Open · vendor-neutral · free
A home for the people who program machines.
PLC programmers are spread across vendor forums, old message boards and private chats, and most of what they know never leaves the site it was learned on. LADX is an open place to ask, to practise, to show what you have built, and to talk about where industrial automation is going.
Ask and answer
The forum
Technical discussion for people who program machines: ladder logic, platforms, migration, HMI, safety, commissioning. Open to read without an account.
Open the forum →Prove it
PLC challenges
Every LADX Twin is a challenge marked by the process itself. Pass every objective with your own program, then post it and compare it with other people's.
Take a challenge →Show it
Product showcase
Make automation hardware, software, a library or a tool? Introduce it to the people who would use it, with its specifications and its limits.
See the showcase →Build it
Open source
Every line of LADX, the virtual PLCs and the twins is public under the Apache License 2.0. Fix a bug, add an instruction, build a twin of your own machine.
Read the code →Forum
Where the conversation is
Categories for the work, and two for what comes next: where industrial automation is heading, and the products being built for it.
Ladder logic
Rungs, timers, counters, seal-ins, and the scan-order problems that look like magic.
Platforms and vendors
Siemens, Rockwell, Beckhoff, CODESYS, Mitsubishi. What differs, and what only appears to.
Migration and conversion
Moving a program between platforms, and what does not survive the trip.
HMI and SCADA
Screens, alarms, historians, and the conventions that make a panel readable at 3 am.
Safety and standards
ISO 13849, IEC 62061, IEC 61511, and reading a risk assessment honestly.
Commissioning and troubleshooting
On site, under pressure, with the plant waiting. What went wrong and what fixed it.
AI and tooling
Where AI genuinely helps in automation, where it does not, and what you would not trust it with.
Virtual PLCs and digital twins
The Wartens LADV controllers, LADX Twin exercises, virtual commissioning, and solutions to post and compare.
Future of industrial automation
Software-defined control, virtual PLCs, IEC 61499, open hardware, AI on the plant floor. Where this is going and what is hype.
Product showcase
Introduce an automation product you make or built: hardware, software, a library, a tool. Say what it does, what it costs and its limits.
Careers and learning
Getting into automation, moving up, interviews, courses and what employers look for.
Challenges
Practise on a process, not a quiz
Each challenge is a digital twin with rules it is held to. Your program passes when the process behaves, which is the only test that matters on site.
- Motor start/stop stationA start button, a stop button, an E-Stop and a motor. The seal-in, done properly.Beginner
- Traffic light junctionTwo sets of lights at a crossroads. A sequence built from timers, with the safety rules checked.Beginner
- Sorting conveyorA belt, two sensors and a pusher. Reject the metal parts, let the plastic through.Intermediate
- Tank level controlA tank, a fill valve and a level transmitter. Hold the level with hysteresis, never overflow.Advanced
Contribute
It gets better when you add to it
Open source means more than readable code. These are the contributions that help most.
Write a twin
A twin is one TypeScript file: signals, physics, objectives and a reference program. A garage door, a pick and place, a batch mixer. Every new one is a new exercise for everyone.
Answer a question
The forum is only as good as the answers in it. One clear answer to a question you have already solved saves the next person a day.
Report what is wrong
A rung that solves differently from your controller, an article that is out of date, a figure that misleads. Say so in the forum or open an issue.
Teach with it
Running a course? The lab and the twins work in a classroom with no installs and no licences. Tell us what your students need and we will build towards it.
House rules
Technical, honest, and kind
- Answer the question that was asked, with what you know rather than what you assume.
- Showcase posts say what a product costs and what it cannot do. Undisclosed promotion is removed.
- No cracked software, licence keys or ways around a vendor's licensing.
- Nothing that could make a machine unsafe. Safety functions are discussed, never bypassed.
The full rules are in the acceptable use policy. Anything that breaks them can be reported, with or without an account.