Android operating system question

My question is how many people are using Touch Pads etc in industrial equipment that run Android operating systems and what aplications are you running on those devices.

I tried to create some Ipad style devices for a company to run Logmein and RS Logix software for a customer and did not have any success. I am wondering if anyone has and what they had to do to get it to work.

Our company is testing the Ipad with its Citrix app to remotely access our ERP system. It could also access our SCADA server I guess (Ignition). Great idea but I don't see the IPad lasting long in an industrial environment.

The difference between having an application working on Android vs working on an iPad (iOS) is whether or not the PLC company has created a party specific application to make it work.

For example, if I have a PLC functioning as a Modbus server, there are hundreds of libraries out there that we can import quickly to grab the data. In fact, checking the Android library, there are already modbus testing apps in there. Then its a simple matter of developing an interface to display the data (for Android, this can be done in Eclipse, a free Java development environment supported by Google's Android SDK). I imagine the same exists for iOS, except I know the iOS SDK costs about $100 a year AND you can't use apps without them being approved by Apple, with the end result being... Android HMI's are much easier, quicker, and cheaper to develop than any iOS HMI. Take into account the (usually - I use an Asus Transformer) less expensive Android tablet... significant savings in time and development with much more freedom. Now HMI developers just need to learn Java .

On the other hand, if you're using a web app of some type, such that you can visit a website on any computer on the network with a web browser, it will work on both the iPad and any Android device (assuming its not using old technology like Java Applets, and if you're using an iOS device you can't view Adobe Flash).

We're using android and apple smartphones on the plant floor through both RDP into virtual scadas and some native Ignition applications.