Building the Next Generation of Smart PLC's With the ctrlX CORE and InfluxDB

The article discusses the evolution of Program Logic Controllers (PLCs) and how they are being adapted to meet the demands of modern manufacturing. It introduces a next-generation PLC called ctrlX core by Rexroth, which provides flexibility in hardware specifications and uses a Linux operating system for extensibility. The article also explores how open source projects like InfluxDB and Grafana can be integrated with this platform to create an anomaly detection stack. It explains the role of InfluxDB as an edge data historian and its benefits, such as high-throughput data ingestion, schema-on-write flexibility, low system requirements, advanced time-based queries, and high-resolution timestamps. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of adapting PLCs to accommodate data extraction, storage, and analysis in Industry 4.0 manufacturing environments.