Opto 22 Exhibitor Demo Break Through the Status Quo in Industrial Automation

Tired of closed PLC platforms with proprietary protocols and high licensing costs? This presentation shows you how Opto 22's groov products can help you break through the status quo in industrial automation. With groov EPIC and RIO systems running Ignition Edge out-of-the-box, you can control edge operations and securely democratize production data from the plant floor to IT systems—even to the cloud. Discover the open, cybersecure architecture and free support and training resources that make Opto 22 groov hardware ideal for your next Ignition project.

Transcript:

00:02
Dan White: Hello, Ignition community. How's everybody doing?

00:05
Audience: Good.

00:08
Dan White: Alright. My name is Dan White. I'm Opto 22's Director of Technical Marketing. I've got Garrick Reichert here with me. He's our Senior Application Engineer. And in the theme of "breakthrough" for this year's ICC, we're gonna present to you how you can break through the status quo in industrial automation. So I know you all came here to see a demo, but before we get into that, and Garrick's gonna take the lead on that, I am going to give you a little bit of context and who we are and what we do and how we've done it. So this is where we do everything. It's out at our headquarters in Temecula, California. Beautiful, sunny Southern Cal. Everything is done there. So the design, the manufacture, the support, all of our applications engineering, everything is done here in the USA at our Opto 22 HQ. And actually this year we are celebrating a big milestone. Just last month we were out at Opto celebrating our 50th-year anniversary. So how about that?

01:10
Dan White: Good stuff. And we plan to be around another 50 and we're gonna talk a little bit about how. So for those of you who don't know Opto 22 or haven't heard of us before, we are a 50-year technology innovator from SSR, solid state relays, and an innovative way to manufacture those back in the 1970s, to PC-based I/O and I/O and control systems, to mobility and web-based visualization, and IIoT. We're a market leader in intelligent and distributed I/O systems. We've got millions, hundreds of millions of I/O at over 10,000, probably more, global customers. Yeah, a worldwide reputation for quality, backed by our guaranteed-for-life I/O. So any Opto I/O, and we'll get into a little bit more of that later, but it is guaranteed for life.

02:02
Dan White: Unique in the industry for enabling simple and secure democratization of OT data. A lot of big words in there, but we're gonna talk about that in a minute. And of course, made in the USA and trusted by lots of companies all over the globe. So what is the problem that our products are... That our company is trying to solve with these products. A big part of it is what you see on this screen. So picture's worth a thousand words, and I'm sure many of you guys have seen things like this architecture out in the world. Does this thing have a little laser pointer? So complicated, layered architectures with unsecured connections and closed-off systems. And we're trying to simplify that for you guys. We know what you see out there. We know what this automation stack looks like but the status quo will not suffice.

02:53
Dan White: Using devices like this one that Garrick is gonna demonstrate for you in a bit, we can simplify that architecture. We can provide valuable production data to stakeholders all across the business, all across, and you can do it all with the best cybersecurity tool sets on the market. So what are these products? Well, in theme with Ignition, we've got what we call Ignition I/O, or Flexible I/O on our groov RIO. So the groov RIO is a single block of I/O with software-configurable, eight software-configurable I/O points. It's got two output relays and it even runs Ignition Edge right on board. We've got another version that does energy monitoring. And in my early days with Opto 22, I actually came in as a customer of Opto 22. And what really drew me in was the modularity. And in a lot of ways, that's really what draws a lot of us to Ignition, is that modularity of the architecture. You don't always need everything. Sometimes a little piece will do. Sometimes you need more.

03:56
Dan White: So sometimes you might choose to run Ignition without I/O. And we've run into a lot of cases where we've got customers that wanna run Ignition out at the edge but they maybe don't need physical I/O. Maybe they've already got some PLCs running. Maybe they just want to use it as an edge gateway. And that's where you see here our EPIC Chassis 0 system. So Ignition without I/O. And then of course traditional PLC applications where you need a lot of I/O. And we've got I/O, all types of I/O. Digital I/O, analog I/O, serial I/O. To do just about any type of control platform that you'll see out there. And this is what Garrick is gonna be demoing for you guys today. So stay tuned for that. And then why would you choose to use Opto 22 I/O?

