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Thoughts on machine software, modern PLC development, robotics, and the tools that move our industry forward.
Sixteen months ago I recommended a licensed web-SCADA toolbox on this blog. Then I shipped a plant data acquisition system on it and ran it in production for fifteen months. Here is what changed my mind, and what replacing it took.
The robot lab now has a curriculum: seven guided lessons that hand you a live ABB arm and take it apart one layer at a time. 27 of the 41 pages will not let you past until the machine agrees you did the thing.
Level 3 of the robot lab is a script editor in the browser, and what you write runs on a real ABB arm. Here is the whole API, what the machine does with your script, and why nobody has finished the challenge yet.
The robot lab is back open. In the 24 hours before it went down, 96 anonymous sessions took control of a real ABB arm and surfaced four distinct failures - including a gripper cable that tore itself apart without ever hitting anything.
85 sessions from 17 locations in 24 hours. The interesting part is not the traffic, it is the unglamorous logging service that makes the traffic visible at all - and the rule that keeps it from ever breaking the thing it measures.
The Remote Robot Lab has been open for a month. Here is what is actually behind it — the work envelope, the deadman guards, the queue, and the vision loop that decides whether you scored.
The Remote Robot Lab is now live and open to the public for testing. Take control of a real ABB IRB1300 industrial robot from your browser — all are welcome.
If you're searching for a powerful web-based HMI platform that's PLC vendor agnostic, easy to use, and plays nice with modern dev tooling, Smart HMI's WebIQ is worth a look.
