RedLion HMI

I had a visit from a distributor of RedLion products the other day who brought the regional rep with him. I'm interested in their HMI's as replacements for some older Mitsubishi equipment we have when they fail. Any opinions on the RedLion product would be appreciated. This is just a general inquiry. We don't have a high failure rate, I'm just looking at options.

HMIs

we have used red lion controls hmis on a few small jobs and also replaced a pv 550 with one and found that they were very good indeed for the price, but in the end we stuck with the mitsi e series (for ease of programming,cost and availabilty ect)

You can download the software manual and a demo version of the EDICT-97 software HERE

If that doesn't scare you away, the hardware seems OK...

I only say this because I had a project for which I planned to use their CL01 display (their lowest-end product). Red Lion was the only brand that could send parameter data to a Banner Presence Plus sensor (which is a piece of **** IMO, but the customer wanted it).

I have used quite a number of different brands of HMIs over the years, and had no trouble programming any of them. After purchasing 2 Red Lion displays (for 2 machines), I made a valiant attempt at using the software. To make a long story short, the displays and software went back into the box and are now stored in the "dead zone" of our parts room.

So, as I said, download the manual and demo and see what you think. The software may be more similar to Mitsubishi stuff than what I'm used to, so you may have better luck.

beerchug

-Eric

Paradigm/red lion Hmi

These Hmi,s are well built and stand up well to the "operator having a bad day syndrome!" unlike some of the mitsi/omron/al brad/siemens keyboards which soon wear and look tatty.
The edict software is very intuitive and drivers are freely downloadable for most all plc,s(even the old Mitsi f series)so that one keyboard/display can store and adjust parameters for a whole production line made up of machines containing different types of plc.
I first used one about five years ago and wrote a program with multiple menus, heating controls and timing adjustments for process control,in a couple of evenings, whereas the likes of the panelview 500, I found very labourious and hard work!
Most importantly, the help and backup is readily available, which helps incredibly when under pressure from customers.
I suggest you give em a try!

To Each His Own...

This is exactly why I didn't "bad mouth" them...

Tim finds the Red Lion stuff intuitive, but fights with the A-B stuff.

With me, it's just the opposite...

beerchug

-Eric

Right now I'm doing some changes to a system which contains a Red Lion CL20 Character display thay someone else programmed to talk to a Micrologix 1200 and an Emerson Indexing Servo Controller.

My frist impression was that it looks kind of cheesy (I'm used to color displays of at least 640x480) but for this job it seems to get the job done.

After looking at the software, besides wanting to strangle the person who originally developed the application, I was amazed at the variety and power behind that little 4x20 display. I guess that's what you get when you have one basic platform for all your OI products. However, as in the case with the person who developed my app., that variety can be a killer if used unwisely. Everything seems to be event driven which can be a paradime shift if all you've been doing is progrmaming ladder which is more procedural or at least slave to the almighty "SCAN" for the most part.

I haven't had time to read the Edict-97 manual but the help seems a little lacking. I don't really have any experience with the hardware but I guess my general comment would be that there is a lot of power there but you would really have to sit down and plan out the interface before diving in and ending up with a mish/mash of events, and references.

Does anyone know where I can find a Red Lion CL20 model 200010? I am in need of one badly!!!