Industrial Automation Q&A: Rockwell QC Defects, TIA Portal Versions, & IT/OT Skills

How's it going, everyone? Vlad here, and welcome back to this week's conversation. As we've done in the past, we have multiple questions and comments coming from our industry that have been the most upvoted ones on various social media platforms. We're going to read the question, and then I'm going to give you my perspective of what I believe to be true in the industry.

Of course, I do not have all the answers. I'm giving you my opinion. If you disagree, if you have some comments, if you just wanna thank me for posting and giving my general, like I said, advice with many years of experience in the industry, feel free to leave that in the comment section. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn, which is going to be the easiest place to find me.

Happy to have a conversation around industrial automation, about manufacturing, about these specific questions, or perhaps how I can help you with some of these challenges. Without any further delay Let's switch over to the first question that we have here, and that's going to be from the username NaveenRawat54,

and he says, "Have PLC programmers become accidental network engineers? Modern projects seem to involve more Ethernet IP, PROFINET, OPC UA, remote access, and managed switches than ever before. Do you spend more time dealing with communications networking today than you did a few years ago, or the PLC logic still where most of your effort goes?"

So again, this is completely normal. I've talked about this multiple times on this channel, on LinkedIn. There's a couple of reasons as to why this is happening. Number one, over the last, I would say decade plus, we have been modernizing the equipment that used to be extremely contained at the factory level.

So he mentioned a couple of different protocols, but in the past you would have, for example, DeviceNet, you would have ControlNet. Again, this is in the world of Rockwell. Of course, you had your SERCOS networks on the drive side, and now we're pretty much migrated to everything that is Ethernet-based. So on the Rockwell side, you will find Ethernet IP.

On the Siemens s-side, you will find PROFINET. He's talking about OPC UA, which is of course, a data-based-- Again, it's a protocol that allows you to extract data into other devices that can be used on various platforms. Now, the other reason is, of course, as many of the increase or the demand of AI.

And of course, one of the first stages of getting a plant or a manufacturing facility, quote-unquote, "ready for AI," and again, this is not going to be a debate whether or not AI is or has been effective. The general consensus is that you need more data, you need more context, and that can of course come from the data sheets, that can come from the documentation, that could come from the offline import and export of structure or text-based files from your PLC program.

But we want to collect more and more data from the plant floor. Again, we're not going to debate how useful it's going to be for AI to give you those insights, but everything is pretty much connected. So to answer the question is, I absolutely see an increase of networking skill requirements and networking skill applications when it comes to controls engineering,

so whether that is on setting up and configuring perhaps local switches, whether that's assigning IP addresses to devices so that they can communicate at the plant level, whether that's being knowledgeable on the network side. I have released a full fundamentals of OT networking course on the Joltech website.

It is accessible for free, so if you're looking to learn some basics, don't hesitate to sign up. It's on the joltech.com website. But I do agree that there's more and more network emphasis when it comes to the role of a typical control systems engineer. And of course, everything that comes with that is also of importance, whether that's troubleshooting duplicate IPs, whether that's troubleshooting shutdowns as a result of connecting to the plant level, whether that's assigning VLANs to different areas.

Even if you're not going to do all of those activities yourself, you will be typically working with the IT department to make sure that it's under control. So the answer to the question on this specific-- or from this specific user is that absolutely there's going to be more networking, I would say, capabilities and time spent as opposed to pure PLC programming

Hi, my name is Vladimir Romanov. I am the founder of Joltech as well as Solis PLC. With a background in electrical engineering and an MBA, and over a decade of experience leading projects in manufacturing and industrial automation, I help engineers, managers, and manufacturers make smarter technical and business decisions, modernize their operations, and build stronger careers.

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The next comment is very interesting. I was surprised to see, and I'll show you the images in just a moment as we look at the ControlLogix PLCs. And if I can switch over my screen, you have this comment by the username lcar210, and he says, "ControlLogix L915 safety process controller with serious manufacturing defects."

