Programming Devices and Alternatives
David Gale Johnson · 2020
This chapter examines the wide variety of devices and methods available today to perform basic program creation and editing functions. Programming devices have seen significant changes in the past five years. Both dedicated and personal computer based programming systems, host-computer-based systems, and program documentation will be covered. In a factory that has accumulated a large (100 and up) number of installed programmable controllers, it is quite often cumbersome and impractical to support all of these with portable programming devices. One of the more interesting trends is that of using the programming device as a node on the network for both program access, and process monitoring and control.