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Automation: Is Arduino replacing programmable logic

controller in industries?

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7 Answers

A bsolutely not. It's not even on anyone's radar. Arduino is a hobbyist toy, and PLCs are

industrial equipment. It's too much of a hack.

The cost savings is completely out the window once you lose a single day of production

because of an issue that took you 10 times as long to fix because of the engineering h urdle.

It's not designed to work in a fail-safe scenario, although all your safety should not even be

trusted by a non-safety PLC due to lack of redundancy in a failure scenario.

It's also not designed to run continuously in a 90F degree panel, 24 hours a day, 365 daysa year for 10 years.

Finally, engineering and technician time is valuable. Bud get $50-200+ per hour, not

including lost time and equipment life. How much mone y are you really going to save?

Written 27 Feb 2015 • View Upvotes

Ben Mordecai, Engineer in Industrial Automation

8.3k Views • Ben is a Most Viewed Writer in Programmable Logic Controller (PLC).

No way.

Firstly, PLC and Arduino are totally different in terms of applications. Once you get the

hang of using a PLC and replacing it with an Arduino will seem difficult and pointless.

One may argue that a rugged Arduino Board could be designed to withstand the harsh

environments of a factory floor. However true this may be when you design a rugged

Arduino board, what you are essentially doing is developing an industrial product a round

Atmel's Atmega microprocessor. So let us give our friends at Atmel some credit and stop

calling such products Arduinos. And believe me I have opened up a few industrial grade

products myself, particularly power factor controllers, energy meters and genset

controllers. Many of them do use Atmel products. I am an Atmel fan myself.

So, the real question is are microcontrollers replacing PLC in industries.

The answer again is no.

You see. PLCs and microcontrollers are built for different kinds of end users.

Ajinkya Kamat, Designing Robot Brains for a living.

5.5k Views • Upvoted by Ben Mordecai, Engineer in Industrial Automation

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Microcontrollers are used by product developers who will design and develop industrial

equipment like temperature controllers, panel meters, sensor modules, transducers,

actuators etc.

PLC are targeted for use by system integrators who will use products developed by other

companies to build an entire assembly line. For their application writing code using

Ladder Logic is much more convenient and optimal.

Written 5 Nov 2014 • View Upvotes

You should not even think of replacing PLCs with Arduino. There is immense difference

between arduino and plc.

So arduino is good to play and program at home and labs it is not ready to be used in

industrial arena.

Written 31 Oct 2014 • View Upvotes

Piyush Ramraika, CFA Level 1 candidate, Electrical Engineer

4.3k Views • Upvoted by Ben Mordecai, Engineer in Industrial Automation

PLCs are made to work in rugged and industrial environment and Arudino are

not reliable for such an environment.

Arduino cannot be trusted in the life saving situation as occur in industries.

Arduino is designed for random hobbyist use a nd sometimes can give error which can

be very dangerous for the life a nd property of the industry.

PLCs use simple Ladder Logic Programming so it is easy to troubleshoot them in

case of error but arduino are programmed with C++ which is foregin for plant

technicians.

Arduino is provided with Reset button as sometimes it gets locked up which is not

good for industries.

Arduino has few I/O pins and analog pins as compared to PLCs where pins can be

hundreds.

I think it is.

Arduino Isn’t Just For Hackers← Paul M Furley But I have mixed feelings about extensively using Arduino in mainstream Industrial

applications and when it comes to replacing PLCs and DCSs,I have to painfully(coz i am a

fan of Arduino and embed it in all my projects)say that, No Arduino is never going to

replace PLCs. You ask why?

Aditya Shakya, Tinkerer by design,Artist by choice.

4.2k Views

First of all if you follow link about you'll find that the industrial printers in the link

about use 5 arduinos, and why is that , because they have low I/O count. Event the

most advanced arduino has I/Os that max out at around 100-150(approx). But even

a small industry will easily have more than 100 I/Os. Now you may say we can use a

number of Arduinos to suffice for lack of I/Os, yes we can , but ask yourself what will

be easy to manage(debug or program ), PLC with a single CPU(there is always a

second standby CPU in them !!) which will have all the program or, A number of

arduinos with the whole program divided into each and they all communicate and

synchronize using protocols like I2C,SPI or at max Serial at 115200 baud, which is

horribly slower than those used by PLC like Modbus.

Second problem is communication protocols available, and problem being they are

slow.Why? Because, when you have at least 1000 I/Os to handle then you will have

around 2000+ process parameters that need to be communicated to the Operator

console at at least 100 to 10 Hz rate. And at the same time they also need to be

communicated to control equipment/hardware/device at much higher frequencies

like tens of thousands time. And with slow communications available it will most likely

result in a blown up Boiler or a Turbine breaking due to excessive vibration and all

that not counting the life casualties and monetary loss and all sorts of accidental

hazards.

Third point being Reliability. What if just one of the Arduino malfunctions which is a

very obvious possibility because we need to reset it when it hang s and again it works

perfect , but this is not tolerable when you are controlling machines worth Billions of

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And at last if you design a n Industrially robust Arduino based controller from scratch,

keeping in mind all the industrial norms then again it would be nothing but a PLC that is

slow at communication,has low processing power,is less reliable and understand Arduino

language. It may be useful for really small industrial application like in situations where

the application is not critical and reliability is not big a deal, But yet again its far from

replacing PLCs.

Its not that I am against whole Arduino thing , actually my major project was an

Industrial grade Data Acquisition and Control Board which support both Digital and

Analog I/Os of both TTL logic level( those used by microcontroller boards like Arduino)

and PLC logic level 0-24v. It can be used with LABView to make any control system by just

using USB connectivity . But this said I would never have suggested its use for anything

but educational purposes.


rupees/dollars. PLC always have a standby CPU that takes over when primary CPU

fails or starts misbehaving.

Fourth reason being, PLC is programmed using ladder logic which has been

understood and used by engineers and technicians for decades , but on the other

hand Arduino has its own language(not even C). And yet again ladder logic being

graphical is easy to edit and debug.Teaching a new language like Arduino will be

cumbersome .

Fifth reason being that , if you are setting up an industrial plant worth millions of

dollars then you wouldn't want to give its control in the hands of a device that come

under 100$ !!. So its the trust factor at last ,PLCs have been here for long and they are

going to stay.


Ankur Kaushal

2.8k Views

We can also design arduino for rugg ed or industrial environment.

How can someone says that arduino gives error in industrial reqirement,as plc and

arduino both are havig microcontroller ,which works according to programming.

Arduino programmed in simple C language not more than "if,else,than,for,while

etc" instructions even 7 or 8 th standard student can do it easily.

Reset is just like on/off button ,if you power off plc it will also not work.

if you make temperature controller in industries using plc it will cost you near about

thousands $ and if you use arduino this cost you only few $, so why we pay more.

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