So for those of you that do not come from the Rockwell world, Rockwell has released the ninth iteration, if you will, of the ControlLogix PLCs as of I believe it's-- they were announced last year at Automation Fair in November. And as we can see here, they are available for purchase by the End users, integrators, whomever.

What I do want to point out as a caveat is, again, it is hard to nowadays figure out, is this a real photo? Has anything been altered? Were there any changes made to this? But what we immediately notice is that the front label of the CPU which should be the same exact part number, is different. So we're missing this kind of red icon on the right-hand side, and we're also missing the USB logo on the right-hand side.

The person is writing: "We purchased two L915 safety process controllers for use with PlantPAx five point three. One of the controllers," right under the picture "is missing the GuardMaster logo, missing the USB logo, and has a misaligned top RJ45 port. Insane that this got through their quality control given that this is a twenty thousand dollar USD plus safety processor.

I didn't even bother powering it up. I will be immediately processing an RMA." So a couple of comments as we dissect maybe this picture. You will start noticing, now that he has mentioned it and that I've read the comment, that the Ethernet port is not properly seated on the right side controller on the printed circuit board.

So what's interesting to see is, again, as he points out, this is a very expensive piece of hardware. It is impossible to tell with the naked eye, was this a defect when it comes to soldering onto the board? Is this a different defect maybe perhaps with the RJ45 jack? That is definitely a problem,

so the connections that go to the board may not be properly made, and you're going to be troubleshooting a ton of different issues if this were to be put inside of a rack and used inside of the ControlLogix chassis. Now, he's mentioning that these are safety processors to be used with PlantPAx. This is, I would say, not probably a highly or not as highly produced as some of the regular controllers that are now going to be for this specific lineup.

I have not looked on the data sheet yet, so this is the seventeen fifty-six ControlLogix family L915 TPS XT processors. But I can imagine that there's a lot less demand for these controllers as opposed to the, let's say, L91 series. And we'll probably review the data sheet at some point. But again, my comment here is that there's probably a lot less of these, so there should be a better control check in place.

But here we are. The other interesting point is, again, I'm not sure where the USB is. I'm assuming there is a swindle on this plate that can open up, and that's going to be revealing the SD card and the USB port. Normally, it is just available on the front faceplate like we see in the backside here of this Ethernet card.

You see the two ports on the bottom and then the USB port on the front. Again, I would prefer to keep everything with the same feel and form factor. I'm not sure exactly why they have changed the general, I would say, mechanical, or in this case, it's just the plastic cover design of the controller. But in any case, this person is saying they will be processing an RMA, which is basically returning to the manufacturer.

They do offer that program if the equipment arrives with problems. And so I have been through that process in the past. Usually, distributors are very good at taking care of the customer if there are defects of such nature. Typically, you can power on the device and perhaps it works as expected. Of course, in this case, it seems to be a little bit bizarre that there's those differences between the two controllers.

But in any case, I'd be curious to hear what the maybe distributor says, what does Rockwell say. I doubt they will release information once they receive the unit. But again, it is interesting that this happened with such an expensive controller. Of course, it's assuming that all of this is correct and hasn't been modified and all or altered.

On the second image, once again, we see the port, and we can, again, to the best of our ability, determine that it almost seems like the Ethernet port was completely improperly seated on the printed circuit board, so again, it's difficult to illustrate if you haven't played with electronics, but imagine for a moment, and I'm just going to switch to the camera that I have.

So if you have a printed circuit board like this, and this is one of the rulers that I made for Joltech for Automate 2026. But here I have the American wire gauge, but ultimately these are also vias where components in theory that are through-hole mounted could be soldered. And if you don't push the component in and solder correctly, you can run into a lot of different problems.

So this is concerning again to see that all of the pins of that RJ45 jack, and I'll just switch this back on, are visible through the hole that again should be flush with the printed circuit board. So again, hopefully there will be a follow-up. I would assume that he will get a new controller, a replacement for this specific unit, and I hope that we get an update

The next question comes from a completely different manufacturer. We are talking about Siemens. This comes from the username by G0918. " Can I update the hardware catalog in TIA Portal? We got a new machine with a Siemens S7-1200 G2 series. I only have TIA Portal version 14 and version 17, so I can't go online with it.

