padees,
Releasing products and then soon after abandoning them for the next "latest & greatest" model? - that sounds awful like they are using us to beta test their new products while still somewhat in development. Then dropping the beta versions for the "actual" to market product. It would also be in keeping with my concerns about how they are happy to release such products to market "feature light" and then adding to and "enhancing" them as newer software versions are developed; future promising us certain features rather than delivering them from the outset.
It's one thing releasing a product and getting a few years out of them before moving on, but the rate and brevity they're doing it at these days concerns me. The PanelView Plus 6 are already "Active Mature" after only a short few years in existence. The "High Performance" features of the latest PanelView 5000 are not available on the PanelView Plus 7 "Performance" terminals. So does that spell their impending doom?...
PanelView 5000 High Performance features:-
High Speed on Screen Buttons
Scalable Vector Graphics
Property Binding
Automatic Rescaling
Alignment Guides
Events and Commands
Navigation Button with on Screen Pop-up Menu Predefined Controller
Terminal Status Screens
Smart Runtime Error Notifications
Already considering parking the "new" PanelView 5x00 terminals, feature-wise, without future plans to add key features, is misleading us, I believe. We were told they were the future, going forward, and by that you would expect a few years of updates before parking them. But as you have mentioned, padees, they appear to be doing just that - there are certain features earmarked for future addition on the latest PanelView 5x10 terminals that apparently will not be made available on the 5x00 terminals -
HMI-based Alarms
Display Import / Export
Portrait / Landscape Display Mode
Localized Keyboard
Web HMI Server (Remote Viewing / Control)
Recipe Manager
Email
Marine Certification
Conformal Coating
High Bright Display
It may be fine if an existing 5x00 terminal suits the application it's been selected for and adequately servicing, but what about the future? If, say, Recipes are required down the road? If the terminal will never natively support this relatively "common" feature, then an alternative, and potentially more costly solution may need to be implemented.
I'd love to think we're being misinformed padees, but the evidence suggests we're not. I'll be keenly watching for the next version release of View Designer, which may be v5 along with Logix Designer v32, and whether it adds anything worthwhile to the 5x00 terminals, or not.
Ken,
Choice is King, but in that regard, I'm a pauper. Our Phili-based multinational stipulates we use "state of the art" RA/AB products and software. So we cannot use other HMI terminal equipment for our in-house applications (apart from very small apps). Aside from the concerning nonsense we're discussing above, they are very nice and the software is easy to use but powerful. For instance, the Add-On Graphics are an extremely useful feature for creating tailor-made graphical instances and tying them to UDT tag instances in the controller. I've also mentioned the HMIBC (Button Control) instruction a couple of times here before - the terminal is now added to the I/O Configuration and these button object instances now work as you would expect under a monitored connection - no mistakes or necessary unlatching of tags to handle glitching. Lot's of other small and neat features, and more I'm sure to come; just not for the ones I'm using, it would appear?
G.