I was surprised to see that PLC4x supports the Firmata protocol. This is something that is often used for talking to arduino scale embedded devices. I have been part of several discussions around where it would be possible to use alternative solutions to the traditional and expensive PLC. Has the development of a common API interface, that of PLC4x, over different hardware controllers given any insight on the following questions:
1. Why is there no established ecosystem for hobbiest level PLC programming? If you can't afford a PLC and all the associated licenses what do you fall back on to, is it embedded systems? Does that require moving from the standard PLC languages/environments for C/C++ 2. PLC programming and embedded programming models appear very different. For example PLC programming model relies on a cycle or read all inputs at once, execute scan cycle, write all outputs at once, in arduino embedded reading a pin is executed at call time. Are these two models incompatible or more similar than they first appear?
