Hi everyone. Today we'll talk about how to learn PLC programming without spending a dime
And people often ask me, how do I actually learn how to program PLC
Well, when I was younger, in school that is, we learned basically on a microcosm
It was the Motorola 6819. But today we have a lot more standards for PLC programming, and so it's much easier to learn these things
The best resource I came across was the PLC Programming for Industrial Automation by Kevin Collins
This is a free publication. It was done as an e-book. There will be a link in the website and in the information at the bottom of this video
But in there is a very good overview of the PLC, as well as it actually talks about a lot of programming
There are a whole lot of books that actually talk about programming, and it's very specific to individual manufacturers
So, if you're briefly looking through, you'll actually see a bunch of information
It's not a manufacturing specific at all, which is really great. And at the end of every section, they actually have a question and answer period where you can test technologies
So, once you've learned the basics, and the basics of that will actually teach you a lot of things
and put the overrides, timers, errors, and a lot of the bit logic and relay
The next thing to do is to then put this into practice
And the best thing I found is to use the Do-more PLC software, which is the Do-more Designer
If you go to their website, again, the link will be provided in the notes below, you will see the Do-more
And what you want is the Do-more Designer to full features programming software
That means it doesn't limit you to anything at all in terms of what instructions that you can have
And it also comes with a free simulator. So, what you do is you just download that information, and what you'll also find is there's a lot of help videos
There's an introduction to the Do-more PLC. There's also series on how to actually utilize the Do-more PLC
Now, keep in mind that a lot of these PLC main tasks are the same way in which you program
So, don't get confused about all the different methods and terminology. Each of the basics, the input, the output, the registers, et cetera
So, if we call up the Apple software, it looks like this
So, you can continue your learning after you've read the e-books, and you can do things in Do-more
like the programming organization, the processes, the PID, the data types, the input, output
You can just do a simple make-like, right click. And if I call up a program, let's do this first program here
You can see that automatically this is what I used the program for, and it was a Do-more Simulator
And you'll be able to turn the status on. So, you can see my status, and that's why you're disoriented
It's on and off. So, basically, X0 turns on, Y0, not X1, turns on Y1, and then we have N for the program
So, looking at simulator, if I turn on X0, Y0 turns on
Turn off X1, Y1 turns off. So, you can see here that I'm actually controlling the simulator
And the simulator itself, let's point this out, we are using Ethernet connections
which is a method which you communicate to the Do-more software. So, anything you do here, you can actually convert to a natural real-world program and download it
So, once you've finished with your programming, looking at your information, then you can move on to more complex information, such as sequential programming
Also, you can go into more mount functions, PID for process design
So, then that's giving you a good start on learning the PLC
And the best thing to do is to practice, practice, practice. Make up some applications and practice
Now, the last topic that I usually will talk about is communication
And communication to other devices. So, that's the use of SCADA, HMI
So, what you want to do is you want to, once you're finished programming, is to get that information out of the PLC
and to the hands of someone that may want to utilize that data for something
So, I've created a bunch of links on how to do that with certain PLCs
And you'll see that, again, in the reference material below this video
I think that's it for now. Thanks for watching. Goodbye