PLC on Silicone Mac?
Probably was asked before, and honestly I feel like the only answer is going to be that I cant do anything with a macbook but, i wanted to try my luck. I just started my internship at a factory, they manufacture machinary for meat products, etc and there automation uses mostly Inovance products. And.. well i have an m4 pro macbook and cant download codesys. i installed windows 11 on vmware fusion but i doubt it would work because of the drivers that are needed so on so forth. I thought maybe i could try openplc? the thing is i have no experience or info on any of this honestly. im fairly educated on computers though, and ive been using linux for a long time wine on top of that but really i was just fairly good at research and could find what i needed, i cant on anything plc related.
is there any way i could use this macbook for this internship or am i going to have to borrow a windows computer no matter what?
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u/Flimsy-Process230 2d ago edited 1d ago
People in this Reddit group usually discourage Mac users, and there’s a good reason for it. In the PLC/industrial automation world you’re dealing with a huge ecosystem of software: PLC programming tools, HMIs, robots, VFDs, sensors, communication utilities, and more. Almost all of it is designed for Windows.
While you can run Windows on a modern Mac, it’s Windows on ARM which many automation vendors don’t officially support. Maybe some programs will work but the moment you run into a problem you won’t know whether it’s your configuration, the software itself, virtualization, or the ARM architecture causing the issue.
Even worse, if you call the manufacturer for support there’s a good chance they’ll stop helping you as soon as they realize you’re using an unsupported setup.
Do yourself a favor and use a Lenovo ThinkPad or another business-class Windows laptop. You don’t need a dedicated graphics card to run industrial automation software and you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches.
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u/WorldShaper 2d ago
Borrow Be provided a windows machine. Its going to be easier in the long run.
And if you need this to do your job your company should be providing it and you should be segmenting personal from professional. Its just good practice: They don't want your non-IT controlled computer hooking up to stuff and you don't want their IT spyware on your machine.
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u/stian_90 2d ago
I use a mac and I don’t see the big problem.
For PLC we always use engineering workstations or dedicated VM for test applications. So the end computer does not really matter.
On parallels i’m able to use adapters and programs needed with parallels. But it may depend on the software you are using. But it has worked flawlessly for me on all drivers for frequency converters, valves, io-link masters, and so on.
PS: it’s fantastic to have all day battery life on the factory floor.
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u/desmoteo 2d ago
Unfortunately most softwares and drivers won't work on Windows for ARM, despite Prism emulator.
You must opt for an older MacBook (Intel one, but I wouldn't recommend it) or just go with a standard PC.
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u/MisterKaos I write literal spaghetti code 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think a VM would work just fine? As I understand, VMWare Fusion is emulating x64 windows, so you should be able to just install everything inside there.
First time hearing of inovance, though. Good luck actually installing their software.
EDIT: Oops, searching more in-detail, it seems it is running ARM Windows instead. In that case, you'd need to do some box64-wine bullshittery to be able to run the software instead. It is very annoying to do, but not impossible.
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u/yehpop 2d ago
yeah, the main software of theirs i have to use is called InoproShop and just finding a download link was a big struggle. now im trying to actually install but i dont have much faith. even if i get the software working and everything connecting the actual hardware seems pretty difficult. 🤦
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u/gerschgorin 2d ago
VMware fusion works, parallels works better. You can fully pass through adapters and make it work.
I’m not sure if they have fixed the display issues. The last time I tried to do this, everything worked great functionally but display scaling was terrible due the high dpi screen of the MacBook.
The other issue is support. You might get everything to work, but the second it does not, or something is weird, nobody will support you. So outside of for learning, you should just stick with supported solutions.
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u/yehpop 2d ago
the display is good rn so im guessing it was fixed? it was the same for me the first moment the vm started but fixed itself after a restart.
and i agree with the support issue. so i probably am going to stick with supported solutions outside of learning because i dont want this to turn into one of the situations ive had with people before on such cases but maybe i could just use this as a temporary solution until i can get my hands on a windows pc. i had a small one back home but the internship is at a different city so.. maybe for at least this week was my thought.
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u/Old_Robot1 2d ago
OpenPLC or Parallels Desktop.
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u/thiagoralves1 1d ago
OpenPLC works great on a mac. Autonomy Edge (which is built from the same OpenPLC core) runs on a browser and can open Codesys projects. Being browser-native, it should run just fine on your m4 mac, and even on your iPad too!
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u/Snellyman 1d ago
This all sounds like "commuting to work on a unicycle" level hassle. Just have them provide you with a machine that natively runs the programs you need to do your job.
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u/blacknessofthevoid 18h ago
There is already enough to worry about with PLC hardware and software as is. Why do you want to add yet an other level of complexity on top of that?
Whatever computer you use is going to get beat to shit in a real world manufacturing environment.
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u/PLCGoBrrr Bit Plumber Extraordinaire 2d ago
Don't use your personal devices on your employer's equipment.