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Automation Tech Talk
Insights In Automation
295 episodes
8 hours ago
The Automation News Roundup covers industrial automation news and events headlines most weekdays. You can find all the links mentioned in the show at https://Automate.News.
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Technology
News,
Daily News,
Tech News
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All content for Automation Tech Talk is the property of Insights In Automation and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
The Automation News Roundup covers industrial automation news and events headlines most weekdays. You can find all the links mentioned in the show at https://Automate.News.
Show more...
Technology
News,
Daily News,
Tech News
Episodes (20/295)
Automation Tech Talk
IND360 on Ethernet/IP: Using with Logix and View (S2E31)

Shawn walks through adding a Mettler Toledo IND360 on Ethernet/IP to Studio 5000 for use with Compact and ControlLogix, and Imports and Tests the IND360 Faceplates for FactoryTalk View in Episode 31 of The Automation Show, Season 2.
For any links related to this episode, check out the "Show Notes" located below the video.

Watch The Automation Show from The Automation Blog:




Note: You can unlock hundreds of previous episodes for just $5/mo here.


Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Show, Season 2 Episode 31 Show Notes: Links for more information about Mettler Toledo's IND360:

*
IND360 Distributed Control eBook

*
IND360 Industrial Weighing Solution

*
IND360 Ease of Integration White Paper

*
IND360 Downloads (EDS File)***

*
IND360 AOI and Faceplates***


*** Links mentioned in episode
Programming Note: Due to scheduling conflicts, episode 31 is releasing prior to episode 30 ;-)

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Automation Show. Sean Tierney here from Insights and Automation. And today on the show we're going to integrate the Indy three hundred sixty from Mettler Toledo into studio five thousand with Compact Logix five thousand three eighty, as well as into Factorytalk View Studio. And I think you guys are going to really enjoy this. This is a pretty cool integration here, and they did a great job, I think, with, uh, providing all the files that we need to make this happen. Now, that said, I do want to thank Mettler Toledo, who sponsored this episode, so we would make it completely ad free. So thank you to them. And with that said, let's go over to the computer here and get started and let me press the right button here. Okay. So here we are on the computer. You can see I've got SES links open. You can see I have well getting ready for another in-person hands on class. Um, we're going to be doing a special here. So if you guys want to buy block of times for in-person training next year, let me know. The special price is only good through the end of twenty twenty five. So even though you don't have to take the training until twenty twenty six. But in any case, um, what we're going to see here is this is the PLC I'm going to use this is my Or pack. This is my uh, L368 fifty three eighty, I think I got thirty seven in it. And then up here you can see the IND three sixty shows up on the ...
Show more...
1 week ago
8 minutes 18 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Discrete vs. Digital: Automation Tech Talk for 10/20/25

Shawn discusses how many so called "experts" don't use the correct terminology when referring to Rockwell and Siemens Modules in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Link mentioned in video:
- Shawn's Online Courses
- Shawn's In-Person Courses

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey everybody. It's Sean Tierney here from Insights and Automation. And I'm trying something completely new. I hope it's working. I hope you can hear me. I'm actually in a different room here. What I'm calling studio C, which as I'm updating all my PLC courses, I need to I needed another spot to be able to, um, film videos.

And so I'm kind of looking off to the side because I need to get another monitor in here. But in any case, I hope you're doing well. I don't know if you guys are seeing my audio. I don't know if you're hearing my audio or seeing my video. I don't know what the quality is, but hey, you get to try things out. I'm actually trying Restream instead of StreamYard because there's some audio delays with the StreamYard that, uh, if you're not using the webcams, audio or whatever.

So in any case, I just figured I'd just, uh, show you, uh, you know, test this out. And I wanted to talk to you about discrete versus digital. I o so I've seen some people who call themselves experts. Of course, you guys know I train for a living. I teach, uh, you know, Allen-bradley, Siemens PLC, HMI and SCADA and, uh, you know, there's a lot of competition out there, a lot of people saying they're experts and a lot of them actually share incorrect information.

And one of the not so, not so horrible information is shares when they're calling Rockwell's IO discrete IO. And of course, if you want to use the word discrete, fine. Right. I always use the word digital. And I'll show you why I use that word. And I know even in Rockwell, there was controversy years ago, I remember seeing a, uh, a letter come out from Rockwell. I don't know if it was rescinded or not, saying we're going to go from one to the other or whatever, but in any case, it kind of came to mind. Uh, I was reminded of this. Let me go to my my screen here, but I recently, uh, partnered with Schneider Electric, uh, great company to cover their modicon edge. Io wants a new a whole bunch of io they came out with, and I think it's really cool. I filmed, I think, a forty five or fifty minute, uh, episode on it. They're reviewing it now Ensure there's no additional graphics they want to add or anything I technically got wrong. That's one of the things we do with our sponsors, is they can go through and say, did you cut this? Add this. You know, just just we want to make sure it's technically correct. They don't they don't get the storyboard, a script, the the episode.

But in any case, it was a lot of fun doing that episode. It's again, it's not ready to go out yet, but soon. Uh, in any case, um, I noticed I kept saying digital I o and their modules specifically say on them discrete I o. And so, um, I just noticed that the restream is putting their logo right over my face. Isn't that nice? So let me take care. See, this is what we call about testing things.
Show more...
2 weeks ago
5 minutes 19 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
MD-34A-DD Win10 IPC Tablet Dock (M5E45)

Shawn details the MD-34A Windows 10 Industrial Tablet Desk Dock from Siemens in Episode 45 of The Automation Minute, Season 5.




Listen to The Automation Minute on The Automation Blog:

The Automation Minute, Season 5 Episode 45 Show Notes: The links mentioned in the video are listed below:

*
MD-34A Product Website

*
Previous episode on the MD-34A 

*
Shawn's Siemens S7 Course



Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host):  Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. Shawn Tierney here from Insights. And today, we're gonna take a look at the desk dock for the MD dash 34 a Windows 10 tablet from Siemens. You remember I took a look at this I five tablet a while back, and at the time, I asked if they could send me the desk dock or docking station so that I could leave it here on the stage and actually use it because it's a gray I five Windows PC that happens to also be a tablet and a barcode reader and an RFID reader and all these other things too. In any case, it did come in, several weeks later, and I filmed an episode.

