StateTick Documentation
How StateTick works — the controller, the HMI and the digital twin, explained in full.
StateTick is an ecosystem of three applications, all built by StateTick. The controller installs on hardware at the machine and drives the I/O directly, programmed as parallel state machines with Structured Text Lite logic blocks. Touch Studio is StateTick’s own HMI builder, reading the machine’s variables directly rather than through a second tag database. TwinTick Studio is StateTick’s own digital twin — a real 3D physics environment in which the actual controller drives a model of the line before the line is built.
Touch Studio and TwinTick are not third-party integrations, and neither runs standalone: both bind to the controller, and the controller is what binds to the outside world.
Articles
Workflow Overview — on video
Six short videos in the order you would do the work: control logic, the Test Manager, driving a digital twin with TwinTick, real EtherCAT I/O, building an HMI with Touch Studio, and abort and interrupt.
Watch →What is StateTick?
One project holds the machine, its tests, its operator panel and its digital twin. How the four parts fit together.
Read article →Digital Twin Validation
Drop in a CAD model, add physics and motions, spawn product, then tick the variables through so the real controller drives the 3D line.
Read article →What is a Digital Twin?
A physics-accurate virtual copy of a machine you can test before building it. A practical guide for machine builders and OEMs.
Read article →The FSM Planner
Every discipline brings a drawing to the design review except automation. How a state machine plan gives the whole project team one picture to argue over.
Read article →A Plant of Machines
A plant is already a set of separate machines. Why each one keeps its own clock, and how logic, equipment and wiring stay three separate worlds.
Read article →Machine Paths, Not Scattered Tags
Interfaces, equipment and instances give every signal an address that says where it lives — and the OPC UA tree comes out of the same names for free.
Read article →Sub-Machines and Machine Modes
Parallel sections that run at their own pace, and automatic and manual as two plans that hand over cleanly the moment the key turns.
Read article →Queues: Batches That Flow
Batch machines move data as well as product. How typed queues let each stage be its own machine and hand the batch record to the next one.
Read article →A Machine Project You Can Diff
A project is a folder of small text files, one per entity — so a change is a readable diff, two engineers can merge, and a machine can be reviewed before it ships.
Read article →Determinism, Timing and Limits
How each machine is scheduled, what StateTick measures about its own timing, and where the boundaries of the system are — said with mechanism and measurement, not adjectives.
Read article →Support and Lifecycle
What a support subscription covers, how long a version stays supported, and why nothing ever reaches into a commissioned controller on its own.
Read article →The Test Manager
Write control tests before the logic exists, run them after every change, and get a coverage report that names the transitions you never tried.
Read article →Finding a Stuck Machine
A line goes down overnight and nobody saw it. Answering where a machine is stuck and why it did not move on, without a guess.
Read article →The HMI Builder
Most panel bugs are two tag lists disagreeing. One tick puts a variable on the panel, and the condition that faults the machine is already the alarm.
Read article →Hardware & Protocols
Windows or Linux, rack server or low-cost ARM board, over EtherCAT, Modbus, OPC UA, serial and raw TCP — with the control running on the machine itself.
Read article →Tutorials
Basics
Global Variables in StateTick
What global variables are, the 16 variable types (scalars, arrays, maps, record), and a step-by-step guide to creating one in the Composer.
Read tutorial →Interfaces in StateTick
Reusable, named groups of variables that describe a kind of device. The I-prefix convention, and how to build one like IMotor or IValve.
Read tutorial →Equipment in StateTick
Named devices composed from interfaces — and the essential building block of the Composite Composer. How to build a Motor and a Valve.
Read tutorial →ST Logic Blocks in StateTick
A one-page reference for the Structured Text language: every operator, statement and function, the Code Advisor, and instantiating blocks in composites.
Read tutorial →Conditions in StateTick
Named boolean rules built from equipment and global terms, edge/aggregate placeholders, operators and parentheses — then mapped in composites.
Read tutorial →States in StateTick
Named machine modes with On Entry, Steps and On Exit actions — equipment, global, generic, timer and logic-block actions — then mapped onto real hardware in composites.
Read tutorial →The FSM Planner
Sketch a machine on the canvas with placeholder states and wires, then let Construct Composite create every state and condition you named — a worked two-motor example.
Read tutorial →