The lectures give students an insight into process automation and the required components and systems. Communication systems for process data transmission (PROFINET, Ethernet, etc.) as well as real-time operating systems and real-time applications for process control are dealt with.

The knowledge gained in the lecture is used in a practical course to automate the model of an industrial plant via a field bus system. The task of the students in the practical course is to create a real-time control software under Linux with which the microcontroller boards are controlled. The PROFINET network must be projected and configured for this purpose. The microcontroller boards can then be operated via PC. The experimental setup and all components used can be seen in Fig. 2.

In the second step, a unit for operating and monitoring the system is created. For this purpose, a UDP server client application is created under Linux. The server provides the process data and the client can retrieve this data from the server via UDP. The data exchange between the UDP server and the control application takes place using shared memory under Linux.