Message Board help

I have a customer that's kicking around the idea of displaying production data on large LCD Monitors. Much cheaper than LED message boards and we can do trends, graphics, flip page announcements etc. The plan is to drive it with wonderware (they already have a PC and WW license available). In addition to pulling realtime production data out of PLCs there will be a user interface for entering lot info, waste, etc.

Is there a way through dual VGA cards, split screens, dual sessions, etc. to have a single PC and Wonderware app concurrently drive both the LCD Monitor for displaying of data and a local monitor for entering data? We could certainly design a wonderware window that's half entering data and half displaying data as long as we can split that window to two monitors. I'm thinking a dual monitor setup, but have never done one before.

I don't have experience with Wonderware but I have done a few dual-monitor setups, mostly for Powerpoint (regular Windows display on main screen and slideshow display on 2nd screen). It's pretty straightforward--the Windows desktop is basically just extended onto the second monitor. I would recommend getting a dual-output video card (rather than two single-output) to ensure compatibility. If you can split your Wonderware app into two separate moveable windows, I don't see any reason why you couldn't move one of them to the second monitor's view.

I have a customer doing just that. He's using a second vga card. You have to configure your windows settings for this.
On one monitor he is displaying one app and on the other another app. The second monitor also has a video splitter which displays info for the floor operator out in the plant.

Using LCD TVs works really nicely for large screen displays! Make sure to use a DVI/HDMI connection and run at the native resolution. You can buy Cat5/6 extenders, but it's often easier to have a local cheap PC running the HMI to drive the display. You can also do clever things that allow you to remotely change screens/screen sets if necessary, via shared PLC registers/database/or direct messaging. The other trick is getting everything to fire up automatically. Then again, remote desktop (or equivalent) works wonders with this kind of setup.

Most graphics cards these days come with dual DVI outputs.

Some workstation cards (nVidia Quadro series) come with VHDCI cable which will split off into 4 separate DVI outputs (for 4 displays).

Most graphics cards will come bundled with some optional software (nVidia nView for instance) that gives you enhanced options to control your displays (controlling which applications display in what monitor and whatnot).