 This week's IonMPI, brought to you by DigiKey and Adafrit is from? Krusei, I hope I'm saying that correctly. I watched a video that of course I've forgotten already, but Krusei makes mechatronic and electronic control stuff and you know it's interesting we haven't yet put PLC on IonMPI because usually they're like massive and they're expensive and they're complicated and I'm like what would I use this for but I saw these adorable you know slim style PLCs and I was like this is so cute and I'm a sucker for anything cute and electronic so I picked one up so these are like the tiniest they're basically you know the size of a like a fuse holder basically it's a tiny little logic controller with four inputs and four outputs and you can run off of 24 volts or 120 or you know AC voltage or 240 AC voltage and inside is logic that you can program and what's interesting about PLCs is you know when you first yeah such as you come from microcontrollers and you look at a PLC you're kind of like well why don't I just use you know a microcontroller for this what's what's the big deal if it's just taking two inputs and ending them and then counting them why not just use it you know why am I buying a thing for a hundred bucks why am I not using something that's you know a $5 microcontroller board and this is the reason so all of these certifications that there's so many of them that they don't even fit on the screen legibly this has them it's UL certified it's you know IP rated it's tested it's assured it's reliable electronics and for automation you really need something that is reliable and will run continuously forever without you know a little bit of dust getting it damaged or you know mis-programmed bootloader you know brown out you know erasing all the flash so these are you know meant for automation but I think they could also be used you know at this size and cost for you know other robotics and you know home automation and robotic automation automation type projects so one thing that is neat about this one is it's Bluetooth programmable which is it is interesting I remember seeing PLC's that were you are programmable but this one actually uses a Bluetooth dongle now it's a I looked up the VID it's actually a blue giga which means that it's the Bluetooth dongle yes it's Bluetooth but it's like Bluetooth like you are basically like you connect to it over USB but it presents itself as a com port and that's actually really good because native USB is like a real pain to program on every platform and by using a basically you are to Bluetooth it it'll work under emulation it'll work like under Windows 7 it'll work under Windows XP it'll work under Windows 10 11 whatever you don't worry about you know weird sign drivers or native Bluetooth implementations you're literally just sending you are data through the program they give you so I think that was actually pretty wise I've noticed you know a lot of companies that have Bluetooth programmability they just go with these blue giga dongles because they are very simple so when you program it first off you know I tried this myself I downloaded their programming software for the PLC plugged in the dongle and it just worked it detected the com port just fine it detected the device just fine and then when you connect to it you get this kind of like again I'm never really used these so it's kind of interesting because it's like it's like flow programming but like everything happens at once so it's kind of like a cross between left FPGA CPLDs and you know block-based programming so at the top you can see it says like logic and you know you know math and whatever at the top you can select different tools so like here I selected the logic so you can see there's like and gates and nor gates and inverters and whatever and then I think I can click on control and you can see there's like counters and analog inputs and filters and and you know some of these are very simple they're like basic logic inverters and some of them are a lot more complicated like you can have timers and you know PID loops and incrementers and dividers and and you know you can have fairly good complex user interfaces and again one of the nice things about PLCs is that everything kind of runs at the same time so you don't have to worry about logic flow control as much because it's all kind of like instantaneous it's not complicated programming situations you know there's like no Wi-Fi interface here JSON parsing but it's really good for like take some inputs process them and then give you outputs without having to worry about you know cross-contamination of logic streams okay so after you you know when design your program you can save it you can compile it and then you upload it over Bluetooth and yeah it worked it works just fine it's kind of cool so if you you know you can program it and debug it all over BLE whenever you you know want to upload new code and you can also password protect it so people can't download it or reprogram it another thing that was interesting is because this PLC does not have a LCD or TFT display you know be wondering okay what if I want to get debug output or I want to like you know if there's a count output and I want to see the count or I want to do another analysis well all again over Bluetooth what's really nice you can use an app to do the debugging interface debugging and user interface when needed right because a lot of PLC's they you're not constantly pressing the buttons and reading the output it's only for like when you're doing the analysis and debugging and so you can basically download the app for iOS or Android install it on your computer and then you can see like this simulated LCD output and you have button inputs as well so you can do diagnostic checking and download data logs and stuff like that so I think what I thought was really neat about this is like I've never really done anything with PLC's but I was actually able to get going and get it working quite quickly and it was kind of shocking to me how easy it was so I think that even though this is a very cute adorable little PLC it could be also really handy for anyone who's doing either advanced stuff and just doesn't need a lot of inputs and outputs only for inputs for outputs but if you're also just like hey I want to learn about PLC's and build something at home just practice with a PLC to get that kind of training which again in you know when I went to college there was no course for it so if I want to learn this stuff I would DIY it pick up the BLD dongle and the PLC and you can just play around at home just like automating stuff in your room right to play around with the wheel a inputs and outputs and long inputs in PWM and just see what it's like and then you can see the the debug output diagnostic output on your phone available on digikey and it's in stock which is the thing that's great digikey.com slash short slash ZT78W55V and you can also search for it by typing in 96689 sorry 88983301ND and you can also just type in the words Cusay CB8R which is the name of this maybe I'll show it really fast on the overhaul. Show it really fast and we have a 2 minute and 45 second video that you wanted me to play. Yeah yeah yeah so just show it just to show how this sizing. So this is it and these are the the four inputs this is power you power it from 24 volts but yeah you can see it's like you know a lot of people are like oh I need I need it to be UL certified and I need it to be you know certified in every country. It's made in France it's got the BLE Mac on the outside and then here's the relay outputs 6 amps a piece it looks like 6 or 8 amps at 25 C and then there's LEDs for power and Bluetooth and it's just like so cute you can panel mount it with these two bolts or you can din rail mount it so you can see the din rail slots here so a very elegant and beautiful little controller. All right we're gonna play the video and then we'll wrap up by MPI and we're gonna get a new product. Hi I'm Robert and welcome to the Cusay Tech Lab today I have the opportunity to introduce you to one of the most exciting and revolutionary products in the small-scale automation market it's Cusay's Millennium Slim. So simply put a logic controller is the brain of your application it takes inputs which are wired here and within the logic controller they're going to process instructions and send those instructions in the terms of a signal to an output. Cusay specializes in making logic controllers that are easy to use easy to program and are favored by both experts and beginners and Millennium Slim represents the latest in Cusay's innovative line of Millennium controllers. Millennium Slim is the only internationally recognized industrial grade logic controller in such a narrow package size in fact at 17.5 millimeters narrow it's the same as a timer relay in its profile and it literally can fit in your pocket. This means you can put logic control in almost any application anywhere and it's easy to mount too. You have two options there's a din rail mounting feature you can see those features here or you can see screw holes here and that allows you to panel mount it in your application. Millennium Slim is in a compact profile but it packs a lot of functionality it's got four convertible inputs two of them are high-speed digital which is ideal for encoders or tachometers and two are PWM or pulse width modulation. On the output side the four outputs can either be relay or solid state solid state gives you the option of having PWM which is ideal when you've got an application that's frequently turning on and off. It has Bluetooth wireless communication already integrated so one Millennium Slim can easily communicate with another up to 20 meters away. This gives you the opportunity to control a number of different applications that interact with each other. The product is designed for use with Krusey's virtual display app. You see it demonstrated here on this smartphone Krusey virtual display is a way to view or modify the program either on a smartphone or on your laptop or PC. You can also download the data log on your smartphone using Krusey's virtual display.