Development of a PLC multimedia tutorial

The Department of Electrical Engineering of the State of Mexico (UAEM) decided to offer courses related to the automation of processes using different types of PLCs and other digital devices. Along the preparation of educational material for these courses, we encountered difficulties in obtaining detailed information on PLC devices. Thus, we concluded it was worthwhile to develop a friendly PLC multimedia tutorial as an aid for electrical engineering students on learning process of the fundamentals and operation of PLCs. Multimedia is a tool that helps human in the acquisition of knowledge through three natural ways for the assimilation of information: (1) visualization of images and videos, (2) reading of specific topics, and (3) listening of audio information in an interactive manner. The tutorial was developed using Toolbook 4.0 software and contains 270 pages in 450 Mbytes approximately. The multimedia tutorial includes general characteristics of PLCs and as well as technical details of two PLC models, one from FESTO and the other from Mitsubishi. The tutorial also contains information about the most common PLC programming languages.