Temporal Characteristics of CodeSys Programmed Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black Embedded Devices

Abstract

The area of application of embedded devices has grown rapidly in last years. From more than couple of years it is even possible to program them using software dedicated formerly only to industrial purposes, i.e. CODESYS development platform. As a result, embedded devices are a lot cheaper alternative to Programmable Logic Controller PLC. In that case however, their temporal characteristics should be taken into consideration. Shortly speaking, one should consider the time needed for the embedded device to react to external stimulus. Moreover, the response time is not constant and depends on other tasks being realized by a given device, such as communication task. That issue is analyzed in the following paper in case of Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black embedded devices and Ethercat and Modbus communication protocols.