Your opinion of Red Lion Crimson / Graphite HMIs?

As I program a Graphite, can't help but admire just about everything about the way they have their software set up. Wondering what others think about the Crimson software and Red Lion in general.

Specifically, I come from a computer programming background, so I absolutely love the programming in the familiar C syntax, and with that the ability to make temporary variables without having to add them to the tag database.

Love the way comms are laid out, and just the overall customizability of it all. I also like the mentality that you set up format and labeling for a tag in the tag settings itself, not for every data entry/display instance on screens.

My only gripe is that the remote control capability is very slow over slow connections. We also use IDEC HG3Gs and they are much faster and more responsive over slow connections.

Your thoughts?

I have used Crimson 3 with a Graphite, and I really loved it. It was very intuitive, but pretty powerful. I would use it for all my applications, but they don't have a CoDeSys driver, and appear to not care that they don't have one.

In a word, awesome. I've been using the G3 series for 12 years now, since back in the early days of Crimson 2. I've used at least half a dozen other brands of HMIs (we're talking non-PC-based here), and sure they all have their pros and cons but when you consider overall functionality and ease of use, I personally don't think Red Lion can be beat. Pricier than some of course but you get what you pay for.

Highland Controls said:

I would use it for all my applications, but they don't have a CoDeSys driver, and appear to not care that they don't have one.

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What do you mean by "CoDeSys driver"? I'm not familiar with that particular communication protocol.

kolyur said:

What do you mean by "CoDeSys driver"? I'm not familiar with that particular communication protocol.

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I'm curious about this as well. I've used Red Lion with both Wago and Schneider PLCs that were using their variations of CoDeSyS v2 and v3.

CoDeSys is a PLC programming package very popular in Europe and gaining ground in the US. It is not tied to one specific model or brand of PLC. Many brands use it.

If you used Red Lion with a CoDeSys PLC, then you were probably using another driver(probably Modbus/TCP). If it had a native CoDeSys driver, then you just export your tags from the PLC and import them into the HMI. No mapping or thinking required.

Yeah, I was using Modbus/TCP. It was a bit of a pain to get the mapping straight to have it talk. We ended up making a Google Docs spreadsheet that did the conversion automatically from %MW addresses to the 4xxxx (or whatever it was) that the Red Lion was looking for.

I am familiar with CoDeSys, my confusion was that when I hear the word "driver" I think of communication protocols. Now I understand that you are talking about exporting tags from programming software and importing them into Crimson. AFAIK the only support Crimson has for this is with Rockwell Logix 5000, and they were probably forced into that due to the extremely large user base. It doesn't surprise me that they wouldn't be interested in expanding this to other platforms, especially since it can be done fairly easily with a spreadsheet as keshik mentioned.

Crimson will also do an import from RSLogix 500 tag database export files. Red Lion has the best hardware and software in my opinion. There may be a few I have never tried that can come close, but I have no reason so far to specify anything else.

I use a bunch of the Kadets and Graphites and they run circles around the competition in hardware performance and development speed.

Kolyur-You can be assured that I am talking about a specific communications protocol. Without that, the device and HMI could not talk. The export and import is a bonus. With the CoDeSys driver, the HMI can use the native datatypes that the PLC uses.

We use Parker re-branded G3's for about 50% of our machines, unless they call for AB exclusively. They work really well, and I love the scripting you can have live on the panel. I also love how their tag folder structure works.

Say you have a folder structure that looks like:



The tag looks like:

One thing that is frustrating with them (at least from a year or so ago) was the way that they handle widgets. Once you create one, it will no longer receive updates if you update the master element (something that most other software packages will do). There's a similar thing with the tag structure. It would be really nice to define a datatype (like a STRUCT or UDT) and have all of the elements that were created with that type automatically receive and changes.

I did a project that had 80 identical elements, so you can imagine that this was annoying...

Another thing that can be frustrating is that you can only have one master element on a screen at once.

Overall, it is a nice piece of hardware. I'm using FactoryTalk View ME pretty much exclusively now and there are some Crimson features I definitely miss.

I have used Red Lion HMI's for almost 10 years. I also like the Crimson Software. Very powerful and easy to use. I am learning something new just about every job I do.

On the hardware side I am very pleased. They are built like tanks and can put up with a surprising amount of abuse. I had a PV+600 "explode" inside of a panel that was shipped to my other office. The panel was packaged very well and there appeared to be no damage on the outside. I can only assume the pallet was dropped and since the PV is a plastic housing held together with clips it just couldn't handle the jolt. I have 0 doubt that if it had been a RL Graphite I wouldnt have even known anything happened.

I have one customer that was all Panel Views starting to change them out to Graphite panels as the PV's fail or if there is a upgrade so that speaks volumes.

As for the price they are much cheaper than Panel Views but more expensive than other brands on the market. I think the price is a excellent value given the quality of the hardware and the performance of the software.

Crimson is great for small to medium sized HMI projects. If you want more complex and modern, try Beijer iX Designer. That'll bring out the XML HTML programmer.

Epy said:

Specifically, I come from a computer programming background, so I absolutely love the programming in the familiar C syntax, and with that the ability to make temporary variables without having to add them to the tag database.

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I also love the use of C syntax; let me do what I want to do. But it is still limited by the C functions that Red Lion provides.
Ex. The alarming system is very basic. No amount of C code can fix that.


What I really love about Crimson is that it is easy to use for non-programmers, or even first time HMI designers. But it still gives you enough feature for those of us who want more.

Bullzi said:

As for the price they are much cheaper than Panel Views but more expensive than other brands on the market. I think the price is a excellent value given the quality of the hardware and the performance of the software.

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I completely agree; the value for quality and performance is awesome.

I think it's real power is in the tag database and exchange of data between different PLC devices. I haven't found any HMI that matches what Red Lion offers for data exchange.