I've spent some time (not a lot) working with Siemens PLCs and RTUs. Their target customer typically has an account manager who will help them choose the right devices, the right modules and the software that you need. Their typical customer also has a significant budget for automation systems and they usually build systems that are mission critical. Like a production line.
Getting an account at Siemens requires a bit of work. They want to know who they are dealing with because a lot of their hardware is export restricted. Some of their hardware they can't even sell you without explicit government licenses. (For instance, motor controllers are tightly regulated when you get to the high RPM stuff since that can be used in gas centrifuges - ie to enrich uranium).
If you have an account with Siemens you can get prices. Also, it isn't exactly your run of the mill shopping experience. I may misremember some things since it is a couple of years since the last time I bought something from Siemens, but you typically create a "project" and then add components to it. It will then validate the stuff you have picked and point out what additional modules you need, what software you need, if this doesn't work with that etc.
You can kind if imagine a PC shopping experience where you buy parts to build a PC and it will automatically ensure that all the components will work together and help you figure out what choices you can make.
Once you think you have pieced together what you want, you typically talk to a solution engineer at Siemens and you go over it together. I bought various components for a small system, and still, I got excellent service. You get to talk to a person who can look over your order and make recommendations within a day or two. I was really impressed.
If you spend millions on automation gear (which one of my consulting customers do) this is the kind of relationship you want with a vendor. You want both the help from the website itself and a solution engineer who can help you make the right choices. And you want it in a timely manner.
Also note that I'm essentially an amateur in industrial automation. People who do this for a living often have many years of experience with this equipment. If, like me, you come from the outside, the website is rather daunting. Just picking the right PLC is going to take a couple of weeks of learning about them before you know what you are looking for. Then you need to figure out what software tools you will be needing to program, operate and maintain your installation.
That being said, their website could do with a makeover. It is unnecessarily hard to find things, the design and use of tiny fonts is ugly and annoying and it is slower than it needs to be. The software is also a bit clunky to use. But it helps understanding what audience it is aimed at. If you are trying to automate your hobbyist beer brewing setup, this isn't for you unless you are prepared to spend a pretty penny and invest time in learning how to program these things. It isn't that hard (it took me a couple of days to cobble together a PLC, a HMI a (third party) motor controller and make 40kg industrial motor do what I wanted), but it is completely overkill for a hobby project.
Yes, there is the LOGO line, but after playing with it a bit, I don't actually understand the point of it. It is too separate from their Simatic S7 line to work as a useful learning tool if you want to ease into the professional stuff, it is too limited to be much fun and it is too expensive. Of course, if you are controlling high power systems you do want equipment that is built to high quality standards.
Yes, the Arduino world has nothing in common with industrial automation hardware. For one, the amount of effort that has gone into delivering guarantees and meet certification criteria in automation hardware is miles beyond what you'll find in hobbyist MCU systems. (A good way to understand this is actually to look at the writeups of the Stuxnet attack. This gives you a good background in how Siemens industrial systems are engineered and what it takes to break them).
But I wouldn't shit on Arduino for doing this. Think of it as a somewhat cheaper entry level into teaching industrial automation and help people use it in hobbyist projects, prototyping on tight budgets or even doing small hobbyist setups. The professional stuff exists. There are lots of vendors. But it requires a lot of training and it costs a lot of money. There is a legitimate place for lower spec systems.
It can also play an important role in helping the industrial automation giants improve their products. It can, and will, generate ideas that, if the giants are smart, they can learn from. As in most of these professional/amateur interfaces between people, the professionals will scoff at this. But that doesn't matter. They're likely myopic and wrong.
I can remember back when Oracle wasn't ported to Linux and the database professionals scoffed at the idea of Oracle offering their database for Linux. (Yes, there was a time when that was the case). They were wrong. Not because they knew what they were talking about, but because they were snobs. And as it later turned out (after I spent a few years designing database schemas and optimizing databases) most of them weren't even particularly good at their jobs.
I think the same thing is going on here. Seasoned professionals with perhaps decades of experience with industrial automation, tend to not have the necessary perspective, which can lead to stagnation. I see this in, for instance, integration beyond traditional SCADA systems. Providers like Siemens have to adapt to new requirements of faster, cheaper, more open, more accessible integrations and a lot of the "old guard" simply have no frame of reference for understanding these things. For instance they have no idea how software engineers work, how fast processes need to be, and how much "self service" is expected. This is frightening and confusing and thus, from where we stand, it looks like silly snobbery.
I hope that my observations as an outsider getting tangled up in industrial automation and dipping my toe into that world might help people make sense of things.
Sure, the Arduino stuff is amateur hour, but it is still immensely valuable because it provides opportunities to advance the industrial automation, MCU and software worlds by exposing people to ideas, problems and solutions from outside their own bubble.
