Heterogeneous Network of Automation Devices

Did you know about the IEC 61499 deployment magic: one software application runs on a network of heterogeneous devices?

A program in IEC 61499 is a network of function blocks, so one can confuse it with the FBD language of IEC 61131-3. But the difference is tremendous. The function block network of IEC 61499 is much more powerful!

Thanks to the event-based connections, the blocks work only when activated by events, not all the time as in usual PLCs. And the network presents a system-level view of the entire distributed system functionality, where single blocks may be running in different devices such as embedded controllers, communication hubs, HMI panels, edge servers, and many more.

Heterogeneous Network of Automation Devices
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