Homegrown Labs with PLCs

A number of lab experiences are discussed that cost little and challenge the student and give creative challenges to the instructor.They are designed around the Siemens S7-1200 PLC (programmable logic controller).The experiences are used to challenge students to experiences like in industry including motion control, PID (proportional integral derivative) control and other interesting processes.A text provides background for the student.The text "Hybrid Text" has been created over the years by the author and is found at his university website 1.A second text at the same website has been started which describes many of the lab experiments from the "Hybrid Text" and has grown with the addition of other experiments as well.It is found under the title "Hybrid Lab Text" 2.With COVID, a YouTube channel 3 has been added integrating the lectures from the text, the problem sets, and labs.All texts and YouTube materials are free. Proceedings of the 2022 Conference for Industry and Education CollaborationCopyright ©2022, American Society for Engineering Education bypassing any expense of additional HMI hardware.Creating buttons and digital displays on a screen was a move forward since the time needed to develop these screens was minimal. First TrialsAn early attempt at building labs in-house included a stepper motor and controller chip on a breadboard.The purpose of this lab was to gain an experience in single axis motion control, a skill needed in industrial automation.The first attempt never worked.