I don't know what happened to it, but it never got published. So, I wanted to in appreciation for them sending this over and sponsoring this episode so it's ad free, I did wanna cover. So in any case, let me first, though, take this guy out and, shut her down because her fan is running. I got it doing all kinds of cool stuff. Now I was really surprised.

I turned it on and it still had all battery. Even though I hadn't used it in months, it still had a full battery. So I really appreciated that. That's cool. A lot of times at home, my tablet, you know, even if it's off, it still will, drain batteries.

So I didn't like that at all. So look at that guy turned off. Now I'm not gonna do an unboxing because the, the box was just a simple cardboard box that came in there wrapped in plastic and very secure, but there wasn't a lot to show with that, so I didn't go and dig up that archival footage. But what I do wanna do here now is go to overhead mode, and then let me go ahead and unplug the ethernet cable and the power cable. This This is the same power cable that came with the tablet.

Right? So you don't have to go and buy that again. And let's take a look at what comes with this, what they call their, desktop or what I would call a docking station. And I think we can even zoom in a little bit more on it. Here, let's try.

Okay. The first thing I wanted to show you is that it has these two metal pegs that make it very easy to align the actual tablet when you go to pull it in. I'm gonna go ahead and bring the tablet back out here, and we can see those two little holes there. And so that makes it extremely easy to align it up and put it in there nice and secure. Right?

And so I really like that. And so that's the first thing here, and you can see all the connections down there at the bottom. Alright. And then if we take a look at the back here, this is where we see this is where I have the power going in. And here we can see two, sorry, two USB two point o's, not three point o's.

Alright. There is a three point o and a USB c in the unit itself. And then we have another RJ 45. This is a ten one hundred. So this is great if you're just leaving it on your desk and, when you plug in, you wanna get off Wi Fi.

Again, there's an r j 45 in the unit itself as well,
Show more...
1 month ago
7 minutes 51 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Adding IO-Link Devices to Logix: Automation Tech Talk for 09/12/25

Shawn walk's through adding IO-Link devices to an IO-Link Master connected to a Rockwell Logix PAC using Studio 5000 in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Link mentioned in video:
- IFM AL1322 Webpage (includes AOI downloads)
- Shawn's Online Courses
- Shawn's In-Person Courses


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey everybody. Happy lunchtime. I hope everything is going great for you today. It is Friday, and I am pretty excited about that. Planning on spending a lot of time building more of these demos, this weekend.

I got all the stuff finally came in. So and then I'll be sharing it with you over the next couple of weeks. Next week, I may have, more recorded content than live content. I'll still try to release it at lunchtime, but, just some of the things I gotta do requires me to have, you know, to go through and do edits and whatnot. So in any case, though but I should be around almost all of next week, lunchtime, whether it's recorded or live, I'll be here.

But in any case, I just hope you all are having a great Friday. And today, we're gonna do part two, and we're gonna actually set up the two devices, the two IO Link devices. I thought this would be fun. Now if you guys are having any troubles hearing me or seeing me, please put it in the chat. Everything on my side looks like it's working.

So, I'm just gonna go ahead and get started. Now I did play around with, some settings early this morning to see if I could get this to work. There we go. Okay. I I'm not a a huge fan of how they design everything, but, at least this is better than what we're doing the other day.

In any case, we're back in Studio 5000. And for anybody who didn't catch yesterday's show, what we did was we added these two. Let me see if I can switch over to those. We added nope. That's not what I wanted to do, and that has to do with the selection.

You always have to select this. So let's try it again. There we go. So we added these two devices to our ControlLogix, And we have one IO Link device here and one IO Link device here, but we already have the masters added to logic. So let's go back here, and, yeah, I'll click over here.

And now we're inside logic, so you can see them right here down here. Make sure you guys are seeing what I'm seeing. And, now what we need to do is get the data in from the devices. We already have it coming in as, you know, just control the tags, but this is this is not, you know, what you would want. I mean, it's it's the twenty first century for crying out loud.

Right? We want our data, you know, to be more, massage than that. And, thankfully, the vendor, IFM, has some AOIs, and they're in that same folder, that same download, the Allen Bradley download. They put all the AOIs in here, which I think is great. At first, I went to the actual pages for the different products, and there were no AOIs there.

And I'm like, I think they're actually in the, the starter package for Allen Bradley. So I went into there. Again, we downloaded this yesterday. I talked about where to get this yesterday. There's the add on instructions, IFM devices.

Show more...
1 month ago
14 minutes 36 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
IFM AL1322 IO-Link Master to Logix: Automation Tech Talk for 09/11/25

Shawn walk's through connecting an IFM AL1322 IO-Link Master to a Rockwell Logix PAC using Studio 5000 in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Link mentioned in video:
- IFM AL1322 Webpage
- Shawn's Online Courses
- Shawn's In-Person Courses


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host):  Happy afternoon, everybody. Shawn Tierney here from Insights and Automation. Today is Thursday. What is today? September 11, I believe.

I hope you all are having a great day. And, you know, I didn't even know if I was gonna be able to do this, give it everything that's been going on. Plus, I just got off the phone, actually off of out of a meeting with a larger vendor talking about their brand new IO, which I'll be covering in a few weeks. Pretty awesome stuff. Can't wait to share it with you guys.

But in any case, if you were here yesterday, I actually ended up deleting the livestream after the livestream because I ran into an issue that something didn't work. And I believe I resolved that. So I'm gonna try it again today. And what am I talking about? What are we gonna cover?

Well and, again, if you can't hear me or if there's a problem with the visuals, let me know in the chat because there's no nobody in the control room. It's all just me. But in any case, we're gonna be integrating these two. I have, a long time ago, the folks over at, IFM sent me in some products. They didn't sponsor any coverage on it, and I've really struggled covering it.

So I did cover these modules with a, with a, a PLC they sent me, and I did, cover these devices with Allen Bradley and Siemens products as dumb devices, not as IO Link devices. But I thought, you know, the automation, automation tech talk lunchtime edition, I think, would be a great time to cover some of these unsponsored products that have been piling up, and I try not to accept anymore because I'm out of room. But in any case, it's it's, I thought this would be a good time to test them out. And today, based on what happened yesterday, today, I'm going to try to get both of these set up on our CompactLogix. Now try to go back here to full screen.

