Instrumentation for PLC Engineers

It is the join between them, written for the PLC side. There is a full Industrial Instrumentation course in this catalogue that covers pressure, level, flow and temperature measurement in depth, and this course does not repeat it. What this one does is follow one signal all the way through: what the transmitter sends, how the loop carries it, what the analog card turns it into, how you scale it, how you alarm on it, how it gets back out to a valve, and how you find the fault when the number is wrong.

Yes. Nothing about instrumentation is assumed, and the arithmetic is done in full every time rather than left as a formula. What is assumed is the programming side: you can write ladder logic in TIA Portal and you have seen an analog input before. If you have not, do the Siemens TIA Portal course first.

No. They help if you have them and the course points out where, but every exercise is written to be done with S7-PLCSIM and forced values instead. The scaling, alarm and PID work is all provable in simulation.

No. Siemens publishes a free 21-day trial with S7-PLCSIM included, and it needs only a free Siemens account. Modules 1 to 4 need no software at all, so install it when you reach module 5.

It covers what a PLC engineer meets: that HART rides on the same two wires as the 4-20 mA signal, what it lets somebody change in the field without telling you, and why that matters to your scaling. Configuring HART devices and designing fieldbus segments is instrument engineering and is not in this course.

Yes. Every module, every practice task and the final assessment. You create an account so your progress is saved and the assessments can be marked. The only paid item is the certificate, and only if you decide you want it.

An EDWartens Certificate of Completion, issued when you have worked through every module and passed the final assessment, with a unique number anyone can verify on our site. It is not a vendor credential and we will never describe it as one.

No. The lab is optional practice. You can skip it whenever you like, and it never blocks your progress, the final assessment or your certificate.

Yes. Every lab level for this course opens in your browser, free, with nothing to install.

The Instrumentation for PLC Engineers course has 12 modules. It opens with "The Signal Path: Field Device to PLC to Valve", goes through "Transmitters: What the Field Device Actually Sends", "Into the PLC: Analog Cards, Raw Counts, NORM_X and SCALE_X", "Reading the Drawings: P&ID and the Loop Sheet" and "Calibration and Finding the Fault from the Control Room" and ends with "Final Assessment". The full list with minutes is under "What you learn" on this page.

After the Instrumentation for PLC Engineers course: Trace one loop from sensing element to final element and say which half a wrong reading is in; Read a transmitter's range and span, and work out the process variable at any current; Wire two-, three- and four-wire transmitters, and tell a fault current from a measurement. These are the practical outcomes the course is written around, and the final assessment of 15 questions checks them.

For the Instrumentation for PLC Engineers course, software: The current TIA Portal trial (21 days) with S7-PLCSIM for the scaling, alarm and PID exercises. The instrumentation modules need nothing installed. Hardware: none. A multimeter and a loop calibrator are useful if you have them, and every exercise is written to work without them. The course itself is free.

Instrumentation for PLC Engineers is rated intermediate. Intermediate. You can write ladder logic in TIA Portal and have met analog inputs. No instrumentation background assumed, and no maths beyond a straight line. It is written for engineering students, apprentices, technicians and working engineers in instrumentation and process plants, and takes about 11.3 hours at your own pace.

Skills from the Instrumentation for PLC Engineers course (for example: trace one loop from sensing element to final element and say which half a wrong reading is in) are used in roles such as instrumentation technician, instrument engineer, calibration technician and process control engineer, and in instrumentation engineer work. The course gives you practical evidence of the skill; it does not promise a job, and employers decide on experience and interview.