Basic Display Recommendations

Hey guys, I'm wanting some advice on the most cost effective / dependable way to achieve this. We have a hodgepodge of various Andon style boards throughout our plant. Some are old Allen Bradley InViews, some are newer LCD televisions with Red Lion products on them, some are FactoryTalk SE setups (which are overkill I think) and some of them are TV's with some little PC (Rasberry Pi I think) hooked to them that our IT dept controls. We are wanting to standardize and make everything the same from here on out, and in a way that our controls team can manage.

We are thinking that the televisions are going to be the way to go, due to the fact that they are ultra cheap nowadays and can be replaced easily and there are a million brands to choose from.

So, simply put...I need a way to display text and numerical values from a PLC (Rockwell) onto a large LCD television (50"-60") so operators can view them on a line. I DO NOT need a way for the operators to interact with them! (That is important to note). ALL I need to do is display info (faults, current production numbers, etc.).

What would be the easiest, best way to get this information onto a television (or multiple televisions)? I would love something with a simple HDMI output to go right into the TV if possible.

I have looked at Red Lion stuff (heard good things about it) but it seems to require C++ knowledge, which I do not have. If I have to learn it I will...but I was trying to stay simpler than that (I am not the only controls guy that will be maintaining / modifying this system).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

What about the R Pi solution you already seem to have in place? $50/$100 is pretty cheap and there is a huge support base if you want to take it from your IT guys and do it yourself.

boneless said:

What about the R Pi solution you already seem to have in place? $50/$100 is pretty cheap and there is a huge support base if you want to take it from your IT guys and do it yourself.

Click to expand...

I don't mind doing this at all, I'm just not familiar with what it takes to program one (what language it's programmed in, etc). I'll do some looking into it, but any info you can give would be awesome.

I would if I could . I know there is ways of doing it and that is how far I have gotten. Please share you experiences since it looks like a fun little project .

I am not sure either however in the past few months I know there are a few threads on PLC to video distribution, if you search you may find something in them that pertains to your situation

One thing you could do is to use thin clients instead of a local PC/panel, and then point them back to a virtual machine running on a server somewhere over the network. The only trick is that the server would need to be connected to all the devices you want to display data from, and it would still need some kind of program to run.

A thin client is essentially a monitor that has just enough of a computer behind it to remote desktop or VNC into a PC running somewhere else, and display whatever it shows. A raspberry PI would probably be able to do that, and I know there are specially made devices as well. I'm sure they could be plugged into a TV instead of a standard computer monitor, at least if you buy the right one.

I don't know the capabilities of the PLC you are using, but many include the ability to host a webpage on the PLC. You might be able to point the TV screen to that webpage to show data. The thin client may even be able to view the webpage directly.

We use an internet at our location to share information from the database. The data is displayed on TV sets connected to a small computer running a powerpoint show. Live Web Pages are displayed.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/25946/how-to-add-live-web-pages-to-a-powerpoint-presentation/

Regards,
Garry
http://www.accautomation.ca

mk42 said:

I don't know the capabilities of the PLC you are using, but many include the ability to host a webpage on the PLC. You might be able to point the TV screen to that webpage to show data.

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Interesting that you brought this up. I have always seen Allen Bradley modules like the 1756-EWEB and simply overlooked them because I never needed any web capability. However, now I'm wondering if this is a possible answer. All of the data that I need to display is in various Contrologix controllers across our plant (and the info that isn't there, I can get there through messaging).

If I designed a webpage using this module (not sure exactly how to do that) could I then have a TV look at that webpage (using something simple like the Raspberry PI, or maybe even a SmartTV that has a web browser built in) to show that page all the time?

Does anyone have any experience with the 1756-EWEB module (or similar AB module)?

To make web-pages in an 1756-EWEB is possible, but I think it will be cumbersome. And aggregating the data from several sources via messaging also sounds as a cludge.

To collect data from many sources and display at several locations sounds as a classical SCADA.
Ignition comes to mind.
You can then display the desired information on any web-enabled device, smart TV, laptop, tablet, etc...
It also opens up for datalogging and reporting. Once you have started going this way you will not look back.

Just a couple weeks ago I did a demonstration showing an ultra low cost solution displaying data from a CompactLogix PLC. The hardware was a BeagleBone Black ($55) with Mono installed and running an AdvancedHMI application. The Beaglebone runs a similar flavor of Linux as the Raspberry Pi, so I'm sure Mono could be installed on it also.