What happened yesterday was Logix kept crashing, and I believe it's because of, Connect Components Workbench when I upgraded it and installed something that was incompatible with the version of Logix I had. So we'll find out. But in any case, let's go over to the computer here, and I have to do this kind of a different way because if I do it through the camera system, I do have a I do have an, request into the company, this whose software this is, and it's not showing me the view I wanted. That's the view I wanted. But I'm like, guys, you gotta help me make my you know, zoom in on this camera, but in any case, I won't, bother you with that.

What we are looking at here, though, is what's the first step in getting these things to work? And the first step is where's the web page I had up? K. We gotta go to the product's web page, and on the product's web page, we wanna grab a couple of downloads. Okay.

If we're gonna integrate these, IO link blocks on EthernetIP to our CompactLogix,
Show more...
1 month ago
22 minutes 25 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
MicroLogix to Micro800: Automation Tech Talk for 09/04/25

Shawn walk's through converting an RSLogix / MicroLogix program to a CCW / Micro800 project in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
NOTE: There is no show planned for this Friday (9/5).
Links mentioned in video:
- Migration Guide
- Conversion Tool Released
- Conversion Tool Updated
- Conversion Tool Download
- Conversion Tool How To Article
- Conversion Tool How To Video
- Shawn's Online Courses
- Shawn's In-Person Courses


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition. Shawn Tierney here from Insights. And today, we're gonna take a look at something different. We're gonna take a look at migrating a Micrologix program to a Micro 800 program, and we're going to do this because, I had somebody ask a question about connecting to a Micro 800 from a SCADA package.

And, you know, when I did my VSC course, I did I think every Allen Bradley PLC except for the Micro 800. So I thought, you know, this would be a good time to convert my my VUSC application that I use to simulate the data for that for that course. And, anybody in my VUSC course can download that, in Micrologic, PLC five, ControlLogics, CompactLogics, multiple versions. You know, you know, I recently converted it to Siemens because I wanted to add those advanced graphical lessons to my unified comfort panel and unified, a basic panel course. So I need to convert it to Siemens, and then somebody asked me to test their SCADA package with Codesys.

And as you know, I had a couple of vendors step up and send me Codesys PLCs. So I converted well, not all of it. There's five molding lines. I wanted to do something different than a bottling line or, you know, a a widget maker. And so, I only did one molding line into the into the code Sys because, you know, I I I we all we've talked about that before.

But in any case, needs a little love and tender love and care to the code sys, IDE does. But in any case, yes. I figured, hey. Let's use this to convert my existing program, which I which I wrote from scratch to the micro 800, and let's see how it goes. Now I did this this morning around 04:30.

I went through it once, and it seemed to work okay. So I figured, we would do this during lunchtime. And so if you guys have any questions on this or anything, let me know. Oh, a couple of housekeeping things. There will be no episode of the show tomorrow.

I'm kinda backed up trying to get through a couple of videos that I'm,
Show more...
2 months ago
21 minutes 9 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Module Discovery and Reading IO Config: Automation Tech Talk for 09/03/25

Shawn discusses Module Discovery and Reading IO Config in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
NOTE: There is no show planned for this Friday (9/5).
Links mentioned in video:
- Online Courses: https://theautomationschool.com
- In-Person Courses: https://theautomationschool.com/live


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Happy Wednesday. Right? I was gonna say Tuesday. It's not Tuesday. It's Wednesday.

I hope you're all doing good. I hope, my mic and video is coming out okay. Let me know in the chat if it's not. But in any case, I do want to, wish you all a great lunchtime here. And it is Wednesday, and, this is Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition.

And, feel free to chat in the, both on YouTube and on LinkedIn. And, of course, you'll always find the audio, the video, and the transcript up on the automationblog.com later in the day. Typically, right after the show's done, I try to get that all up there before going back to work. So in any case, today, I was gonna do one thing, and I decided to do something else. So, we're actually gonna take a look at discovering IO, automatically discovering IO so you don't have to crank in all those different part numbers.

And, we're gonna do it today for Rockwell. And I did have some things that, I've been telling myself, Shawn, you gotta kinda remember to mention some things to everybody, when you're doing the show. So let me just pull my notes up here and bring them over to the screen right below here so I can read them. So, first of all, the idea for today's, discussion about discovering IO, adding IO, reading IO was, based on some lessons. I'm I actually had to I found some bugs in them, so I had to rerender them.

So I'll be updating them, and, several of the courses over at the Automation School are getting updates, including my CompactLogics and ControlLogics. They're getting the most updates today. But in any case, I also wanted to mention that I already have two industry veterans who I'm talking to about coming on the Automation Museum's History of Automation podcast. And so I mentioned this because we already have three shows in the, in the can. We talked to experts about the history of Triconics, the history of InTouch or Wonderware, and the history of Rockwell PLCs.

But, again, these are things where we want to have multiple guests on about each each product and, to share their own experiences with them. And, you know, everybody remembers things differently. Like, some people remember some features, other people remember other features, and so on. So, we have two new people who I'm talking to to get them to come on the show. And I wanna invite you, whether you're a vendor, user, integrated OEM, if you have done something with automation before the year February, I'm just using that as a kind of a benchmark.

Right? So, you know, we're talking legacy stuff. We're not talking, you know, fifty three seventies and fifty three eighties or a '7 you know, fifteen hundreds or December, or m two sixty twos if you're a Snyder guy. But, we're talking we're talking, you know, older stuff, legacy stuff. The automation museum is not gonna be a museum of what just came out this this year.

Show more...
2 months ago
15 minutes 9 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Studio 5000 Logix Designer v30 vs v31: Automation Tech Talk for 09/02/25

Shawn details how Studio 5000 Logix Designer's look and feel changed from version 30 to version 31 in today's episode of #AutomationTechTalk Lunchtime Edition livestream:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:
Coming after the show


Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
NOTE: There is no show planned for this Friday (9/5).
Links mentioned in video:
- Online Courses: https://theautomationschool.com
- In-Person Courses: https://theautomationschool.com/live


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Happy Tuesday, everybody, and happy, September. It is September now, the second, and, please let me know if the video or audio is not working, but everything's looking great. I can actually get the, streaming out over here on the right. And, I was hoping to have a guest come on the show today. We were all set up.