04:44
Dan White: A big part of it is the cost of ownership. We know what it's like out there. We know that sometimes you call and get support, and the first question is, "What's your account number? Where's your credit card number?" At Opto 22, we believe in supporting our customers. If they buy our hardware, we're gonna help them make sure, we're gonna help you make sure that you can use it and that you have all the free tools available to do that. So that means free support. If you call Opto 22 right now, Elizabeth will answer the phone. She'll connect you to an engineer, somebody who's ready to help you, and you're not gonna have to pull out the wallet to do that. Free programming tools, and we'll talk a bit about more what those programming tools are. And then, of course, as I mentioned before, guaranteed lifetime I/O. Built on open standards. So, we don't want customers to come in and feel like they're locked into this architecture of, I have to use this PLC, and I have to use this HMI, and I have to use this OPC server. From the early days at Opto, we've been offering tool kits to allow you to run your programs on your own Windows applications, C++, .NET.

05:54
Dan White: Nowadays, it's Python and all kinds of other tool kits to allow you to have this open architecture and supporting of open protocols and even a lot of proprietary protocols as well. Security is a huge part of what we do. So just because we have open architectures does not mean that these products are not secure. We designed everything that you're about to see today with security in mind. Security, these products have been tested, penetration tested by government applications, by cybersecurity applications, and they pass the test. And we're gonna get into all those fun tools in a little bit. And then of course, robust and reliable. You can't guarantee anything for life if you're not making good stuff. And at Opto, we believe that our stuff's gonna last a lifetime. And that's why when it does fail, if it does fail, we stand behind it 100%. And it's designed to operate in the harshest environments, -20C° to 70C°, hazardous locations. You'll find them out on oil rigs. You'll find them just about anywhere in food and beverage, all kinds of applications. And then innovation.

07:04
Dan White: We've been, innovation has been at the core of what Opto 22 has been doing for 50 years, from an innovative method for making solid state relays, to innovative ways to allow customers back in the '80s to run programs from their IBM 16-bit computer and into a real industrial-grade I/O, to being one of the founding members of the OPC Foundation in the '90s, and of course, nowadays, the Eclipse Foundation that supports MQTT and is trying to spread that message for MQTT and all the things we can do in that space. So now, to kind of dig in a little bit more, what are all these open standards you're talking about? So everything that you see here is supported on groov EPIC. And in the age of IIoT, Digital Transformation, or whatever you want to call it, the data is more important than ever. And you might hear us talking about or using the term democratizing the data to explain this idea that we wanna make the data available to anybody who wants to use it, anybody who can use it in the business, or even outside the business. And so we're gonna collect a lot of that data at the edge. It could be machine data, it could be energy data, OEE, production data.

08:26
Dan White: The people in the business need that data, both on the OT operational side and on the IT side and the business side. And so that's why we choose to support everything you see here. And on top of open protocols, we support OPP. I don't know if you're down with OPP, but for those of you Gen Z-ers, this is an oldies band, or really an oldies rap group from the '90s. But we support other people's protocols as well, through having tools on board like Ignition and [Ignition] Edge, like CODESYS and OpenIEC programming platform, that supports things like EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, EtherCAT, all the industrial protocols that you guys see out there every day. So I like the open standards a little bit better. Talking about the architecture and the security of groov EPIC and RIO as well, open is great and open means accessible. But does open mean not secure? We're here to tell you, no. Open does not necessarily mean not secure. Open standards, open architectures, they're all good, but we don't sacrifice on the security side. And you know, most PLCs that you see out there on plant floors today are the least cyber secure device in that building. They've got open ports. They've got, anybody who comes up with a laptop could get in there and cripple your operation.

09:52
Dan White: So in today's environment, if you're gonna democratize all this data, you better do it securely, and that's why we support things like an integrated firewall on our groov EPIC, like encryption and security certificates that you can either create yourself through a self-signed CA or go to a GoDaddy-type place and create your own CAs through there. We've got an OpenVPN client on our groov, so you can securely connect through a VPN tunnel. We've got network segmentation, but what you see in the picture here and what I've been talking about if you've come by and seen us at the booth all week, is this idea of the separated, isolated networks between your OT and your IT. We've got zero trust user management. So when you plug in your groov EPIC for the first time, the first thing you're gonna have to do is create a username and password. There's no backdoor. There's no default username and password. You plug it in, you set it up. And of course, MQTT pub/sub, which allows us to securely pump data to on-premise brokers or cloud-based brokers without ever having to open up a port in our firewall and expose your important processes that are critical to operation.

