Talvieno wrote:I'm particularly interested in that "automation engineer" bit. What does that mean, exactly? Is it robots? I like robots.
Silverware wrote:
Hardware or software?
I do a bit of software automation myself, lets me sleep during my job. :V
Robots (Ouuuh, scaaary robots!) is part of it, yeah. I did program a very basic robot before (two (and a half) axis (that could be the title of a tv show...wait a second...), use two motors to move an equipment head to a defined position in a x/y coordinate field and lower it (hence the "half" axis)). But I would have to go to a technical school to study robotics to be an expert in that topic. But to explain it: an automation engineer does everything that has to do with machine automation (or even basic automation, like sliding doors for buildings that only detect you when you are within a 0.5cm2 big area that is like 2 meters to the left of the door or rotating doors that stop when you look angry at them or detect when you are most in hurry and slow down to calm you down a little).
You all know these huge automated production lines manufactures have?
Yeah, I build and program the controls for these. Either by wiring and relay logic (the old way) or with the use of PLCs (programmable logic controller, the new way). Or with a mixture of both (the new-ish way).
And when I'm bored I do stuff like this:
http://janb1.com/data/bored.mp4
See the imgur album for the explanation on what's going on and how it works.
https://imgur.com/a/5I8R4
(further information: the used programming languages, data types, variable types, configuration types and POU types (the "function" and "function block" thingy mentioned in the imgur album) are defined by the international standard "IEC 61131-3", see
here (Wikipedia article)
Basically, IEC-61131 defines everything I use and can use (on the software side and partly on the hardware side) when working with PLCs.
This is a real big topic, that I can't really explain in one single post. This is basically a small overview over what I do. If you want to know more, just ask. Maybe In a separate topic?
Resident derp. 
You sound like a highly interesting person. I'm particularly interested in that "automation engineer" bit. What does that mean, exactly? Is it robots? I like robots. 