There was actually one that was, rescheduled, and, no guests. Now it could be a problem with StreamYard because I have seen the delay when somebody tries to join as a guest and when they actually show up in my in my web browser. I've, like, refreshed a 100 times, so I don't know what else to do. But in any case, I still have something that I was just working on for my students that I figured we could talk about since the guest is not connected. So and I was really looking forward to having a Julio on to talk about his company because it just sounded really interesting.

But in any case, I don't see anything in the chat. So let me go ahead and switch over to this view. Now I've had many people, actually, I shouldn't say many people. I had one person I was talking to about two weeks ago, and they said, you know, Shawn, I was taking one of your courses, and I didn't recognize I didn't recognize Studio five thousand. I'm like, what do you mean?

He's like, it looked totally different. And I'm like, well, that's not good. And so I'm going back, and I'm like, I think I know what happened. So some people work with only new products. Right?

So they're only using the latest and the greatest version of the software, and I'm like, wow. You know, that that that's not me. I've been using RS logic since beta. Right? And so I'm like, wow.

So some people make it that, you know, look and feel shock when they, when they, use the latest version and then go back a few versions. So I thought, you know, I did an update a lesson. I just rendered it for my students, and I figured we hey. Since we had a new show, again, he could still connect if he wanted to, but I figured, hey. Let's cover that.

We'll call this, Studio 5,000 Logix Designer version 30 versus versus 31. And so what I wanna show you here is I actually have version 10. Now to save time, I typically will will often not install one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Right? And so and some of those versions don't exist.

Right? So in any case, so this is what, Studio 5,000 Logix designer, a k a RS Logix 5,000, if you didn't know. This is what it looks like, brand new program. This is what it looked like the version 10. 10 is the first version that supported multi, multiple installs or what they call side by side installations where you can install ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and so on.

Before that,
Show more...
2 months ago
13 minutes 12 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Brandon Cooper makes guest appearance on Automation Tech Talk for August 28, 2025

Today Shawn has Brandon Cooper on the #AutomationTechTalk livestream to talk about what he's learning in his travels.
Note: There is no show planned for Friday or Monday.

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:
Coming after the show


Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Links mentioned in video:
- Online Courses: https://theautomationschool.com
- In-Person Courses: https://theautomationschool.com/live


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition. You may hear some background noise because today, I have a special guest on. It's Brandon Cooper, who you probably all know has written a bunch of articles over at the automation blog. And I've actually had Brandon on the automation podcast back on episode one zero six.

That was in 2022. Brandon, thank you for, agreeing to share your lunch with us.

Brandon Cooper (Guest): Hey. Glad to do it. Glad to do it. Thanks for

Shawn Tierney (Host): having me. You're well. Thank you. And I was telling, Brandon in the preshow, he's actually sitting in his backyard in Louisiana, and it just sounds awesome. He's got birds chirping, and it sounds so great.

It's like, man, that's so relaxing. But in any case, let me see. Brandon, you are

Brandon Cooper (Guest): eighties this week, so it's almost fall in Louisiana.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. Eighties. We got into the seventies. I had to put the heat on this morning because it was in the sixties, which is which is kinda odd for late August. How about you guys?

Is this normal for late August? Or

Brandon Cooper (Guest): not really. We usually don't hit get into the eighties until, sometime in September, but we get we got a a lower temp week this week, so it's it's nice.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yeah. I'm I'm not complaining at all. So you are a senior process control engineer, and, I know you from your what you do with POCs, but you also work on a lot of DCS systems or what would classically be called the DCS. And like I said, he Brandon was on, in episode one zero six. He's written several articles on Rockwell and Siemens.

His latest one was on, simulating e threes, I think, for migration purposes. And he also wrote two articles recently on the things I've learned because, change. And I don't want you to give away the actual companies you worked for, but describe your old old role and the new role you've been doing now to give the audience some perspective on that's kinda how you change roles.

Brandon Cooper (Guest): So I guess for twenty two years, starting at 19 years old, I joined on as basically a process control type technician and then moved up to to a process control engineer and then a senior engineer later, you know, working in in specific specific facilities, you know, doing the day to day program and then graphics and troubleshooting and working with operations at a facility, which is also, you know, being on call twenty four seven for for all those twenty two years. So, it was it was great. I learned a lot and, helped me get to the next step, I guess. So, three years ago, I had the opportunity to take a job, where we travel around and and do things in different sites. And there's, like a like a,
Show more...
2 months ago
24 minutes 4 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Distributed I/O: Automation Tech Talk for August 27, 2025

Shawn discusses generations of Rockwell IP20 distributed / remote I/O in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Links mentioned in video:
- Courses: https://theautomationschool.com


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk. I'm Shawn Tierney from Insights, and I'm about seven minutes late today. I just got off a, really excellent call with a major automation supplier, actually, automation manufacturer, who, was introducing me to his next generation IO. And, so I didn't have a lot of time to prep, and I'm like, what am I gonna cover today?

And I'm like, let's talk about distributed IO. So that's what we're gonna talk about. I love to hear in the chat where you what you guys are using for distributed IO if you're using distributed IO. Now OEMs typically don't need distributed IO. I mean, don't get me wrong.

They will, oh, and I should also say if you guys can't hear me or you can't see me or something's wrong, let me know. But in any case, typically, an OEM with a small machine, they don't need the distributed IO. Now they will run a lot of times Ethernet through their different devices like VFDs and HMIs, but, they don't need distributed IO. However, a facility with a large machine or a large system, it makes no sense to run all the wires back from all the sensors and switches and buttons all the way back to the main panel, and that's where distributed IO really does extremely well. And, you know, PLCs and PACs more and more can handle even more and more higher quantities of distributed IO.

But before we get into that, I thought we would talk a little bit about the history of distributed IO or remote IO as Rockwell coined the phrase or patented the phrase back in the day, back in the late seventies. In any case, in the first distributor IO I saw out there, saw a lot of it out there, was seventeen seventy one. And seventeen seventy one IO was, big and bulky. This is an eight point module. I just grabbed what I had available, you know you know, with two minutes to go before the show started.