Is it possible to install the hardware catalog in one of these versions or do I need TIA Portal version 20?" And I have actually spoken to Siemens about this specific question and I made a video almost a year ago. I had the opportunity to meet the product manager of the S7-1200 series PLC at Automate Two Thousand and Twenty-Five.

And the short answer is that-- And by the way, I have one of these G2 series PLCs sitting behind me, so this is the G2 series PLC, the same one that he's got inside of his machine. I guess it's a different model, so there's two extra slots on the front of his PLC. That being said, to answer the question, it is not possible to go online with this controller using TIA Portal version fourteen or version seventeen.

You need at least version twenty, preferably at this point, version twenty-one. It has been released almost a year ago at this point. So you will be able to leverage the features of the G2 series PLC, but you will also have the full catalog to be able to configure the controller. The other very important point to note is that the IO for this specific controller, once again, you may recognize by the form factor, it has changed from the first generation CPU, and that IO is not compatible unless you use basically an Ethernet or in this case, a PROFINET bridge to communicate with that IO block.

And so basically what that means is that if you look on the Again, for me, that was going to be the right-hand side of the PLC, but here you have the backplane connection. This connection is not going to be compatible with the first generation of I/O on the S7-1200 processor. So ultimately, I guess the short answer is that you need to be installing TIA Portal version 20.

There are options to upgrade from whichever version you currently have at a reduced price than if you were to just pur-purchase a new license. Preferably at this point, I would recommend going to version twenty-one, but you absolutely must have that version to connect to this specific machine. The last comment I will make is sometimes there is a question as to why you may want to upgrade to the second generation of the S7-1200 series controllers.

And the way it was explained to me is that the hardware inside of these series of CPUs is actually closer to the S7-1500 series. So it is possible that this specific machine is leveraging, number one, some of those functions, but is also more compact as a result of that versus using a more powerful S7-1200 first generation CPU.

So it is preferable in this day and age to deploy equipment with the second generation of these controllers. Therefore, I would applaud to the machine builder that has put this and commissioned the machine onto the plant floor using the newer release as opposed to the G1 series of controllers. I would also recommend, again, if you're going to purchase version twenty or version twenty-one of TIA Portal to standardize, because at this stage, it seems that you will have some controllers on version fourteen, some controllers on version seventeen, some controllers on version twenty and twenty-one.

So slowly but surely, you can modernize, or I would say in this case, just upgrade the firmware for the other equipment that you have around the plant so that you could leverage some of the features in the newer releases of TIA Portal.

We've got a very interesting philosophical, like personal maybe even question. So if I switch over to the post by the username of TalkingToMyself_00. As a controls engineers or technician, are you into tech? As in you like other forms of coding or in the age term of IoT, how about cloud computing or networking?

Don't need to read below to answer the question. As someone who's-- does a little bit with automation, people think I'm into information technology and such, but I am not. I don't care about AI in the next development studio or different communication protocols. I'm way more into physics. I like seeing the machines come to life.

I love the electrical engineering of the projects. I always wanted a career in the PCB area, but with that little opportunities I had in it, the job itself wasn't appealing. I'm not into the evol-evolution of computers or pushing the boundaries. I think that what I love about electronics is pretty much impossible to change.

It can be learned, mastered, and that's appealing to me. So there's a lot to unpack here. Let me start by giving you my own personal take. I have always been into tech ever since I was, I would say, younger. I grew up building computers. I also had an opportunity to start learning to code when I was very young, again, I believe around fourteen or so.

I remember building printed circuit boards together with my dad learning how to solder around the age of eight. So I was always interested in all sorts of electronics. I was always interested in embedded systems, so I've always had the latest, I would say, Raspberry Pis just in general, and sometimes they would collect dust just like many other electronics hobbyists.

