PLC Programming for Industrial Automation: A Practical Guide with Examples and Case Studies

I’ll be honest: the virtual voice narration nearly derailed me. Its flat, unmodulated delivery turns what should be a snappy technical guide into something that feels like listening to a GPS recite Python code. That’s a shame, because Calderon’s content *deserves* better—his breakdown of how to structure a PLC program for a batch processing system is one of the clearest I’ve heard, and the case study on reducing downtime in a packaging line is gold for maintenance teams. But when the narrator butchers terms like “rung” (rhyming it with “lung” instead of “young”), it’s hard to stay immersed. The pacing is where this audiobook shines. At just over two hours, it’s mercifully free of the bloated intros that plague many tech books. Calderon jumps straight into examples, like configuring a PID loop for temperature control or diagnosing a faulty limit switch, which keeps the energy up. My biggest gripe? The lack of accompanying PDFs or diagrams—listening to descriptions of ladder logic without visuals is like assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded. Still, if you’re a hands-on learner who can tolerate the narration, the real-world troubleshooting tips (especially the chapter on integrating PLCs with SCADA) make this worth a listen—*with the speed cranked to 1.25x*.