FBD programming, licensing questions

[Merinorus]

Hi,

We recently bought the RevPi Connect+ and I just watched the YouTube tutorials about how to get started.
So far so good, they are very well made! Yet, I have questions about the PLC programming part.

Our goal is to replace our existing PLC by a RevPi in each of our installations. I work as a software engineer (familiar with Linux, programming etc.). I have worked with some PLCs with proprietary software in the past, but I didn't work with Codesys nor LogiCAD.
I saw that we can develop the program in Python, but if LogiCAD3 is not mandatory, it would make our life easier for PLC related tasks (I/O, watchdog, RS485, network...). Did I understand right?

I have a few questions because it's still a bit confusing for me:

• Do we have to buy one logi.RTS license per RevPi? Or one is enough to deploy in all of our devices?

• If we want to use the FBD part, we need to buy one logi.CAD 3 FBD-Light license, right? One per developer?

• Is Procon Web an alternative or a complementary solution to LogiCad?

• Same question for Codesys?

Thank you in advance for your help!

[pi_admin]

Hi Merinorus,

you don`t need to use logi.CAD or any other plc software to create a control program. As you stated correctly you can use Phyton or C to create this. But, of course the more complex your program is, the more convenient a plc software like logi.CAD is.

Regarding your licensing questions:

the PLC software from logicals is mainly divided into 2 parts. First part is the software (logi.CAD 3 or logi.CAD 3 FBD Lite) that you need on your desktop computer to create the project/program. The second part is the runtime (logi.RTS), that is installed on your RevPi.

This means:

- You need one Logi.CAD 3 FBD-Lite license for each desktop computer, no matter on how many RevPis you want to deploy your program.

- Each logi.RTS runtime license is tied to one RevPi, so for example if you want to have equipped 5 RevPis with the your logi.CAD software, you need 5 logi.RTS licenses.

- If you want to work with ST (Structured Text) you can use the free version of logi.CAD 3 and only have to pay for the logi.RTS on your RevPis.

- logi.CAD is a pure plc software. If you want to create an user interface/dashboard (HMI) you can either create this manually for example with Phyton or use a HMI software like PROCON-WEB IoT, which is a browser/web based HMI.

- Codesys is a plc software which is also able to create an user interface/dashboard (HMI), but as far as I can say is not as powerful as the HMI software PROCON-WEB IoT.

[Merinorus]

Hi,

Thank you very much for all the information! That answers perfectly my expectations.

Have a great day!