11:05
Dan White: And so on top of that we've talked a little bit about before about the difference between the Opto... The Opto experience is the free support. You've got free resources on here for support, and if you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this stuff sounds good, I'm a little bit intrigued." Well, there's lots of ways to learn about it and get more information and get help once you've got your EPIC and you're starting to play around with it and you go, "Oh, I need this or that." Hop on our website, right in opto22.com, you'll go into chat. Hop in our chat and I think a lot of times people see those chat bubbles pop up in the website and they start typing and they get some automated response. But when you go into our chats, you're gonna get guys like Garrick. You're gonna get guys like Justin back at headquarters today. You're gonna get trained engineers who know our stuff standing by, ready to answer your questions. There's other ways. If you're not into live chat and maybe you don't have a critical issue that needs to be handled in that very moment, feel free to hit us up on email.

12:09
Dan White: We've got also our direct phone line. Like I said, you can call Opto. You'll get a person on the phone. We've also got, and this is great, similar to the Ignition community, the Opto community's got a beautiful online forum that is factory manned by our engineers. It's community guided, so get in there, ask questions, share ideas. That's what it's all about, is making sure that our community is rich with ideas and sharing and keeping it going. So all our love and support for free. And if you don't need to talk to somebody, maybe you're more of a self-guided learner. We've got free training on OptoU, modular setup for all the tools on your groov EPIC. We've got our online configuration tools that'll help you to build out your system, choose your I/O modules, choose your power supplies, your software licenses, customize your system. If you're learning about IoT and how to build out an IoT architecture, we've got great tools like this IoT System Architecture Builder that'll show you everything from down at the plant floor, up to the cloud, how to do it securely, how to do it safely. Amazing videos on YouTube and on our website. Some of the most-watched videos on Node-RED. Our engineer, Terry, who you guys may see later at the Build-a-Thon, is prolific on there. And of course, you'll notice one of the top videos that pulled up was these "How to Run Ignition Edge with OPC or MQTT on Your EPIC."

13:45
Dan White: And then we've got our developer page. So for the guys that like to get down into the nitty gritty, developers that wanna program with Python or with C++ or .NET or wanna connect to our groovs using an API, it's all there. It's all shared. We like to keep it open and flexible. I talked a little bit about the robust reliability of the hardware and the lifetime guarantee. Well, back in 1974, it was that thing over there. In 2018, we launched groov EPIC. And it's all guaranteed for life, all of the solid state I/Os. So we really, we'll stand behind it. We'll make sure it works for you. And if it doesn't work for you, we will replace it right away. And then our community, we've got Opto partners, many... some of you in this room, many also Ignition partners. You can find those on our website. We've got distribution all over the country and as well all over the world. So you shouldn't have a hard time getting Opto gear all around the globe. If you don't see your logo and you're in this room and you're an Ignition and Opto partner and you don't see your logo, I have to apologize. I'm sure I missed a few, but we are proud supporters of the Ignition community.

15:07
Dan White: Many of our longtime integrators are also Ignition integrators. Some of the newer integrators have come to us from Ignition, and some of our newer Inductive integrators have come over from us. So we've got a really thriving group of people out there sharing great ideas, building out great applications, changing the world, and if you don't see your name, I apologize. In that theme of sharing ideas, we love to share success stories. We've got our case study program where we love talking to integrators and end users, finding out about their story, sharing in these applications, and I'm happy to talk to anybody who has a neat application using our gear and wants to get it out there for the rest of the world to see. Of course, we work well with others. Another great reason, you see a lot of companies up on this list that are here today.

16:02
Dan White: Your Inductive, your Cirrus Link, Snowflake. Partner communities are big in what we do. We know that there's a lot of applications out there that we can't do alone, and that Inductive can't do alone. But with this rich network and this rich ecosystem of partners, we can get it done together. And so, as promised, Garrick is ready to show off the latest and greatest. If you like what you have seen or what you're about to see, don't forget to check out Benson's presentation tomorrow. He's got some great stuff with Ignition Exchange resources, UDTs, Perspective templates, and a great energy monitoring application. So let's go. Garrick, take it away.

16:51
Garrick Reichert: Alright, we'll shift gears here and do the inverse of the grade school experience where we tell and then we're gonna show. First of all, this is a PLC out of the box. That's what it's made to do. The base functionality, the base application is a PLC and we're all at least familiar with that in this community, so we're gonna start there and we're gonna build and I'm gonna show you what this thing can do and what we can do with all the power and then introduce some new features that are coming out that I'm excited to show you that'll be out in the near future. As I said, this is a PLC. PLCs have I/O. Dan mentioned I/O, talking about digital, talking about analog. We also have what's called a mix module, which is software programmable I/O. So I'm gonna show you that where we can come in and I can configure this channel to be whatever you need to be to meet your needs there. We've got thermocouples, we've got inputs, outputs, digital, analog. So all of this is available on this one I/O unit and it's also available on the groov RIO, if you're familiar with that, as a standalone module.

