Possibly Lowest Cost Large HMI/SCADA Display

This is a picture of a 60" LED TV running Windows 8.1 from a $129 PC. It has a 1.33Ghz quad core processor with 2Gb RAM, so it's not an extreme low end PC. If you look on the lower right of the picture you will see the PC, it's about 6" wide. It comes pre-installed with Windows 8.1. Simply plug in the HDMI cable that comes with it and plug a cable into a USB port to power it.

In this configuration I have it connected to a WiFi router and the Beckhoff controller is hardwired to the same router. The AdvancedHMI application is showing live data from the controller. I used the Beckhoff because it was what I had handy, this could work just as well with a ControlLogix/CompactLogix or anything that communicates Modbus.

For anyone not familiar with AdvancedHMI, it is a free HMI software that uses Visual Studio as the designer. You build HMI's by all drag and drop, no code writing necessary. The application then runs on any Windows PC with the .NET framework.

Very nice. I bet this gets some people thinking about updating their control rooms with larger displays!

Now if it and the I/O servers would run on a Rasberry Pi...

rdrast said:

Now if it and the I/O servers would run on a Rasberry Pi...

Click to expand...

How about the exact same application (complete unmodified) on a $55 Beaglebone Black (a competitor to the Pi that is much faster). In a couple days I'll set up my Raspberry Pi and run the same application on it.

An AdvancedHMI applications using the native drivers will run on Windows, Linux, or Mac.

I'm actually waiting for the new Pi 2, to give this a shot. Should be here this afternoon, along with a cute little 2.8" color touchscreen.

rdrast said:

I'm actually waiting for the new Pi 2, to give this a shot. Should be here this afternoon, along with a cute little 2.8" color touchscreen.

Click to expand...

I just ordered one myself. I started with the B+ model and it was painfully slow, so I moved to the Beaglebone Black which is much faster. So now I'm curious as to how the Pi 2 performance compares.

intel is coming out with that hdmi stick that will be $150 and preloaded with windows 8.1.

http://ces.gizmodo.com/intels-150-hdmi-stick-turns-any-tv-into-a-windows-desk-1678550370

diat150 said:

intel is coming out with that hdmi stick that will be $150 and preloaded with windows 8.1.

Click to expand...

That PC in the first picture is based on the same hardware. The only difference is that it is slightly bigger and has more ports.

Another company got a jump on Intel and released the exact same thing already:

http://www.amazon.com/MeeGoPad-T01-...=UTF8&qid=1425045196&sr=8-1&keywords=pc+stick

HMI on a Pi

So here is the same HMI application on a Raspberry Pi model B+. Turned out to be quite easy to set it up, 4 basic steps in about 30 minutes prepared the Pi for running AdvancedHMI applications.

I'm confused

How do you get .NET to run on Raspberian?

ndzied1 said:

How do you get .NET to run on Raspberian?

Click to expand...

Pure .NET applications will run under Mono. The application in the picture was compiled with Visual Studio on a Windows PC, copied to a USB memory stick, then the executable was run under Mono on Linux. If you can make out the picture, in the command prompt window you will see the command line:

mono AdvancedHMI.exe

The OS is the Debian Wheezy distribution (Raspbian)

Very cool

Awesome! Are you going to post a How-to guide?

boneless said:

Awesome! Are you going to post a How-to guide?

Click to expand...

I put some detailed steps on the AdvancedHMI forum:

http://advancedhmi.com/forum/index.php?topic=666.0

Thanks! I will check it out!