But I remember even in university, I would-- I was part of the IEEE section at my specific school. I used to build things like LED cubes. I used to build small robotics. For me, it was always very different, I would say, than what he's describing. I enjoy seeing things come to life, but I don't enjoy the mechanical aspects as much.

So for me, when I was, for example, building small robots for competitions in university, I understand that there's a very big need in, for example, selecting the right wheels for the robot. I was never interested by, let's say, the materials, the grip it may have, the torque. I was always interested by the electronics.

I was interested about building printed circuit boards. Like I've mentioned, I made this ruler for the giveaway at the Automate Trade Show, and I plan on doing more. So I enjoy soldering electronics. I have all sorts of different components that I like to build. But I also enjoy the IT side. I've spent a lot of my career not only on the OT side with PLCs, HMIs, and SCADA systems, I've also spent quite a bit of time working with data, collecting data, storing data in different databases, networking in terms of basically connecting different devices and different facilities.

I enjoy deploying servers quite a bit, so I enjoy playing with server hardware, but I also enjoy deploying the software that lives on top of it. So I would say that yes, I absolutely enjoy tech. I do have certain limits, I would say, and restrictions as to how I approach certain technology. And again, not to get overly philosophical, depending on the tool, there's going to be different nuances as to whether or not I want to share or expose some of my own personal data into the cloud provider, or I would like to keep it within the ecosystem that I choose.

So to give you an example I have my own personal network-attached storage, or NAS, if you will, and that is a server that is contained within my local network. I do have some cameras, so just IP-based cameras that collect images and then store that directly into the NAS, as opposed to some off-the-shelf solutions that you can buy from Google.

Amazon has a variation of similar technologies that goes through their servers. However, on the side of AI, for example, I believe that the models that we have available through Anthropic, for example, like Cloud Code, are significantly better than what you can currently do on-prem. Therefore, I am willing to pay for the subscription bases and then use them as part of some of my workflows to either work on the content, do some simple edits, experiment with coding, et cetera, et cetera.

But I guess to answer the question a little bit more briefly, I'm super passionate about technology outside of automation and controls. I enjoy all aspects of it. I recently even bought this newly released Fitbit because it allows me to also monitor some of the, I would say, signals that my body emits and then track my sleep, track my general rest rate, and then have some additional data, so not just the data from the plant floor, but also data that I can use in my daily life. But like I said, I am not on the extreme side. I do not pay extreme close attention. I know there's very high-end, for example, monitors and watches as an example. There's going to be rings. There's going to be implants in the biohacking space.

I talk to some of those individuals, but I'm not going to take my at least like hobby in some of these areas to that extreme. But I think it's always very diff... it's always interesting to discuss technology, I would say, at least for myself, and that's the reason why I've done so many videos. I do a podcast.

I write a lot of content, and I try to learn from other practitioners in our space as well as I maybe leverage some of their time that they have taken to learn about their the technologies, and then I can decide whether or not I should pursue that specific path.

We've got the last highly upvoted question. I believe I've answered this several times. I have a few videos on the channel about this topic, but let's take a look at what the user by the name of Praveen231105 is posting, and he says, " Is it possible to get into automation without an engineering degree? I am twenty-one pursuing bachelor's of..."

Maybe it's computer science, "... and side by side learning about automation PLC, RLC, etc. I wanted to come this field. Is this possible to get without a bachelor's in technology and diploma? Please help and how can I start my journey? Which things should I learn and any suggestion, please share it." So again, I've done a couple of videos on this.

We're not going to spend a whole lot of time in this discussion. It is absolutely possible. However, I have seen larger companies, especially gatekeep some of the positions if you do not have a degree, so there is a difference between is it possible versus is it the most optimal path. So the first question starts is what would you like to actually focus on?

Because the job of a technician versus an engineer is, I would say, personally inherently different. And of course, there's going to be a ton of overlap. It is not to say that one is better than the other. My general perspective is that technicians, again, and I'm generalizing like I said, there-- it's a bell curve.

