Control.com - Nerds in Control

About 20 years ago, we were using VAX FORTRAN on VAX for process control applications.

Can you suggest what platform and language would be suitable for PC-based process control applications?

There are some third party s/w such as kuka (WinCe) that run on Windows xp.

I would rather use Linux/Win and develop my own application.

Thanks.

RKB

If you actually like FORTRAN you can use it on Linux. You might have to scramble to find the low level bits, but I'm sure someone is doing it. Otherwise I would recommend C since it is well suited for low level control. If for some reason you don't like C, you have a better choice of languages than any other platform I can think of. I have not heard of any, even obscure language that is not available on Linux with the exception of some proprietary languages which would be a bad choice for just that reason. From Assembler to Ruby and beyond, the popularity of Linux with CS programs ensures that even class project languages are most likely available for Linux. That said, C is _the_ language for systems and network programming on Linux and other *NIX operating systems. I have personally used or at least tried, BASIC, Pascal. FORTH, Smalltalk, C++, C, COBOL(ick), Python, FORTRAN, and a couple 4GLs for reports and some Screen Painters. For control purposes, you need the low level stuff to actually twiddle bits and control ports. Even in the higher level languages, these are often done in C, so for my purposes, it has been easiest to simply stick with C with an eye towards a reasonable way to interface with any presentation languages or GUI builders needed. I don't do much applications software, so my experience has been diametrically opposed to Windows programming where the GUI is everything and the working part of the program is a tiny fraction of the code.

Regards

cww

I would suggest Python or C, or a combination of the two. The advantage of Python is that you can develop software with it fairly quickly, which reduces time and cost in one-off applications. The library selection is also quite extensive, which is also very important. You can also import C libraries into Python fairly easily.

If you are used to using Fortran math libraries, I believe the entire Fortran BLAS library has Python wrappers. There are also other extensive scientific and engineering libraries available. Almost all of these are free (including all the major ones).

Labview is popular for PC-based automation (this is not just my opinion). If you want to display dials, charts, and have switches and buttons on your GUI, etc., then Labview is good for that. You don't have to use National Instruments expensive hardware either...

RKB