Productivity Open is finalist in 2021 Engineers’ Choice Awards

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We are excited to announce that AutomationDirect’s P1AM-100 ProductivityOpen Arduino-compatible Controller has been selected as a Finalist for these prestigious awards in the Machine & Embedded Control – PLCs category. Winners will be determined by the number of votes received by the end of the year. And while we don’t currently stock the Productivity Open, we have been taking special orders and the feedback has been positive. So, it’s not surprising the ProductivityOpen is up for nomination this year.

The open-source P1AM-100 ProductivityOpen Arduino-compatible Controller, released in January, provides all the features of a standard Arduino along with the added power and reliability of an industrial controller. The ProductivityOpen controller is nominated for the same category in which we received an Honorable Mention for our Productivity1000 Programmable Controller last year.

P1AM-100 is designed to mimic the Arduino MKRZero microcontroller, be compatible with most Arduino MKR format shields and/or ProductivityOpen shields and utilize most Arduino sketch programs. Using the Arduino integrated development environment, the controller is programmed with C++ code and also offers a visual approach, with the ProductivityBlocks interface, that simplifies coding and reduces syntax errors. The CPU supports the full suite of Productivity1000 I/O expansion modules.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the instant popularity of our P1AM-100 controller when we released it at the beginning of the year,” said Jonathan Griffith with AutomationDirect. “We encourage people who have experience with the P1AM-100 to give us their vote and help us spread the word about how this platform can help customers in a variety of industrial applications and industries.”

Control Engineering Engineers’ Choice Awards is the premier award for new products in the automation, control, and instrumentation technology markets. The awards highlight some of the best new control, instrumentation and automation products as chosen by the publication’s subscribers. Control Engineering has held award competitions for engineering products since 1987. Originally called the Editors’ Choice Awards, the awards moved to subscriber voting in 2006. Companies and products are nominated for 29 product categories, which range from Motion Control to Machine Safety to Software.

Voting runs from October 8 – December 31. Visit the New Products for Engineers section on Control Engineering’s website at to cast your vote today.

Control Engineering will announce the Winners and Honorable Mentions in February 2021.

Article adapted from AutomationDirect.com

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ProductivityOpen: What can I do with it?

The short answer is, "Whatever you can think of". The P1AM-100 is a blank canvas and if you have the know-how, you can make it do almost anything. On the other hand, if you don't have much experience with C++, there may be a program already written that will do what you need. That's the beauty of open source - many times what you want to do has already been done. Make it a simple data logger with an Excel interface, incorporate a Modbus TCP server for C-more and other HMIs, or make it a pick-and-place controller on a production line, it's completely up to you and your imagination!