PLC has been the standard of Industrial automation for decades, and embedded systems have been away from that area, mostly because of difficulty in design, developing, testing and deploying an embedded system unit.
But, as we are seeing, Embedded systems along with IOT (Connected micocontrollrs) has become so easy for prototyping and projects, people have started to develop fairly complecated projects at their homes.
So, Embedded IOT could be a potential replacement for PLC, as its easier, cheaper, simpler and can be customised to any requirement.
BUt, some of the drawbacks are :
- There is no set standard, similar to PLC
- Range of available sensors with industrial certification
- security
and many more…
The day Embedded IOT could become a PLC replacement for small scale industries and home industries is not too far away.