So for less than $600 you can have a 50"+ display with a PC that communicates directly to AB controllers over Ethernet.

shoelesscraig said:

Interesting that you brought this up. I have always seen Allen Bradley modules like the 1756-EWEB and simply overlooked them because I never needed any web capability. However, now I'm wondering if this is a possible answer. All of the data that I need to display is in various Contrologix controllers across our plant (and the info that isn't there, I can get there through messaging).

If I designed a webpage using this module (not sure exactly how to do that) could I then have a TV look at that webpage (using something simple like the Raspberry PI, or maybe even a SmartTV that has a web browser built in) to show that page all the time?

Does anyone have any experience with the 1756-EWEB module (or similar AB module)?

Click to expand...

I've seen it done with a Siemens system, where they used custom web pages in an S7-300 and a Siemens 15" thin client screen. I'm not too familiar with the Rockwell components. However, in this system, all the info they needed to display was already loaded in the PLC on the each machine, and they had two summer interns that created the pages and got it working (between naps) with no pressure from deadlines.

If the data you want is spread all over, then a SCADA system like Jesper suggests would likely reduce engineering time, at a potentially increased licensing cost.

This was one I installed about 2 years ago. Not a good picture because it's mounted up high and hard to get a good picture. But it is an LG TV (42" EzSign) with a Zotac mini PC (from Amazon) mounted on the back of it. It runs an AdvancedHMI app that communicates with a ControlLogix. It took about an hour to put the app together. I actually had my summer help do the HMI while I had written the PLC program to compute the statistics.

Approximate cost break down (2 years ago):

TV - $725
PC - $250
SSD - $125
Windows 7 Pro - $125
AdvancedHMI (free of course)

One feature I liked about the LG TV was the programmable Power On/Off. Since they only run 2 shifts, I set the TV to come in the morning and go off at night, then disabled all screen savers/Power savers on the PC. The PC is all solid state so it stays on 24/7. The advantage of a Windows PC is that this one also has a wirelesss keyboard so you can flip back to Internet Explorer and check the stats of the RFID readers on the system. RSLogix was even installed on it, although it is a neck breaker to use.

Archie, that is awesome advice! I will look into that for sure. Sounds pretty simple and cost effective. Exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks man...

Archie said:

Just a couple weeks ago I did a demonstration showing an ultra low cost solution displaying data from a CompactLogix PLC. The hardware was a BeagleBone Black ($55) with Mono installed and running an AdvancedHMI application. The Beaglebone runs a similar flavor of Linux as the Raspberry Pi, so I'm sure Mono could be installed on it also.

So for less than $600 you can have a 50"+ display with a PC that communicates directly to AB controllers over Ethernet.

Click to expand...

I would love to look into this as well. I have a couple of questions though if you don't mind...I know nothing about Mono...

Which version of Mono was installed on the BeagleBone? I see several different flavors out there for download.

With the AdvancedHMI program, can someone like me (who has tons of Rockwell experience, but not a lot of IT programming knowledge) install, setup, and figure out how to use it fairly easily? Or does it require a lot of C-Language knowledge to run?

shoelesscraig said:

I would love to look into this as well. I have a couple of questions though if you don't mind...I know nothing about Mono...

Which version of Mono was installed on the BeagleBone? I see several different flavors out there for download.

With the AdvancedHMI program, can someone like me (who has tons of Rockwell experience, but not a lot of IT programming knowledge) install, setup, and figure out how to use it fairly easily? Or does it require a lot of C-Language knowledge to run?

Click to expand...

Installing Mono on a Beaglebone does take a little bit of Linux knowledge. Because of the processor used it does require downloading the complete Mono source code and compiling on the Beaglebone. The whole process from scratch takes about 7 hours, so I don't recommend it to anyone new to Linux.

If someone wants to experiment with Linux and Mono I would recommend starting with Linux Mint. It is easier to install than Windows and Mono is part of the install package. Mono is nothing more than a cross platform implementation of the Microsoft .NET framework.

As for Advanced HMI, it requires absolutely NO programming knowledge to use. It works just like any other HMI/SCADA software and is easier to use than most, if not all.