Electronic Chart Recorder

A customer has asked me to look into chart recorders for measuring 15 different temperatures. He also wants trending up to 3 months.
The current system is controlled by a ControlLogix (L62) with multible RTD modules used. They also have a PanelView Plus hooked to the systems for proess control. What they want is 15 buttons on the main screen, one for each station. Click on the button and it will take you to another screen that will allow you show you the temperature reading in a graph and allow you to look at the temperature trending for 3 months. The number of points per system will maybe be 1 every 15 seconds.

I have used trending in PanelView + before but I don't believe that it is the best solution for this app. They won't go for all of that converting CSV to excel for printing and such.

RS-Historian would have to be mounted in a PC and is quite expensive.

I have now been browsing the web sites looking for a recorder that could be mounted in one of the cabinets. I have looked at Endress-Hauser, Omega and Nematron. Either monochrome or color will be fine as well as printing.


Can anyone give recomendations of recorders that they have used with possible link and rough pricing.

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Mark Buskell said:

A customer has asked me to look into chart recorders for measuring 15 different temperatures. He also wants trending up to 3 months.
The current system is controlled by a ControlLogix (L62) with multible RTD modules used. They also have a PanelView Plus hooked to the systems for proess control. What they want is 15 buttons on the main screen, one for each station. Click on the button and it will take you to another screen that will allow you show you the temperature reading in a graph and allow you to look at the temperature trending for 3 months. The number of points per system will maybe be 1 every 15 seconds.

I have used trending in PanelView + before but I don't believe that it is the best solution for this app. They won't go for all of that converting CSV to excel for printing and such.

RS-Historian would have to be mounted in a PC and is quite expensive.

I have now been browsing the web sites looking for a recorder that could be mounted in one of the cabinets. I have looked at Endress-Hauser, Omega and Nematron. Either monochrome or color will be fine as well as printing.


Can anyone give recomendations of recorders that they have used with possible link and rough pricing.

Click to expand...

Thanks surferb,

I did a search first but overlooked the link you posted.

I have been using E +H recorders for about 10 years, some +30 units. We have a few that have well over 45,000 hours of run time and still function well. Some screens are dimming but none have failed. Some have really been beatup from use in our foundry but still function. They have been reliable and if they are powered up they will record. Not like another brand I have used that at times will quit logging for no reason.
The software works quite well and you can access the units remotely if needed. Data storage depends on the memory size you specify or it can be automaticaly downloaded from a PC. It souldn't be a problem to store a years worth on a memory card.
Prices vary due to options needed. The original 16 channel unit with most options can run $5-6k. The newer ones (just being released) are a bit cheaper with a nice display. The software is free with unit on CD or download from web.

Mark,

I quoted installing a Eurotherm 6180A http://www.chessell.com/products/graphicdaq/6180A/index.html

VERY VERY nice... I wish I got the job just to play with the recorder

We use Honeywell Trendview paperless recorders.

The internal flash memory can be adjusted between 'storage' memory or 'screen' memory. It sounds like you want lots of screen memory, to scroll back and look at data over weeks or months. Biasing the internal memory for 'screen' memory works fine, because the saved data can be exported to a Compact Flash memory card on a scheduled basis daily) allowing re-use of minimum internal 'storage' memory. In fact, that's the way we've set up ours.

The large recorders can have up to 20 screens, the active screen is easily selected from from a list of screens. So they mix and match signals for whatever makes sense on a particular screen. They put tank levels are on a vertical bar graph screen, temperatures on vertical trend graphs, and some flows and totals are on large character digital readouts.

The people on the floor find the touch screen easy to use and navigate.

The recorders come standard with an ethernet port and the recorder screen can be viewed with a web browser, which the quality guy, the materials gal, and the shift supervisor like; they don't have to get up from their desk to check out what's on the recorder.

The other thing the operators like is the choice of 'chart speeds'; slow, medium or fast, for any screen. The slow screen compresses the data to show a day's worth of data, the slow speed is 20 minutes or half an hour.

One recorder has a USB bar code reader and USB keyboard attached to it, for entering batch record data.

Pretty versatile, compared to the old paper charts.

Dan