Let's see if I set up the overhead cam correctly. So I do not have the terminal block on here, but this is an 8.1771, IO module that was donated to, somebody who then donated it to me. And, thank you to both of companies for the donation. And I have a ton of this stuff, and, it's really super inexpensive online. But the, you know, the problem is the programming software is so expensive.

So, you know, a lot of people could use this, reuse this stuff for hobbies or whatnot. But, in any case, this would fit in a big, jack. You guys have seen the racks here before, the big seventy seventy one chassis, and we don't call them racks. We call them chassis. And, you know, it worked.

Remote IO definitely worked. The the digital was so easy to set up. The analog, a lot of people had a hard time getting their mind around block transfers. I always felt that I could explain it to people easily, and that's why I'm doing a PLC five course with seventeen seventy one IO. I don't have that on here on the stage because it's just so big.

I actually have it over there on the floor. But in any case, you know, of this you see this a lot. I remember going to one power plant and walking through and and,
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2 months ago
23 minutes 44 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
CompactLogix Gen 5: Automation Tech Talk for August 26, 2025

Shawn discusses the Fifth (and current) Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Links mentioned in video:
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-1/
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-2/
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-3/
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-4/
- Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Hope you are all doing well today. Please let me know if you can hear me and see me okay. Everything's looking good on my side, though, so I hope you're off to a great day. I was I had a, actually, a special guest scheduled to come on today.

But at the last minute, then a customer called, and, he had to go out and do a sales call or a service call. And, yeah. So these things happen. I mean, I would like I was telling them, customers come first, and, lunchtime tech talks come second. That's always the case.

But in any case, we hope to get him back on. I didn't put all his information in the show because I know, you know, these these kind of folks, you guys out there are very busy, and, you can't make every show. So I also wanna say hi to Rob in the chat. We have the chat coming in from both, YouTube and, LinkedIn. But when I reply, like, hey, Rob, it only went to YouTube.

So in any case, okay. Rob confirms. Thank you, Rob. You're like my producer today. In any case, let's go ahead and get in today's show.

The first thing I wanna do, though, is let me click here. And I am offering this is a a special for, well, we're almost in fall now. Right? So I'm offering a special. I'm gonna offer any viewer of the show, and you can give this to somebody you know because I know a lot of you are already experts.

A lot of people watch this show are already automation experts, so you would not need this. But you can gift this to one person. It is a, a 20% discount on any of my courses that are $99 or more, and, that is, that goes for the bundles as well. And I do this I always do this for returning customers. So let's say a student takes a PLC course, that he wants to take an HMI course, I always offer a 20% discount to on their next course.

And, of course, they can always upgrade to the bundle for the difference in price. But I thought, you know, I wanna do something. You know? This show is only a couple weeks old, so I wanted to do something, special for you guys who found the show here early. This not only goes for those who are watching live, but also for those who are watching after the fact.

All you have to do and you can see here the automationschool.com. I got the email you can use. I got the voice mail. I got the you can actually submit a form to send me an email if that's easier, and you can even book a time. Now this also applies to, group enrollments.
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2 months ago
28 minutes 47 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
CompactLogix Gen 4: Automation Tech Talk for August 25, 2025

Shawn discusses the Fourth Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Links mentioned in video:
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-4/
- Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): So I wanna welcome everybody. Happy Monday. I wanna welcome you all too. Sorry if we get some echo. I'm actually here in the, really the, the foyer, the the kind of the you know, where you walk into my offices.

And today, we're gonna talk about the CompactLogic's fourth generation. I do wanna wish you all a very happy Monday morning. And what you see here is the METTLA Toledo trade show demo from well, I I expect it'll be an automation fair this year and other fairs as well. I wanna say hi to, I think it's Jim's the the because of the setup, the screen is very far away. So but hello to everybody who's watching.

So in any case, this is what I'm working on next couple days. I gotta get this all up and running and do a video on how to set it up and use it, and I just thought it would be really fun. It's a rate control application. So, the the scale feeds into the I n d three sixty, and then no matter how much is left in there, it keeps maintains a steady rate out. So it should be pretty cool, but I'm looking forward to getting that set up later today.

And I was here, so I figured, well, let's just do today's automation, tech talk lunchtime edition from the foyer. Again, I apologize for any echoes you're here. Last minute mic setup change. So I'm wearing the lavalier mic, not the the headset that I was hoping to use. But in any case, let me know if you guys can hear me okay.

If everything looks good on my side, make sure you could see me okay. What we're gonna do today is the generation for oh, I know what I wanted to say. Tomorrow and I believe it's tomorrow and Friday, we have special guests coming on to talk to us about their companies and, what they've learned, recently in automation. So this way, you guys don't have to always just wait to hear from me. And what I've learned, you can hear from other people, and I invite all our audience to also, thank you, Jims, to also, you know, come and join up in, a ten day a ten day lunchtime, automation tech talk with me.

Because, you know, I I'll tell you what. I learn every time I go somewhere or visit somebody or talk to someone, I learn something new, and, I love learning new stuff too. So I wanna invite you all to come on the show. Now with that said, let's see if everything's all still set up correctly. And to do to switch to make the switch because I'm here in the lobby, I'm gonna have to do it like this.

Okay. Great. It looks like it's working. Okay. Let's see here.

Alright. Alright. Excellent. So we're talking about the CompactLogic's fourth generation, which is also known as, the fifty three seventy line. So we talked about on the first gen, we talked about the fifty three twenty and thirty, then we talked about the fifty three thirty one, 32, and 35.

We talked about the fifty three forty three and forty five, and so now we're on the fifty three seventy. And I gotta tell you,
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2 months ago
15 minutes 58 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
CompactLogix Gen 3: Automation Tech Talk for August 21, 2025

Shawn discusses the Third Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:



Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Links mentioned in video:
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-3/
- Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)

Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk, lunchtime edition. I hope you're having a great day. And, I ate my lunch early, so I'm here ready to go. And I just wanna welcome everybody who's joining.

I can see people joining up, and, please feel free to leave comments as you go. And, somebody asked yesterday why I wasn't covering a particular product. I've never heard of that product. So I wanna invite that person to come on the show and tell us all about the product. And I wanna thank everybody who's actually reached out to me about coming on the show.

