The control-automation world made a strange trade: enormous capability behind desktop engineering toolchains. CODESYS can run a real machine — programmed in a desktop IDE and downloaded to it. Home Assistant is friendly — but it is built for the home, not for real-time machine control.
Melanite refuses the trade. It is a universal, user-programmable soft PLC: wire real-time logic, industrial protocols, the smart home, a touch HMI, and a live spatial 3D editor directly on the device — no IDE, no coding, no deployment.
This is a scaffold post. Replace with the real launch narrative.
What ships in the free tier
Everything. Every protocol — EtherCAT included — spatial rendering, the custom HTML HMI, logging. The Community tier is the marketing, free for private use. A business pays when it uses Melanite — in a product it sells, or in its own operation.