17:58
Garrick Reichert: Also within this I/O structure we've got typical wiring specs and all this stuff here, so you can kind of see what it looks like if you would need to wire it up, the actual product specifications for those, and all that's available right here on the unit. So this is all on the unit. I guess I should open with that for those of you who are new. This is actually a web server running on the unit called groov Manage. And you can see up here that I am connected to that via its host name, not an IP address. We can live on those DHCP networks. We can also be secure on those DHCP networks. So IT doesn't feel that kind of ire in the back of their neck when a system like this is deployed. They know that it is trusted in their trust store. So we have all the I/O. Dan also mentioned the controller options. We do have two control options, our PAC control, flowchart-based language, and the CODESYS control. Which is a IEC 61131-3 standard tool set. If you wanna learn more about those, once again, come by the booth after this. We can talk about those.

18:55
Garrick Reichert: We offer our lightweight groov view HMI. If you wanna just do some basic stuff, Node-RED onboard, which is an open source platform that you can use to kind of move data. It's got a lot of cool nodes, including an Ignition node. If you wanted to get data from some source into Ignition, Node-RED can be that avenue that you might wanna use. So these are all tools we're gonna provide. And then you just pick and choose the ones that you want to use to suit your application. Obviously, the next one being Ignition onboard. And so we run Ignition or Ignition Edge. We prefer Ignition Edge, but we can run Ignition on this platform should you need it to run, maybe say, a small historian, where we can spin up a little database, run it local on the unit, give you that kind of local historian, and that you can manage and keep to yourself there within your system without having to go out and get in the SCADA's way and maybe involve IT in this sort of thing. We can handle that data management there.

19:49
Garrick Reichert: We'll get back into the Ignition vein at the end of this. I just wanna touch a few more things regarding, as Dan said, data democratization. We have on board as well OPC UA server capabilities, direct MQTT with Sparkplug B, transmission capabilities, if you would need that in your environment as well, as well as the networking. Full dual isolated NICs on board. And as you can see, this device is actually connected on multiple networks. I am on a static network up there on that "Ethernet 0."

20:19
Garrick Reichert: And then I'm on a DHCP network on that "Ethernet 1." And that DHCP network is actually connected to a cell modem here, which is transmitting data out via MQTT to the cloud. And we'll showcase that in a minute as well. Also, as Dan mentioned, we also have that open VPN tunnel, which is also connected. So anyone that had the credentials on their laptop anywhere in the world with an Ethernet connection could securely log into this unit and do what they needed to do, whether it be troubleshooting maintenance or anything like that.

20:47
Garrick Reichert: We have a couple other features here. One that I will touch on is port redirect. A lot of our Ignition customers can find this very useful in that it allows us to create a software bridge between those isolated NICs that allows us, if we're running that unsecured network with other PLCs that need to be secured, we can jump that bridge. You can get in, program those PLCs, remove that redirect, and then it's like they've never been there and they're completely isolated again.

21:14
Garrick Reichert: All of this can be facilitated directly on the unit or via Ignition using API calls and things like that. So you can program this in your Ignition environment to allow your techs to create these rules and maybe enable VPN, enable the port redirect, jump into their PLC of choice, program it and back out. And now you've created an audit log of that, of every time they checked one of those boxes to enable access to that, you've got that logged in there.

21:42
Garrick Reichert: The next big one is, as he mentioned, security. He mentioned the web server certs. So this device allows web server certs. As we mentioned, I showed you I am secure. It is in my trust store. You can generate the CSR, send it to your IT department. IT department will send you back a nice certificate you can load onto this device, knowing that everywhere on your network, this is a trusted device, like a web share, or maybe a database, things that you would routinely access with your PC, knowing that it is trusted, and I have access to it.

22:09
Garrick Reichert: Also, the opposite of that, we can put stuff into our trust store if we need to connect to things, MQTT listed, other things up there, data services, databases, things like that, where I wanna know that I'm connecting to a trusted version when I transmit data. So it works both ways with that. So we can do that and provide that level of IT security that many to all PLCs cannot. And then a custom built-in firewall. So this allows you to create custom rules on those different Ethernet ports, eth0, eth1, VPN. That allows you to inhibit access to certain functions. Maybe you don't want someone using CODESYS over the tunnel. We can take that and disable that over VPN. Now, someone has to be on eth0 on the static network to just program the unit.

