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PLC4X is a set of libraries for communicating with industrial programmable
logic controllers (PLCs) using a variety of protocols but with a shared API.
PLC4X has been incubating since 2017-12-18.
Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:
1. Building the community: The PPMC and committer group has a large
percentage of codecentric employees, we have been recruiting people
from other companies, but will have to continue these efforts for
establishing a healthy Apache community.
2. Onboarding of new committers: With PLC4X several people on the team
are not very familiar with the Apache Way. We have started and will
continue our efforts on this onboarding.
3. Make our first release
Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?
In order to get access to some of the specifications the ASF will eventually
have to become Members of some external foundations: OPC, EtherCat, Modbus …
these memberships usually have a free level, that allows us to use the
specifications but doesn’t result in any regular costs. We will have to discuss
these details with the ASF and the other foundations.
One of the external foundations (Profinet) doesn’t have a free membership. In
general, the CEO of the European branch of the Profinet Foundation has signaled
that it should be possible for the ASF to become a member and have an outside
company pay the membership fees, but we have to discuss the details (With them
as well as the ASF).
How has the community developed since the last report?
Christofer has invested most of his time in February spreading the word about
PLC4X.
A first POC has been created for the company “Kampf Schneid- und Wickeltechnik
GmbH & Co. KG”
Two articles for IoT Special editions of German tech magazines have been
submitted. The “JavaSPEKTURM – IoT Sonderheft” is scheduled for sale end or
March, the “iX – IoT Sonderheft” is scheduled later.
The university of Stuttgart has shown great interest in joining our effort, as
they had just started a project with a similar goal. Chris will continue
on-boarding efforts in March.
At this year’s AALE Conference in Cologne, Chris has talked to a lot of people
from different German universities. We’re hoping to get at least a hand full of
them on board too.
We have continuing our onboarding of new Apache committers (extended emails
with a lot of explanations on why we are doing things the way we are)
In the next few months we are expecting to spread the word and hopefully grow
the community due to the tech magazine articles as well as several talks on
different conferences.
How has the project developed since the last report?
The work on the RawSocket Netty transport which is a requirement to implement
protocols that are IP based, but are not TCP or UDP has continued and we are
currently waiting for infra to setup a dedicated Jenkins VM for our project so
we can enable the RawSocket releated tests.
We have finished a first version of the Beckhoff ADS driver, and are looking
forward to first tests with this.
The functionality of the S7 driver has improved due to experience collected
with the Kampf POC.
Next we are aiming to implement Modbus and OPC-UA protocols.
How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.
We have a mix of new participants and experienced Apache people involved.
So far, the new participants have shown great willingness and success in
adopting the Apache Way.
However, we still need to continue:
the on-boarding
increasing the diversity of the team
Also, will we need to decide and establish all the processes involved in
releasing software at Apache
[X] Initial setup
[X] Working towards first release
[ ] Community building
[ ] Nearing graduation
[ ] Other:
Date of last release:
XXXX-XX-XX
When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?
Signed-off-by:
[ ](plc4x) Greg Trasuk
Comments:
[X](plc4x) Justin Mclean
Comments:
[ ](plc4x) Luciano Resende
Comments:
[X](plc4x) Stefan Bodewig
PLC4X is a set of libraries for communicating with industrial programmable
logic controllers (PLCs) using a variety of protocols but with a shared API.
PLC4X has been incubating since 2017-12-18.
Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:
1. Building the community: The PPMC and committer group has a large percentage of
codecentric employees, we have been recruiting people from other companies, but
will have to continue these efforts for establishing a healthy Apache community.
Onboarding of new committers: With PLC4X several people on the team are not
very familiar with the Apache Way. We have started and will continue our
efforts on this onboarding.
2. Making our first release.
Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?
In order to get access to some of the specifications the ASF will eventually
have to become Members of some external foundations: OPC, EtherCat, Modbus …
these memberships usually have a free level, that allows us to use the
specifications but doesn’t result in any regular costs. We will have to discuss
these details with the ASF and the other foundations.
One of the external foundations (Profinet) doesn’t have a free membership. In
general, the CEO of the European branch of the Profinet Foundation has signaled
that it should be possible for the ASF to become a member and have an outside
company pay the membership fees, but we have to discuss the details (With them
as well as the ASF).
How has the community developed since the last report?
We have finished the process of getting setup at Apache.
The Podling Name Search has been resolved successfully
(https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PODLINGNAMESEARCH-136)
In of January a list of about 40 different companies, which have indicated
interest in PLC4X in personal discussions have been directly contacted
regarding our project, some have subscribed to our mailing lists.
A small number of new people have been popping up on our mailing lists.
On 23rd of January Christofer Dutz had a talk PLC4X at the Nortec 2018
conference in Hamburg (Production industry conference)
(https://www.nortec-hamburg.de/).
We have continuing our onboarding of new Apache committers (extended emails
with a lot of explanations on why we are doing things the way we are)
Testing coverage has been improved over the initial code base.
With Beckhoff, we managed to get a first major PLC vendor to support us with
software as well as technical support. We hope on this having a signal-effect
on other vendors.
How has the project developed since the last report?
Test coverage and SonarQube reported issues have been addressed hereby greatly
increasing the quality of the initial POC code.
A lot of code and architecture reviews have been done which lead to great
improvements in the API itself.
We have started work on a RawSocket Netty transport which is a requirement to
implement protocols that are IP based, but are not TCP or UDP.
We have started work on implementing a driver for the Beckhoff ADS protocol.
(Beckhoff has been very helpful with providing Specs and Support for setting
up a test environment.)
How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.
[X] Initial setup
[X] Working towards first release
[X] Community building
[ ] Nearing graduation
[ ] Other:
Date of last release:
None yet
When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?
None elected beyond initial committers.
Signed-off-by:
[ ](plc4x) Greg Trasuk
Comments:
[X](plc4x) Justin Mclean
Comments:
[X](plc4x) Luciano Resende
Comments:
[ ](plc4x) Stefan Bodewig
Comments: