The OS for the factory. Integration without friction, from machine control to IoT.
We provide full automation solutions with remote monitoring,
web access, and alerting compatible with
Beckhoff®,
Siemens®
and
Rockwell®
controllers
D.U.C.K is RatchTech’s control platform: software that runs your process, records everything that happens, and lets you see it from anywhere.
Your process should not be locked to one vendor’s hardware. D.U.C.K runs on the compute and I/O you choose.
Control, operator interface, data historian, alerting and IoT in a single platform, instead of separate products bolted together.
Let D.U.C.K run the machine outright, or sit it alongside the controller that is already doing the job.
Choose your setup
D.U.C.K is the controller. It reads your sensors and drives your actuators over off-the-shelf fieldbus I/O, with the operator interface, data historian and IoT built in.
A 1 ms control cycle with under 3 µs of jitter, so every loop runs on time, every time.
e.g. temperature and flow loops that update every millisecond.
D.U.C.K runs on the compute you pick, an industrial PC or a server, and talks to off-the-shelf fieldbus I/O.
e.g. an IPC in the cabinet wired to standard fieldbus terminals.
Logic written in C, C++, Python, JavaScript and Rust works side by side, so your team keeps the tools it already knows.
e.g. reuse an existing Python library alongside control code written in C++.
Build and read control logic visually, in a ladder-style UI that is familiar to anyone from a PLC background.
e.g. add an interlock as a new rung, no code required.
D.U.C.K runs your control logic on a fixed 1 ms cycle. Every cycle does the same three things in the same order: read the inputs, run the logic, write the outputs.
The start of each cycle lands within 3 µs of where it should, so a timing-sensitive loop behaves the same on its millionth cycle as on its first.
D.U.C.K is software, so it is not tied to one vendor’s controller. Run it on an industrial PC in the cabinet or on a server, and connect it to off-the-shelf fieldbus I/O.
On our catalysis research units, building on off-the-shelf I/O this way cut the hardware cost by 90% and de-risked the supply chain.
Control projects rarely live in one language. D.U.C.K lets logic written in C, C++, Python, JavaScript and Rust run in the same system and work on the same live data.
Real-time control, calculations and integrations can each be written in the language that suits them, and your team keeps the tools it already knows.
Control logic is built and read as rungs, the way electricians and PLC engineers already think. Conditions sit on the left, the output on the right, and a rung is live when there is an unbroken path across it.
That makes it easy to read at a glance what has to be true before an output switches on, and to add a new condition without writing code.
D.U.C.K makes your system reachable over the web, so the readings an operator sees at the machine are also available from the office or from a phone.
Security is built in: data is encrypted in transport on its way from D.U.C.K to your screen, and encrypted at rest where it is stored.
Every action taken on the system is written to a log with who did it and when: logins, setpoint changes, manual valve operations, alarm acknowledgements.
When the process changes, you can trace it back to the action that caused it, down to the operator and the minute.
Readings from across the system come together live on one screen: temperatures, pressures, flow rates and equipment status. Monitoring can also come to you: by email, by WhatsApp, or fed into your own system.
Each reading is also logged, so you can graph it over time and export the data. On our Observability Platform project that put 50 thermocouple readings, which used to be checked one at a time, onto a single display.
Set limits on the readings that matter. When one crosses its limit, D.U.C.K raises an alarm and notifies the people who need to know.
Problems are caught when they start, rather than at the next walk-round.
Web access to your system from anywhere, with your data encrypted in transport and at rest.
e.g. check on a running unit from your phone.
Every action is recorded: who did what, and when.
e.g. trace a setpoint change back to the operator and the minute it happened.
Live dashboards, graphing and data logging on one screen, delivered by email, WhatsApp or straight into your own system.
e.g. 50 thermocouple readings on a single display.
Alarms that reach the right person as soon as something drifts.
e.g. a notification when a pressure reading leaves its limits.
These control units were built for research. Functional,
but very limited. The brief was to modernize them
without replacing the underlying hardware, and give
operators a faster read on the whole system.
We built custom hardware to multiplex 50 thermocouple
readings into a single modern interface showing
temperatures, pressures, MFC readings, and heater
status at once. Previously each reading could only be
checked one at a time on the analog controllers. A
manual, sequential process became a real-time
heads-up display.
Full electrical installation done by Ratch Tech.
The D.U.C.K software was integrated
into catalysis research units to provide full system
data collection and control using 'off the shelf' I/O
hardware.
We reduced the CapEx costs of the
research units by 90% and
de-risked their supply chain by using
our framework.
The system includes temperature sensing
and control, flow rate control through
mass flow controllers,
pressure readings, and
valve actuation. The system can be
interacted with through a full custom
user interface including data display,
graphing, and data export.
