Arduino Opta PLC: Second Impressions

Arduino Opta PLC: My Honest Experience (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)
In this video, I dive into my hands-on experience with the Arduino Opta PLC, sharing the highs and lows of working with this "programmable logic relay."

Here's what I cover:
• Arduino PLC IDE Issues: Why I think it's poor and why C++ in the original Arduino IDE is the only real option.
• Setup Struggles: From Ethernet connectivity headaches to USB crashes and license activation woes, it took me 2 hours just to connect.
• Hardware Highlights: Digital and analog inputs (0-10V, not 4-20mA), a programmable user button, onboard RS485, and built-in Modbus RTU—no extra comms module required!
• Bluetooth Confusion: Is it pointless? I couldn’t find a single use case online.
• WiFi and Ethernet Potential: Excited to explore API calls and internet integration for the PLC.
• Documentation Woes: Most resources are for the original Arduino IDE, with little support for the Arduino PLC IDE.
• Mixing PLC and Arduino: A standout feature allowing standard Arduino sketches in the PLC IDE.
• Interrupts and Inputs: The ability to add interrupts is a major plus.

Watch to see if the Arduino Opta PLC is worth the hype or if it’s just another product that falls short.

👉 Let me know your thoughts or share your experiences in the comments!

[thetooth]

Good review, I picked one up recently for a diy project. Yeah, that PLC IDE is an absolute dead end, it's not been updated since 2023 and if you trace the origin of the software it comes from a project called openPLC, which was purchased by autonomy logic around 2021. They did some amount of work, got bored and sold/licensed it to arduino, now the original openPLC developers at back at it without any support from autonomy or arduino. Just a complete and utter disaster on all fronts.

If you just stick to the arduino environment it's a really powerful little box, I have it talking modbus RTU to a bunch of sensors, controlling some pumps and reporting the status over MQTT. But MAN is the software something you have to be capable of dealing with, absolutely nothing is guided or abstracted away, even something as basic as a TON timer is something you have to make yourself.

[Supden]

Totally agree with having IO status lights on the unit, such a missed insight!

[LionTree]

Great video! Thanks for the second opinion.

[BER-UK]

Wasn't just me that had difficulty then!

[michaelmorand]

Everything about arduino is programable. You need to add the led's as a output in the logic.

[simonprice-hnsx]

The 4 LED's are programable and can be used to indicate the OP relay state.

[johngangemi]

If they are marketing this thing is a PLC, it should work as a PLC. That means all features should be available over the PLC runtime and programming languages not just C/C++ code.

It still seems half baked to me.

I watched your videos because you reviewed it as a PLC. Not a microcontroller development board in a PLC like chassis.

Great review.

Taking 2 to 3 hours to get the thing to run is stupid. They need to do better with the software and firmware.

For the price it is great value but the quality of the software needs to improve.

[the_falln.]

Not sure the difference between OPTA vs portenta machine control

[simonprice-hnsx]

Finder have announced CODESYS version of the OPTA for Q1 2025