When I've bought Siemens gear in recent years the panel builder buys it for me, at prices I could never get, and deals with all the returns, late deliveries etc etc, they hold the Siemens account.
If you know what you are doing there are ways to make it easier and cheaper.
Getting an account at Siemens requires a bit of work. They want to know who they are dealing with because a lot of their hardware is export restricted. Some of their hardware they can't even sell you without explicit government licenses. (For instance, motor controllers are tightly regulated when you get to the high RPM stuff since that can be used in gas centrifuges - ie to enrich uranium).
If you have an account with Siemens you can get prices. Also, it isn't exactly your run of the mill shopping experience. I may misremember some things since it is a couple of years since the last time I bought something from Siemens, but you typically create a "project" and then add components to it. It will then validate the stuff you have picked and point out what additional modules you need, what software you need, if this doesn't work with that etc.
You can kind if imagine a PC shopping experience where you buy parts to build a PC and it will automatically ensure that all the components will work together and help you figure out what choices you can make.
Once you think you have pieced together what you want, you typically talk to a solution engineer at Siemens and you go over it together. I bought various components for a small system, and still, I got excellent service. You get to talk to a person who can look over your order and make recommendations within a day or two. I was really impressed.
If you spend millions on automation gear (which one of my consulting customers do) this is the kind of relationship you want with a vendor. You want both the help from the website itself and a solution engineer who can help you make the right choices. And you want it in a timely manner.
Also note that I'm essentially an amateur in industrial automation. People who do this for a living often have many years of experience with this equipment. If, like me, you come from the outside, the website is rather daunting. Just picking the right PLC is going to take a couple of weeks of learning about them before you know what you are looking for. Then you need to figure out what software tools you will be needing to program, operate and maintain your installation.
That being said, their website could do with a makeover. It is unnecessarily hard to find things, the design and use of tiny fonts is ugly and annoying and it is slower than it needs to be. The software is also a bit clunky to use. But it helps understanding what audience it is aimed at. If you are trying to automate your hobbyist beer brewing setup, this isn't for you unless you are prepared to spend a pretty penny and invest time in learning how to program these things. It isn't that hard (it took me a couple of days to cobble together a PLC, a HMI a (third party) motor controller and make 40kg industrial motor do what I wanted), but it is completely overkill for a hobby project.
Yes, there is the LOGO line, but after playing with it a bit, I don't actually understand the point of it. It is too separate from their Simatic S7 line to work as a useful learning tool if you want to ease into the professional stuff, it is too limited to be much fun and it is too expensive. Of course, if you are controlling high power systems you do want equipment that is built to high quality standards.
Yes, the Arduino world has nothing in common with industrial automation hardware. For one, the amount of effort that has gone into delivering guarantees and meet certification criteria in automation hardware is miles beyond what you'll find in hobbyist MCU systems. (A good way to understand this is actually to look at the writeups of the Stuxnet attack. This gives you a good background in how Siemens industrial systems are engineered and what it takes to break them).
But I wouldn't shit on Arduino for doing this. Think of it as a somewhat cheaper entry level into teaching industrial automation and help people use it in hobbyist projects, prototyping on tight budgets or even doing small hobbyist setups. The professional stuff exists. There are lots of vendors. But it requires a lot of training and it costs a lot of money. There is a legitimate place for lower spec systems.
It can also play an important role in helping the industrial automation giants improve their products. It can, and will, generate ideas that, if the giants are smart, they can learn from. As in most of these professional/amateur interfaces between people, the professionals will scoff at this. But that doesn't matter. They're likely myopic and wrong.
I can remember back when Oracle wasn't ported to Linux and the database professionals scoffed at the idea of Oracle offering their database for Linux. (Yes, there was a time when that was the case). They were wrong. Not because they knew what they were talking about, but because they were snobs. And as it later turned out (after I spent a few years designing database schemas and optimizing databases) most of them weren't even particularly good at their jobs.
I think the same thing is going on here. Seasoned professionals with perhaps decades of experience with industrial automation, tend to not have the necessary perspective, which can lead to stagnation. I see this in, for instance, integration beyond traditional SCADA systems. Providers like Siemens have to adapt to new requirements of faster, cheaper, more open, more accessible integrations and a lot of the "old guard" simply have no frame of reference for understanding these things. For instance they have no idea how software engineers work, how fast processes need to be, and how much "self service" is expected. This is frightening and confusing and thus, from where we stand, it looks like silly snobbery.
I hope that my observations as an outsider getting tangled up in industrial automation and dipping my toe into that world might help people make sense of things.
Sure, the Arduino stuff is amateur hour, but it is still immensely valuable because it provides opportunities to advance the industrial automation, MCU and software worlds by exposing people to ideas, problems and solutions from outside their own bubble.