Home Lab advice needed

I am building a home lab using a Wago PLC (750-841) and some I/O modules. My goal is not to be a PLC programmer, but rather to just further my knowledge in that area. I am a software engineer, and work in the Internet of Things space, and interfacing with PLC's and RTU's is of interest to me, and I like to get my hands dirty.

I would like in my lab both digital and analog I/O. I have digital input of 24V and digital output of 24V. I figure I will just hook some 24V lights up to these and some switches, and that would be some good digital components.

What about the analog I/O, any recommendations? I was thinking maybe just connecting a potentiometer/knob to an Analog input, and then looking at the output on a meter. Trying to determine which Wago cards make the most sense, some measure resistance, some voltage and some current.

If anyone has some interesting ideas for basic things that would be useful in a lab please let me know (fan, stack light, etc). I can always add to it, but I wanted to start off with something that would be very useful. My programs will be basic at first as I am just learning Codesys, but I will also be interfacing to an external Modbus Master via software as well.

Thanks for any advice.

As a programmer I'd think that the communications capabilities of the CoDeSys PLCs would interest you most. Since the 750-841 is an older unit I doubt that it works with the SQL library. There are some interesting things in there like FTP support but with the small on-board flash there's not a lot that you can do with it in the real world.

I LOVE these PLCs for writing protocols both over standard serial links and ethernet. They support pointers too which is great for me as a programmer. Finally, be sure to check out the OSCAT library.

Good luck and feel free to ask questions,

Yosi

What type of control are you interested in?

well you can use the simulator, it is a lot cheaper, and if you want indeed analog i/o i would go for Voltage input and milliamps output.
you can also make a servo motor etc, however they are expensive to start.

PID heater

One of the things for you could be a 4-20 ma temperature in ( RTD to 4-20 ma xmiter) that way you still have spare 4-20 ma inputs for other inputs. You could use this with an output to a solid state relay controlling a heater element with the probe hooked close to it. It would let you program a PID control with pulsed time output. This way you could learn how to tune a working loop.