remotely monitoring such machines, including legacy machines which may not otherwise support network connectivity.

Described are platforms, systems, and methods to discover relationships among equipment in automated industrial or commercial environments by cycling each individual piece of equipment while observing sensors in all other equipment in order to measure how each part reacts to each other part. The platforms, systems, and methods identify a plurality of data sources associated with an automation environment; issue one or more commands to cycle a current data source in the a plurality of data sources; monitor the automation environment for events or state changes in the data sources; detect one or more events or one or more state changes in one or more other data sources in the a plurality of data sources; and determine one or more relationships between the current data source and the one or more other data sources.

Embodiments of this present disclosure may include a system with a first power converter and a control system. The first power converter may supply a first current to a first backplane while a second power converter is concurrently supplying a second current to a second backplane. The first backplane and the second backplane may electrically couple to one or more load components and the control system. The control system may cause the first power converter to adjust the first current such that the first current and the second current are imbalanced with respect to each other in response to receiving a request to verify that the second power converter is capable of supplying the one or more load components with a target current value while the first current and the second current are imbalanced.

A communication simplifier system and method simplify communication between a client application and a single-board data processing system using a tethering architecture. In at least one embodiment, the communication simplifier system and method allows a software developer to build a communication tethering application for the single-board data processing system, define a communication connection strategy, and add a client communication tethering application to a remote computer system, such as a mobile or desktop client computer system, to handle communication with the single-board data processing system. The client computer system also offloads processing from the single-board data processing system by including a processing logic application to implement additional logic to process data received by the single-board data processing system.

Current approaches to integrating industrial ecosystems, for instance integrating automation functions across different vendors, lack efficiencies and capabilities. For example, system integrators are often required to develop special software that functions as a proxy or adaptor between different systems. In such cases, the proxy or adaptor is often specific to a particular set of equipment or vendors, and which can limit reusability, among other technical drawbacks. Embodiments described herein overcome one or more of the described-herein shortcomings or technical problems by providing methods, systems, and apparatuses for automatically generating connecters that enable interoperability between different ecosystems in automated industrial systems, and that define semantics that are specific to a given ecosystem. Further, such connectors can be re-used by the given ecosystem.

A control system includes a support device used for developing a user program to be executed on a controller, and a display device that provides a supervisory control screen by referring to information held by the controller. The support device extracts a relationship between an output signal and one or more input signals defined by the user program and generates input-output correspondence information, and transmits the input-output correspondence information or screen data reflecting the input-output correspondence information to the display device. The display device provides, on the basis of the input-output correspondence information or the screen data reflecting the input-output correspondence information, the supervisory control screen showing the current value of a selected output signal and the current value of one or more input signals associated with the output signal by referring to the values of input and output signals held by the controller.

The computing device may be configured to automatically determine curated configuration settings for a scene that is configured to control one or more zones. Each of the zones may be assigned a respective zone purpose. Each zone may be assigned at least one load control device that is configured to control a corresponding electrical load. Each of the one or more zones may be assigned a control type, which may be based on a respective product type and/or load type of the load control devices/electrical loads within each zone. The computing device may be configured to display one or more graphical user interfaces that a user of the computing device may interact with to select a curated configuration option for configuring the scene. The computing device may be configured to automatically determine curated configuration setting for the scene based on the selected curated configuration option and/or the zone purpose.

An apparatus for extracting common command information from programmable logic controller (PLC) ladder information according to the present invention may include: a logic information extracting portion configured to extract control logic information from XML information converted from PLC ladder information; and a common command converting portion configured to convert the control logic information extracted by the logic information extracting portion into common command information, wherein the logic information extracting portion is configured to extract, from the XML information, the control logic information in the form of a block obtained by grouping units that respectively represent contacts and lines constituting the PLC ladder information according to an AND condition and an OR condition.