CoDeSys vs Embedded Approach to Electronic Control Design for Small Production Series: a Case Study

The use of electronic systems for the control of mobile fluid power applications has proved in the past decade to give a substantial improvement in flexibility, diagnosis and maintenance, but the development of ad hoc embedded devices, is not a viable and profitable choice for small productions, since amortization of the countless project development costs is not feasible. In this case, off-the-shelf CoDeSys-based ECUs, either "blind" or equipped with matched HMI devices, can be appealing since, even if their list price per unit is noticeably higher, they are already certified, all the hardware-development costs were met by the manufacturer, and a wide set of high-level software function libraries and development tools is available for a quick deployment of the control and visualization code. The potentials of CoDeSys-based electronic control systems were successfully verified on a case study application (the control of the rotary head in an hydraulic crawler drill), a performance comparison with an embedded system was made and specific issues related to code complexity were analyzed.