We had some very interesting guests that are gonna come on and talk about what they're learning and what they're doing. That's all about what this lunchtime show is about, you know, just sharing what we learned. And because I have the kind of disarray in here, I'm going over the generations of CompactLogix. And today, we're gonna look at generation number three. Now you can always watch this if you're not available during lunch.

I know some people can't get to the computer at lunchtime. That's okay. You can always watch the replay. I'm also releasing this as an audio podcast. I've renamed the old automation news roundup news headlines podcast automation tech talk, and, it's also being put on the blog.

And if you're one of those morning readers and you can't watch a video, I'm also putting trying to put every, transcript up there now. It costs me extra to do that, but I'm trying to get those up there. It costs extra to get it, but it's a really good transcript. It's not just like the the captions you get on YouTube. So, not that it's a 100% correct.

It's all AI generated. But in any case, it's nice for those people who wanna read about, what, the video instead of watching the video. Right? In any case, with that said, I hope you are all doing well. I'm just checking my mic, checking my video.

Everything looks looks to be working on this side. Again, if you're seeing not seeing something working, let me know in the chat. Otherwise, I'll just talk the whole time and not know that you can't hear me. So in any case, the first thing I wanna do, though, is let's see if I rearrange this correctly. Yeah.

So I wanted to show you where I wanna try to broadcast from tomorrow. So tomorrow, I'm gonna try to use what I'm gonna call Studio C. So I get this studio set up for, you know, recording my lessons, And so there's not a lot of room on the workbench, and there's a lot of other products I wanna cover besides what's on the workbench here. So that's why I'm, trying to get this set up. I don't know if you can see.

Probably can't. I got a Monoclon PLC on there. And so that will be Studio C for shop for, closet. It's kinda like the you know, when you were a kid, you might had a if you went to a small school, you might had a a cafeteria. This is kinda like the closet slash storage closet slash three d p...
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2 months ago
17 minutes 59 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
CompactLogix Gen 2: Automation Tech Talk for August 20, 2025

Shawn discusses the Second Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:



Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Links mentioned in video:
- Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-2/
- Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Automation Tech Talk lunchtime edition. I had a little, issue earlier, so I watched the replay. Everything looked great. So, again, I wanna thank you for hanging out with me at lunchtime.

I also wanna thank those folks who've reached out to me about actually being a guest on the lunchtime show. I really appreciate that. And, you know, it's it's nice to actually hear what other people are doing. Right? And, we got some pretty cool guests lined up.

I I also have some vendors who, maybe they're not ready to sponsor an episode of the podcast, but they just want to, tell us the cool things they're doing. And so, inviting them on as well. Just trying to share everything I've learned and share help people share what they've learned over the years, during lunchtime, right, when we all get to take a break from all the serious stuff trying to make money to pay the bills and all that. So in any case, with that said, I had and and I'm assuming I guess I'll just delete the original five minute livestream, because, things didn't seem like they were working. So I got a couple things I was talking about in that livestream.

Number one is that that big box in the middle of the training room, that is, some hardware for the add on lessons I'm gonna be adding. I have a lot of different hardware here from all kinds of different vendors, and I will be adding those as bonus, lessons add on lessons to the courses. So if you're in in any of my level one or two do I still have the automation school up? So if you're in, my level one or two courses, level one and two courses, I should say that correctly, over at the automationschool.com, you will get those, add on lessons at no charge. And, plus, there's some other courses you're gonna be getting at no charge as well as I kinda mix things up, and and I think I covered that over at the automation school and the updates for each of the courses.

Also, I ran across somebody on Reddit who was looking they're like, you know, what do I need to get started? I'm like, hey. Lesson one zero two in all my courses is free and all my PLC courses, and it tells you everything you need to know to get started programming PLCs, software options, hardware options, demo options. So if you know anybody looking to get started and they don't know where to start, like, how much does Rockwell software cost, and is it free, and can I get a free demo, and, you know, how about for Siemens, and what starter packs are available? I cover that all, and I make that lesson free.

Because quite honestly, I don't want anybody signing up for a course and then be like, you know, I didn't wanna do a simulated PLC. I wanna do a real PLC, and I can't afford it. So I want everybody to know upfront what the costs are. For a lot of people, it's not an issue. They get a bunch of PLCs in the software at work, so and they're gonna do it at at during their lunchtime.

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2 months ago
20 minutes 22 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
CompactLogix Gen 1: Automation Tech Talk for August 19, 2025

Let's talk about how the Series C 1756 Chassis differs from the Series B in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:



Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.
Link to article mentioned in video:
- https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-1/

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey everybody. Hope you can hear me. I'm trying something a little bit different here. Welcome to automation tech talk lunchtime edition, and, I hope you guys can hear me. I hope, you can see me because I've changed everything around.

But, because I have all the equipment here for my new twenty twenty five courses on the workbench, and I don't have any of the other studio set up for what I want to cover today, I decided to cover generation one of the CompactLogic. So I'm just gonna look over here. It seems like audio is working. Okay? It seems like the video is okay.

So in any case, feel free to say hi in the chat if you're watching. But, lots going on here. I just had, three vendors send in, samples for me to look at. Actually, one is a trade show demo from Automation Fair, so I'm looking forward to, covering that. The other is a brand new line of IO.

Very exciting. And then the third are some Ethernet push buttons. So I hope to have more about that. Plus, I have, more boxes of stuff donated to the automation museum. So, just so much to cover in the coming weeks and days.

And, but in any case, one thing I do every day too is work on my courses, not only, answer questions, but also work on my courses. And I'm getting ready to update them all for 2025. And I just wanted to say if you are already enrolled in any of my Compact Logics, whether it's level one, level one, two, you get the new cost for free, so don't worry about that. So in any case, today, I wanna talk about, though, is the first generation of CompactLogix because a lot of people have never even seen them, not even know they exist, but have never seen them. And, just some real interesting stuff here.

And, let me first show you with the, overhead cam here. Let's see if I can do this. Do I still have audio? Yep. Okay.

So, in any case, you can see here, this is the l 30, and I'm actually connected through a serial port. I'm using a USB, a USPS rev three from Rockwell that I bought years and years ago. And, let me see if I can zoom in on that. You can see I don't have everything wired up for the new courses yet. So, be spending some nights and weekends doing that.

But you can see there, I have one of just my, sample program in there. This is the one I use. If you're in my VUE course, you'll be very familiar with this program. But in any case, with all the molding simulators, code in there and whatnot. So but I also wanna get on here.

I'm just gonna stick it off top of the Polysplike, the l 20. And in the description of today's show, I have an article I wrote years ago that kinda detailed some of these things, but the l 20 was the very first CompactLogix to come out. Now I had sourced its release to late twenty I'm sorry, late two thousand or twenty zero zero in any case. But, but, you know, whether it came out early two thousand one or late, February, you know, that was almost directly after, like, a year after the ControlLogix l one, the 5550, controller. So pretty quick.

And, this, unit came in either a single serial port or dual serial port. Now the, the, l 30 I have written down here is,
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2 months ago
18 minutes 49 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Automation Museum Update for August 18, 2025: SyMax
Shawn Tierney shares an update on the Automation Museum fundraiser, as well as a look at one of the items the community has donated, a Square D SyMax PLC.
For information about donating to the Automation Museum, please click here.





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning back in. Shawn Tierney here from Insights, and I wanted to give you an update on the automation museum. So let me go over to the computer screen here, and you can see we're still stuck at about 7%. We're at about $200 of our $3,000 goal to get this unit set up, this, you know, new nonprofit set up.

And a couple of things we're doing to drive attention to this across this video, but we're also launching a history of automation podcast to try to drive awareness to this goal of actually setting up maybe first a virtual museum and then a physical museum. And I got a ton of stuff I wanna donate to it, and I really would look enjoy having people come in and teaching them what I know, but also learning what they know. And with that in mind, I wanna talk about some of the, samples that have been sent in over the years. And I've actually told people to kinda keep things in your attic or in your storage unit because I'm just out of space. And when the town comes in here, they wanna tax everything they see.

You know? It's hard to explain to them that this is a donation or whatever or it's personal. Right? So in any case, I wanna share with you this particular unit. Now I did send a very kind gentleman who sent this in a few years ago.

I did send him a message on LinkedIn and, to try to get some backstory and learn a little bit more about it, But, he must be very busy, because I haven't heard back from him. But this is again, this is not a POC that I, started programming back when I got into the into this business back in the nineties. I gotta make sure I do this correctly here. But this is a really old Symax and, yeah, I'm gonna have to put the glasses on. But, check this thing out.

This is a Symax demo. Have I have no idea how old this is. I have no idea what I'm even looking at, but I think it's super cool. You know? Square d PLC.

Right? And, if you guys know anything about this, I'd love to have any links or any literature, PDFs, or anything you have. But this is something I could see that we could restore and set up in the nonprofit automation museum and, actually teach people how what this unit used to do, how it used to work, and so on and so forth. But, it is very reminiscent to the PLC five in my opinion or PLC two and, 1771. So, just one of the very cool things that I've been sent here over the years that, that I would like to get into a real, physical museum.

And a Cuesta Museum would have, like, computer technology in it. It would have all the other technologies in it. But the focus here is the automation museum and that's what we're fundraising for. I think can I go back to the screen here? Yeah.

So, if you look here, this is, give sengo.com/automationmuseum. You can go to also go to automationmuseum.org, and it'll transfer here. I don't even have a bank account set up to withdraw the stuff because if, you know, if we can't reach the goal, then I'll just return everybody's money. But, I'm not gonna touch any of this money. It's gonna go directly into a 5013 c, charity fund, to set up the, to set up the the organization.

So in any case, if you have an extra $20 maybe this week and, you know, you're you're doing good at work and you, you know, you're interested in industrial automation, which I think you are because you're watching this channel,...
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2 months ago
4 minutes 38 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Building Systems with CompactLogix vs Micro800s: Automation Tech Talk for August 15, 2025

Shawn meet's up with Giovanni Mendoza of GM  Automation and Controls in today's episode of Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:





Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link. You'll also find Giovanni's website here.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Giovanni, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate you coming on. I know we've talked a lot about ControlLogix and CompactLogix over the months and years, But I recently saw you did a project, and I know your company and you guys do a lot of different projects. But I noticed you recently did a project on the micro eight hundreds. And I wanted to ask you, well, just a bunch of questions.

It just really got me curious. So if you don't mind, I would like to start off with why you chose the micro 800. And I just for so everybody knows, I teach both Logix, you know, Compact Control Logix micro 800. You know, I teach other brands as well. And, you know, I like them all.

But I a lot of times people who use Logix never use the micro 100. So this really piqued my interest. So I wanted to start, asking you and, really, before we get to that, tell us a little bit about what you do. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): Sure. Well, first thing, thanks a lot, Shawn, for, having me here. It's, it's an honor to be on your podcast. Yeah. So I am a systems integrator, essentially.

A, I'm a business owner here in California. And so we do a lot of, bakery automation, but we just dug into the, foam molding industry with this project. So that one was very cool. Yeah. You know, I know that's pretty much all we do as far as our typical projects, you know, logic stuff.

But we pretty much had to ask the customer what was their budget.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Yep.

Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): And, you know, I have used the micro eight hundreds at home. And I know they were very, you know, versatile as far as what you can do with them. So and the cost was awesome. You know? The Yeah.

Very justifies the cost for the customer and whatnot. And so we sat down with the customer, and we were like, hey. Like, what are you guys expecting with this project? What are you expecting it to do? What do you wanna see on, like, a screen?

What is it that you guys want? And the application was very simple. It's a hydraulic press, essentially, that was, automated with a MicroLogix 1,100. But

Shawn Tierney (Host): Okay.

Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): The entire program wiped out, and the person that programmed it was long gone and actually passed away many, many years ago. Ugh. The there was no records or anything that we can pretty much use for, essentially, just to get kinda, like, a picture of what was going on.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): So, thankfully, the process was very basic.

Shawn Tierney (Host): Mhmm.

Giovanni Mendoza (GMAC): And so, you know, the customer was a little bit on a tighter budget, and so we couldn't really justify the cost to put in, like, a CompactLogix in there. So we picked out the micro 800. And, the environment I know there's a lot of people that don't really like CCW for Mhmm. You know, many reasons. Sometimes the software is a little different in certain aspects.