Of course, there's going to be smarter technicians than a lot of different engineers, but technicians are usually focused on the day-to-day of the plant, more so forward-looking. What I mean by that is that a technician is going to handle maintenance, is going to handle work orders to make sure the systems continue to run, is going to run some smaller projects,

so they're going to look at, for example, modernize specific machines. Engineering teams that are outside of operations and maintenance are going to be much more forward-looking. So forward-looking Means that you are concerned with capital projects that may take one, two, three, sometimes five years to execute.

They will be doing a lot of research as to what technology should be coming into the plant to better operations. They will also be helping troubleshoot equipment, but that will usually not be part of the main function that they serve. The... All-- The other difference is, of course, technicians are going to be much more hands-on as opposed to engineers.

And again, that's not always the case. I have worked with engineers very comfortable going inside of panels, just as I've worked with technicians that are much better at programming PLCs. However, the typical, I would say, workload of a technician is gonna be being on the plant floor, making sure things are running, opening panels, working a little bit more with operators, working with the maintenance team, the mechanics to troubleshoot and fix issues.

Whereas engineers are going to be sitting, again, typically in their offices, they're going to be managing some of the projects, they're going to help allocate capital, they're going to sit in meetings a lot more, they're going to use software to complete their work, whether that's PLC programming, reviewing drawings, reviewing P&IDs.

So the job inherently is different. Now, going back to the question from this specific post is where would you like to land, and what is the most optimal path for you? I would say it is rare, at least in my experience, to, without a degree, go into an engineering role immediately. So typically what will happen is you can come in and with enough enthusiasm and of course landing the job interview, maybe impressing the interviewing a little bit, you will be put into an entry-level role where you can be, to an extent, I would say electrician/technician.

You will start by learning circuits. You will start by learning how to work in the field and usually move up the ranks to maybe from electrician to technician. At some point, you will be exposed to PLCs. Again, depends on the environment, depends on your mentor, your boss, of course. You will slowly learn and understand what it takes to maintain, program, and of course, run some projects.

I would generally, if I were to maybe put some ballpark numbers you're probably going to take ten years or so to go from absolutely zero experience on the plant floor to the point that you're now an engineer that's running projects, that's deploying equipment, that's doing a lot of the programming.

It can be faster, it can take longer. Again, depends on the environment. However, with a degree so if you go and sit for usually for four years in college and apply yourself, you can come out and almost immediately be in those positions. So now you have to ask yourself, would you like to progress, I would say at a slower pace and maybe learn some other technologies, or would you like to have a shortcut where you learn a lot of that?

I would say again, you're not going to maybe learn a lot of specific skills when it comes to, let's say, PLC programming, but you will learn electricity, you will learn electronics, you will learn design. You will generally learn control systems so that you can then have a shortcut into some of those positions that will require a degree.

The other important point to consider is when you apply to jobs in our profession, and I would say in general as well, when you're going to look at the job description and it is an engineering type of a role, they will usually list a either requirement or good to have is a bachelor's degree in engineering.

Now, how different firms evaluate that is of course going to be different, but the reality that I have seen is that if they have hundreds if not thousands of candidates, it is just easier for them to reject all those that do not have a degree and focus on the ones that do than curate in other different fashions.

So again, I want to be honest with the people entering our industry. Is it possible to get in without an engineering degree? Absolutely it is possible. Are you going to have different barriers? I would say so, yes, because I have experienced them myself, and I have witnessed candidates who were much better get rejected because they did not pursue a degree.

The other thing that you should consider, and I know a lot of engineers and technicians who have done this, is once you land a job, you will, in some instances, have the opportunity to continue pursuing some of those classes to finish up the degree. So I would highly recommend continuing to invest in your education and land something a little bit more formal.

So I do believe that certain certificates and knowledge are great, but a degree does open doors in our industry. And again, if you find that fortunate or unfortunate is of course a matter of opinion. I do believe that a degree is going to open doors for you. So make sure to do some research, maybe look at some job postings and figure out where you want to land, what are they asking for, start applying, and then figure out if that is the right path or if you'd like to have some other options and pursue the bachelor's in technology