Upgrading Panelviews

I have a customer who has had two Windows XP based Panelviews fail in the last month. He has decided to bite the bullet and upgrade them to current Windows 7 based Panelviews.

I have purchased the FactoryTalk ME RT version 6.0 for the new Panelviews. However, the applications were developed in ME Studio 5.0 - will I need to pull the .MER files into ME Studio 8.0 to convert them to run on the 6.0 software?

There's probably some confusion about the current revisions and operating systems.

PanelView Plus terminals run Windows CE. If he has computers with XP or Windows 7, then they aren't PanelView terminals and you're correct that they need FactoryTalk View ME Runtime licenses.

In general if you buy FactoryTalk View ME new, you'll be downloading the current Version 8. The license will work with everything later than v4.

To jump to the final question: In general, FactoryTalk View ME runtime project files (*.MER) can be run on any FTVME Runtime station equal or newer than the one they were created on.

You should be able to run a *.MER that was compiled for v5 on a computer with v5.0, v5.10, v6.0, v6.10, v7.0, or v8.0.

If there are ActiveX components or KepServer drivers, the issue becomes a little more complex.