Today we invited 'Little Orange Apartments' and asked him to come and share his experience and experience with us.
Guest Introduction: With more than ten years of C++ development experience, he has independently developed embedded file systems.
**Why did you choose to work in the field of industrial control? **
The first job before was the development of control software related to medical equipment, and I also felt that the prospects of industrial control and ** high-end manufacturing ** are good, in fact, similar to aviation and the like is also considered to be in the industrial field, it can be called the application of industrial control in aviation.
****If you were given another chance, would you continue to choose in the field of industrial control? **
If there is still a chance to choose, I will still choose industry or high-end manufacturing, if more specific, I may be more inclined to choose the direction of 'robot', which is actually in a broad sense also belongs to industrial control, the robot industry, for the software, the room for play will be greater, it is not only control software, there will be more similar to 'artificial intelligence' and 'pattern recognition' direction can be deepened, more like the direction of pure software. After all, as a software person, I still hope to use more software things.
****According to your description, what kind of industrial control field do you think we belong to now? Low-end? **
The industrial control field we are now in contact with, mainly the inheritance of traditional business, can not do the combination of traditional business and new technology, this aspect is relatively weak, especially in the intelligent software is not well reflected, mainly reflected in the ** direct operation and control of hardware **, but this is actually only the **most basic requirements ** for the product. For example, Nest, you can't say what it subverted, but it did change people's expectations of it.
** Just when you mentioned Nest, for many people it is a product with extremely Internet elements and spirit, how do you rate it? **
Nest itself is on the market, but it has changed people's use patterns, in the past people are expecting what services it provides me, this kind of thinking has changed, it has become what it can do for me, for example, I now feel that the temperature is high, I will manually turn it down, and then cold and adjust again, and this is adjusted by my own feelings, Nest is more can know what kind of habits the owner has after many times of learning, This is integrated into more artificial intelligence processing methods, so that it better serves us, after all, this feeling of people must be a hindsight, people must be adjusted when they feel uncomfortable.
****What do you think can be integrated into the field of industrial control with Internet elements? **
Nest actually made a good start, making us realize that the artificial intelligence we usually talk about is no longer at the level of staying on paper or doing papers, and more let us feel that the bits and pieces of our daily life can redefine our lives after stringing together, and we can use more processing methods and means. For smart homes, you can't say how much big data is in it, but there is indeed a lot of data in it, depending on how it is combined with the Internet to play its advantages, that is, let us improve our lives more.
In the field of industrial control, in fact, in the most basic ** first is normal operation **, ** the second is more robust **, ** the third is to collect the data we want **, but these data can also be used as an input to our future big data raw data, we can also filter and filter the data, and ** dig out the value that customers do not realize in the data, it sounds a bit virtual, but in fact it is a thing we can and should do.
****What is your favorite aspect in the field of industrial control? **
In fact, I don't like it the most, for me, I should still be more willing to do the direction I am familiar with, do the design part that I can control, and other aspects can be used as hobbies.
As a software person, what do you think is the most limiting place in this field? **
In terms of functionality alone, most of the products in the field of industrial control can provide the main function is control, as far as the control itself is concerned, for software personnel, the program design, algorithm and ideas of the control are relatively good, for the 'lower computer' drive, even chip-level, is not very good.
In fact, it cannot be said to be a limitation, but they have lacked the knowledge and understanding of the lower computer before, so there may be incomplete considerations when designing or doing architecture, so there will be rework or defects in design.
Lower computer: A computer that directly controls the equipment to obtain the status of the equipment, generally PLC/MCU and the like.
** What professional knowledge (or books to read) is generally supplemented in spare time? **
Recommend a book 'Domain Specific Language ANTLR', you can customize a new language, for us, when we want to implement a set of our own defined language in our own specific domain, so that your customers can easily use this language to operate the set of interfaces you defined. The second recommended book is 'Linux Kernel Design', which systematically explains the design related knowledge of Linux.
**Have you systematically or partially studied automation expertise? **
I have not studied systematically, and I basically started to contact it after I arrived at the company.
** What are the general ways to obtain the relevant knowledge of peers (industrial software)? **
Usually through some automated forums, the earliest contact is to find OPC related knowledge, to see.
****Which company do you think is the best in the field of industrial control? **
It should be 'ABB' robots, and others like 'Honeywell', 'Siemens', and 'Rockwell' are actually similar, all have similar 'DCS' or 'SCADA' systems, all of which are relatively average. In fact, companies like 'KW' have a good entry point, although they are also doing industrial control systems, but they focus all their energy on industrial control software, from 'configuration' to 'runtime' have achieved good integration.
The MultiProg series of 'configuration software' produced by KW has a large share in the automation major of universities.
**** What do you think is most lacking in the current industrial control field? **
The field of industrial control is a very traditional field, and now it is slowly realized that for the application of the industrial control field, more 'sensors' will gradually be added, which can better help us understand more different things, because once there is a sensor, it will get more feedback, with feedback, it is no longer the same as before, completely relying on people to actively set up the equipment. This makes it smarter, and Nest provides a great example of this.
For example, a product designed by our company has been running for 20 years and is still in use, even if there is a replacement of spare parts, it still wants to use the original because it is stable. We are now designed, with so many higher performance processors, higher performance control logic, we definitely hope that in addition to the previous kind of normal collection of data, we definitely hope to provide more valuable information to users, if just want to be stable, then simple, directly use simple PLC on the line, the reason why we do 'history server', 'trend chart', do a variety of charts, is to better show the data to the user, let the user feel that the product they buy is valuable. In order to distinguish it from competitors' product lines, then what you provide must be ** have stronger software capabilities**, because the hardware, everyone can actually do it.
** What are the special problems in this industry? **
There are relatively few large companies, most of the patents are monopolized by a few oligopolies, and many experts in the field of industrial control are gradually retiring, and before their retirement, their experience is not well inherited.
What interesting projects have you worked on? **
An X-ray equipment project, the more interesting thing is that we are personally involved in the assembly, including the C-shaped column inside are installed by themselves, this significance is relatively large, no matter how simple things are, as long as you can participate in the whole process, the harvest will be very large. Because when integrating testing, you will learn a lot of system-level things, which cannot be learned from the software side alone.
What are your views/thoughts on the future? **
For yourself, you also need to improve your capabilities in terms of system architecture.
****What do you hope to learn through this WeChat platform? **
In addition to knowledge, I hope that people with common interests and people with common interests will share and improve knowledge together. What I want to see is people who are independent-minded and have their own clear ideas, not soy sauce and funny.
Glacier Language: In the future, I am also ready to continue to interview the survival status of some software people in the industrial control industry, and convey the full picture of the industrial control industry to you in a more real state. So you are welcome to give me your thoughts or suggestions.