Right?
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2 months ago
31 minutes 59 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
1756 Chassis Series B vs C: Automation Tech Talk for August 14, 2025

Let's talk about how the Series C 1756 Chassis differs from the Series B in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:



Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): coming soon


If you have any questions about Shawn's in-person or online courses, please don't hesitate to setup a time to meet with Shawn via MSTeams, or drop him an email using his contact form here: https://theautomationschool.com/question/

Until next time, Peace  
If you enjoy this episode please give it a Like, and consider Sharing as this is the best way for us to find new guests to come on the show.
Shawn M TierneyTechnology Enthusiast & Content Creator
Eliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.

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2 months ago
11 minutes 33 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Ethernet/IP vs PROFINET: Automation Tech Talk for August 13, 2025
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Let's talk about Ethernet/IP versus PROFINET in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:



Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link.

Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey, everybody. Happy lunchtime. It is Shawn from Insights and Automation. I wanna welcome everybody who's tuning in. Thank you for joining me.

Really wanna make these lunchtime sessions of the automation tech talk show, collaborative. So, please feel free to post questions or comments. For some reason, StreamYard has not taken those from LinkedIn, so my apologies. I don't know why. But in any case, maybe, if somebody could do a test post there, it says can't post comments to LinkedIn, so maybe I still can read them.

Who knows? In any case, I hope you're having a great lunch. I'm giving myself thirty minutes to get ready for these things, and then, like, I was editing to this afternoon's podcast, and I'm like, oh, I gotta hurry up and get over here. But I put together a little, presentation just to talk about, you know, Ethernet IP versus PROFINET. Right?

And so before we get into that, again, if you're having problems hearing me or anything like that, it looks like everything's working on my side. And and by the way, today, I'm coming to you from my office. It's not very clean, but this is where the work gets done when I'm not in the studio or in the training room. But in any case, so, let me put some things out there. So as somebody who's used Ethernet IP well since it came out.

Right? So, you know, we were back in the days in Data Hour plus and remote IO, and some people call it Rio. And I was like, Rio is a city. Call it remote IO or r I o. But in the case, that's how my weird brain works.

Hey. Thank you, Emmanuel. Really appreciate it. It's good to see you again. Great.

It's been a while since we talked. So in any case, you know, one of the thing these vendors have done is made these things easy to implement in their products. And I gotta say, like all the major vendors I've used, they put that first in their thought process, at least from my perspective. And I can go into that programming software. I can add things on their network, and it works.

So and there's a lot that goes on under the under the scenes behind the scenes in the software that makes that all work so well. I know with Ethan IP early on, we had the whole, you know, unicast with versus multicast. Everything was multicast. Some of you younger folks won't even know what I'm talking about, but we had to run around saying, use a use a switch with IGMP snooping. Use a switch with IGMP snooping.

And then it was IG snooping and querying. And it's like, but in any case, that's all going away now with Unicast support. And, again, if you guys if I say something wrong, I'm just going off the cuff here. It's just lunchtime, so let me know. But, long story short, you know, I use both, both networks in the house here with just commercial switches.

They run great. Of course, you wanna use industrial switches in an industrial environment. And I think most of you have the same the same experience with that. So, what I wanna do is kinda, like, take a look at them now. The one of the reasons I'm doing this today is I'm editing.

I'm not quite done. It takes about three hours to edit these shows and publish them. But I'm just at the final steps of editing today's podcast, which will be on Profinet.
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2 months ago
18 minutes 59 seconds

Automation Tech Talk
Sub-$400 Ethernet PLCs (and more): Automation Tech Talk for August 12, 2025:

Let's talk about sub-$400 Ethernet PLCs (and more) in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition:

Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:


 


Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog:

Automation Tech Talk Show Notes:
Below you'll find the links from this week's show:

* Automation Game
* LinkedIn Post
* The Automation School 


Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated)
Shawn Tierney (Host):Hey, everybody. Welcome to Automation Tech Talk. Shawn Tierney here. You know, it's been a long time since I've used StreamYard, and they've actually added some really cool things. I can actually see if my mic is working.

So please, leave a comment in the chat. I'm, we're going out live to LinkedIn and YouTube. Of course, this will be released over on the podcast and at the automation blog later, when I'm done lunch. But in any case, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the, the thought process behind the show is, you know, I learn so much every day, and I just I can't I can't keep up with the courses. I can't add everything I learn into my courses or do, like, full blown productions on it.

And so I'm like, you know what? Let me just meet up with all my followers on LinkedIn and YouTube and just share what I'm learning, and then I can just watch the chat and see if you guys have anything else to say about it. In that way, all this stuff I'm learning every day, I can get right back out to you guys, and you guys can share what you're learning with me in very informal, you know, type of show. So that is what automation tech talk lunchtime edition is all about. I'm doing this to my lunch because there's no there's you know, I'm not making money from this.

But, in any case, I do wanna say say thank you to all my students at the automation school, and thank you to all my members at on YouTube and the automation blog. Thank you guys very much. Now I am you know, I wanted to bring the news, show back, but it's, like, three hours a day, and it makes zero money. So it's just like I can't invest the time to do that. And so that's why I'm doing the show, but I'm gonna reuse the new show podcast.

So if you're listening to the podcast, you're like, hey. Showed to the new new show, and you're getting this instead. It's expensive and time consuming to spend the new podcast. So, I'm thinking from talking to some of the listeners out there, I'm thinking you guys would enjoy this, maybe not as much as the news, but maybe, as close to it as I can provide right now. With all that said, thank you again for tuning in.

And today, what I wanted to talk to you is about, low cost Ethernet PLC. So as an instructor, I'm always looking for how people can can get, you know, learn PLCs. Right? Program controls, PACs, PLCs, whatever you wanna call them. They are, like, to me, the heart of an automation system.

The IO comes into that. You know, devices talk to the IO. IO talks to controller. HMIs and SCADA talk to the controller. IoT connections, IoT connections.

You know? So that's like the brain of the system, always has been. Right? And it's kinda like the motherboard in our computers. Right?

And so, you know, I I think people will always wanna learn them as long as we're we have control systems. And, I know some people will say, well, you know, there's DCSs and this this that I understand that. I understand that. But in any case so, you know,
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2 months ago
22 minutes

Automation Tech Talk
The Automation News Roundup covers industrial automation news and events headlines most weekdays. You can find all the links mentioned in the show at https://Automate.News.