22:56
Garrick Reichert: So we're locking it down in different ways so that you can tailor it to what works best for your application. It's not a, "You can only do X and that's the only way we can secure this." We've given you the options, we're gonna give you all the tools that you need to secure it within your infrastructure. The next one with security in mind is that accounts. Dan had mentioned creating a user account out of the box. You do have to define one local user as a local admin. But beyond that, we have access to LDAP, Active Directory Networks, directory, so that we can let IT manage the user password stuff. So now IT handles when do we update passwords. IT handles when an employee gets let go, HR sends them the email, that account is now locked out and does not have access to the system. Because in previous iterations of HMIs, you might have a guest, an admin, an engineer account, and by the end of the week, there's a sticky note with the admin password on the HMI itself. I'm speaking from experience.

23:55
Garrick Reichert: This eliminates that need, and lets it all be managed externally so that the peace of mind you guys have in IT is the same. And then we get into info and help. These are just, we can go into these details later if you guys want to learn more. We have a full RESTful API suit on board that you could leverage if you wanted to make RESTful API calls to get any bit of data out of this system, I/O data, configuration data, things like that. It's all available to you within the system. But I wanna get in and kind of focus on Ignition here at the end of this before we jump to a Q&A section. And I know you guys probably can't see on the front display too well, it's pretty small, but if you wanna come take a look at it after this, you can see this. This device is actually running a beta version of our upcoming 4.0 EPIC firmware that now allows or will allow you to run a Perspective client on the front touch to screen here.

24:47
Garrick Reichert: So now you can actually leverage all this power. All of these things are templates that have UDTs behind them and Ignition that now I can just deploy on my Edge gateway, run it here directly without having to worry about, "Do I create a custom interface here? Is it managed where? Where's the tags?" We're building it all in that system. So you can kind of tell this is Opto 22's Ignition Cloud Edition that we are running has all of our demos on it, as you can see on the left. And I am currently focused on this demo here, connected over MQTT. And we can go ahead and start a process on it. So there's got a car wash simulated. And you'll note if you're close enough, you'll be able to see the color change on these because these are the same built templates here. So we can walk through it as it starts. You'll see the things start changing color between here and there. Since we're leveraging the same templates, there's not a disconnect if I use a third-party HMI or anything like that. It's all built into one platform: Ignition.

25:44
Garrick Reichert: And so that's how we leverage that, we can use this to bring a lot of resources in and pretty powerfully deploy these systems now and in the future. 4.0, we're really excited about it. There's one other thing I wanna mention, there's a lot of other stuff that might interest this crowd and this audience specifically before we spend a couple of minutes on Q&A for any of those that you might have, is we're also going to be introducing in a kind of power user capacity, the ability to do containerization on these units. So, kind of one of those things that some of our customers, particularly this type of audience, might be very interested to know and be able to utilize and grow and flex some of the power that can be involved in this unit.

26:26
Garrick Reichert: And yeah, any of you could go to ice.groov.com right now and you could go to this unit and you could start seeing the data that's flowing from there. So, that's what we like to see. We wanted the power to the people, data democratization. And with that, we'll open it up to questions for Dan and I. And if you guys got anything, we got a couple of minutes.

26:43
Audience Member 1: That initial password that you're talking about. So you buy a new device, you put in the first username and password. But then you said the other username and passwords can be handled by LDAP or whatever. But that initial username and password still on there. So the employee gets removed, but they may still know that password.

27:04
Garrick Reichert: That would typically be set up by the initial engineer. So there is a little bit, you could change that password. It's always passwords...

27:09
Audience Member 1: Well, that was my question. Can it be changed through the REST API?

27:13
Garrick Reichert: Passwords, can passwords be set?

27:15
Audience Member 1: Is that a dumb question?

27:16
Garrick Reichert: I don't believe passwords can be changed. No, it's not a dumb question. That's a good question. 'Cause we have a public-facing API, and so there's a lot of inter-working. I don't believe passwords...

27:24
Audience Member 1: That way, if you did have an employee leave, you could use the REST API... Your fleet of devices could get all changed at the same time.

27:32
Garrick Reichert: Yes.

27:32
Audience Member 1: Okay. Just a thought.

27:33
Garrick Reichert: No, no. Thank you for that. Maybe I have to disable the buzzer here before too long.

27:40
Dan White: We answered everyone's questions? Oh, there's one.

27:46
Audience Member 2: Are there any plans for other VPNs besides OpenVPN like WireGuard or Tailscale?

