Automate Show 2024 (May 6-9) to discover how Arduino is transforming the industrial automation space through open-source hardware and software, providing new perspectives and unlocking opportunities across every industry. More than 30,000 enterprises worldwide already leverage the company’s user-friendly and reliable Arduino Pro hardware, intuitive Arduino Cloud, accessible educational kits and certification courses.
Arduino Opta: The “Swiss Army Knife” of Industrial Automation
Opta is a groundbreaking micro-PLC, successfully adopted to integrate automation with IoT applications due to its security features and built-in connectivity options. It allows users to avoid vendor lock-in and is suitable even for beginners in industrial and building automation, remote monitoring and control, and IoT. Arduino Opta gives users plenty of programming choices: it can be programmed with the key IEC 61131-3 languages as well as within the Arduino environment, also relying on many ready-to-use software libraries and sketches. In addition, the two approaches can be combined to further expand capabilities.
“With Opta, we lower barriers to industrial automation enabling a broad range of projects that were ‘unthinkable’ or ‘unapproachable’ not long ago. We’ve worked hard to provide high-performance hardware and super-secure connectivity at a compelling price point, combined with flexibility in the choice of the preferred programming paradigm between Arduino language and all IEC 61131-3 languages,” comments Arduino’s CEO Fabio Violante.
For more complex projects, Opta’s monitoring and control capabilities can be augmented with I/O expansion modules: Arduino Pro Opta Ext D1608E and Arduino Pro Opta Ext D1608S multiply real-time control points with 16 programmable inputs and 8 digital (electromechanical or solid-state) relay outputs; Arduino Pro Opta Ext A0602 instead allows users to configure new analog I/O to interact with 0-10 V and 0/4-20 mA signals, and get temperature values through PT100, diversifying data acquisition capabilities and expanding actuation possibilities.
Its ease of use has made Opta a favorite tool also in rapid prototyping, education and training. Arduino itself has recently launched the Arduino PLC Starter Kit, based on the Opta WiFi and Arduino PLC IDE, offering a training solution that plugs right into the future of industrial automation. The kit, integration-ready with industrial simulated systems, is designed to introduce students in vocational institutes and tech-oriented academies to IEC 61131-3 standard programming languages and Modbus communications.
SOURCE: Businesswire