Even if some of us grow white beards, it’s hard to completely cut the umbilical cord from childhood toys. I abandoned PLC programming at TIA Portal 16 for mechanical design, while keeping electrical design as a strong base. Anyway, even if most of my PLCs took the Marktplaats route (the Dutch eBay), I kept the Siemens Logo 8 close to me as I will use them to automate my home. Unexpectedly, this year it was hard to resist opening the wallet because the Siemens Logo 8.4 is the new smart kid on the block, and I couldn’t resist trying it out. The Logo 8.4 has double the layout memory, access to more cloud services, and let’s not forget the MQTT support. I was looking to get the Wago CC100, but I always postponed the purchase as it’s hard to use 500 euros from the family budget without explanations… For the Logo, I just used my beer money and with one purchase, I also gave my liver a break.