27:51
Garrick Reichert: Yes, there are. We've actually done because, as I mentioned, with containerization and things like that, you would be able to load whatever software you might need and you can test that out, see if it works. We have had customers use other VPN software on board in the past. So that's definitely gonna be an option.

28:11
Audience Member 3: A quick question, you can connect HDMI to that to have a larger screen?

28:18
Garrick Reichert: Yes.

28:19
Audience Member 3: How many can you connect, just one?

28:22
Garrick Reichert: Just one HDMI port with dual USB, so you could extend this display to a larger monitor, touch screen, keyboard, mouse, if you wanted to put it in like, you know, a control room type environment where you would wanna have that. But yeah, that is also an option and available.

28:37
Audience Member 4: It came with Node-RED installed on it. Can that control the I/O as well or is it?

28:42
Garrick Reichert: Yes. Yeah. Okay...

28:44
Dan White: We've got seven nodes that are in there that you can use to control I/O, read and write I/O, scan I/O, read and write from our UI, or read and write from our PAC control programming software. Or if you're using CODESYS, you could use OPC nodes to read and write. So yeah, Node-RED is fully compatible communicating with I/O with variables, process variables as well.

29:08
Audience Member 5: Can the user management for groov manage the LDAP? Can that be used in CODESYS as well?

29:16
Garrick Reichert: No, it cannot right now. CODESYS has its own user management groups if you need to configure and set those up. You'd have to do it within that environment 'cause that's all the IDE side compiled from external.

29:25
Audience Member 5: Thank you.

29:27 
Audience Member 6: In the new version, is PAC Control able to do online editing now?

29:34
Garrick Reichert: PAC Control will function the same as it has always functioned. But good question.

29:40
Dan White: For those of you who aren't familiar with PAC Control, it's our legacy programming environment that's been with us since the '80s. And so a bit limited in terms of that.

29:48
Garrick Reichert: Yeah.

29:53
Audience Member 7: I was curious about the CODESYS runtime versus Ignition and what kind of controls are there to keep one from hosing the other, I guess, and making sure that your PLC functions are...

30:05
Garrick Reichert: Yeah, the PLC is a separate runtime engine that grabs a real-time thread and is totally dedicated to the PLC operations. Ignition is gonna... It's just like if you were in the field with a standard PLC and an Ignition at a PC. It's gonna function exactly like that.

30:19
Audience Member 7: Thank you.

30:22
Audience Member 8: Forgive me, I'm not familiar with you guys' product at all, it's first time I've had experience with it. So does it have to operate as an edge gateway and remote to Ignition or can it operate as a standalone PLC over Modbus TCP as well and interface with everything that...

30:37
Dan White: Yes, that's the latter. It does not have to run Ignition. It comes with Ignition pre-installed as a convenience and your choice whether or not you license it. In some cases you want that Edge gateway because you want that redundancy at the edge and that store-and-forward capabilities and things like that. But in other cases you may have a robust network and maybe you just want to publish MQTT data or expose OPC data to Ignition or to the software platform of your choice and that's also totally well and good. We put all the tools there, but you don't have to use them all.

31:07
Audience Member 8: And it can do both simultaneously, right?

31:08
Dan White: Yes, absolutely.

31:08
Garrick Reichert: Yes. Yeah, remember I started. This is a PLC.

31:13
Audience Member 8: Thank you guys.

31:13
Garrick Reichert: First and foremost.

31:14
Dan White: I'm glad you said that too, 'cause I think sometimes we talk all about this stuff and then people forget it. You know, many of our applications are traditional PLC control applications.

31:24
Moderator: Last one.

31:27
Audience Member 9: With the remote I/O is it possible to use that to transmit I/O from one of those modules to say another one at another end. Analog input on one side, analog output to the other remote I/O?

31:38
Dan White: Sure, I think.

31:39
Garrick Reichert: Yeah, I mean of course, like standard PLC functions we can wrap it past anything we need to in the system.

31:44
Dan White: You wanna put an output signal out of one and then wire it to an input of another?

31:46
Garrick Reichert: And put, wire it to another? Or even through programmatically?

31:50
Dan White: A lot of our learning centers even do that. I know that sometimes we've got inputs wired back to outputs just to show the dual functionality. Yeah, you can do that.

32:00
Moderator: We're at time.

32:00
Garrick Reichert: Alright. Thank you guys for attending.

32:02
Dan White: Thanks guys. Stop by the booth if you have any other questions.