FTV SE Multiple Screens

ian.smith7

Member
Join Date
Aug 2002
Location
UK
Posts
145
Hi Guys
I have seen on you tube an AB video showing FTV SE sending different HMI Pages to different monitors. We are considering installing some Large Overview / Critical info screens in various locations around the factory and this seems like a solution. But I have some questions which I am hoping someone here can answer.

1. Is multiple screens possible with a standard FTV SE installation?
2. How are the Screens Connected to the Server/PC running FTV SE?
3. What type of screens are required for this scenario?
4. Is the Viewpoint addon required to publish screens to web browsers?
5. Can Smart TVs with web browsers be used to view the Screens / Web Pages?
6. How good are either of these proposed scenarios?

any comments of your experiences with this would be appreciated.
Cheers
Ian
 
Going off of memory here and it's been a while since I worked with FTView but I think I can answer some of these.

1. I believe you have to buy a license for each client and then each client can choose which 'screen' is shown on it (and which ones are available can be restricted by client or login).
2. Typically, it's a client PC that is connected over the network.
3. Anything that is compatible with the client PC. Keep in mind that if you want to use the same display in multiple locations, you probably want to keep the aspect ratio the same to keep things looking nice and not have to maintain two copies of the same display.
4. Yes. Viewpoint is required to publish the webpage.
5. Not sure. A couple versions back, viewpoint used Silverlight which may not work with smart tvs. I'd also be skeptical of any auto-login etc. The login can be used to restrict which displays are available and which ones start on their own.
6. I found viewpoint wasn't the greatest. It was good for giving someone quick access to look something up in their office but your best bet would likely be a tiny PC strapped to the back of a TV with the client installed.

7. If you are using multiple displays from the same PC, you have to start each client on the screen that you want it to be on. This can be a bit hokey on machines you want to auto-login because it will start the client wherever the mouse is positioned so you end up with 4 clients stacked (you can start several instances of the client on the same machine with one license).
 
Hi Bryan
Thanks for your reply
It seems that your experience with this system was not too great.
You say its been awhile how long ago was this?
The major screens are intended to be displaying one page permanently on 24x7 with no user feed back so this may restrict the log on problems.
other screens would be served up ad hock for "look up" purposes.
To be honest I was hoping to avoid the use of client PCs, possibly android TVs as the AB bumpf does quote compatibility with android tablets.
Hopefully will be speaking to our AB account Manager this week but i like to get some 'Customer Feedback' as well because real world experience does not always live up to the sales hype.
Cheers
Ian
 
My experience with factorytalk view is neither great nor horrible. I was using it up until about 3 years ago so there could be some significant changes since then (especially to viewpoint since silverlight was already dead to everyone else by that point).

Will they all be displaying the same one page, or each one will display something different? If you're using a client, you can definitely set it to open a specific display on startup. On viewpoint, I think they would all start with the same one unless you're using logins. And I don't expect you'd want to have to go point it to the 'correct' display every time the TV is turned off.

I'm guessing the android app would be a paid client but I don't have an experience with that specifically.
 
All the screens will not be showing the same page but each screen will probably show the same page all the time with alarm messages popping up and clearing after a time.
i have not at this time thought too much about what happens if the screen is turned off. I will have to put that on my list of questions.
I understood there are a number of licences that the server can issue (1 per Client) but I thought (!!) that a log in was not necessarily required. Just a http navigation to a valid page address on the server but my thoughts about this are only what I have gleaned from the Rockwell product pages.
To be honest this is not a fully thought out plan at the moment.

Cheers
ian
 
You don't necessarily need logins if you don't need different access levels (ie if viewpoint is going to be read only) and you're ok with anyone that hasn't logged in starting at the same screen. If you have to open the browser and navigate to the website anyway, that probably isn't such a big deal. I seem to recall that if you wanted anyone to have a login, then everyone had to have a login (ie if you only wanted to give some people ability to 'change' things, then you no longer had an option to have a default for people that aren't logged in). This could very well have changed in the last few years.
 
Hi Bryan
Thanks for your replies you have given me some food for thought.
I have a chat arranged with our Rockwell contracts manager next week to get some software prices and hardware specs.
Hopefully at that point I will be able to clear up the grey areas, though whether our company will throw some money at it is still not clear either.
Cheers
Ian
 
Hi Guys
I have seen on you tube an AB video showing FTV SE sending different HMI Pages to different monitors. We are considering installing some Large Overview / Critical info screens in various locations around the factory and this seems like a solution. But I have some questions which I am hoping someone here can answer.

1. Is multiple screens possible with a standard FTV SE installation?
2. How are the Screens Connected to the Server/PC running FTV SE?
3. What type of screens are required for this scenario?
4. Is the Viewpoint addon required to publish screens to web browsers?
5. Can Smart TVs with web browsers be used to view the Screens / Web Pages?
6. How good are either of these proposed scenarios?

any comments of your experiences with this would be appreciated.
Cheers
Ian

Yes, you can do this. The short answer to "how" is money.
I would use FTV SE distributed, thin-client computers, and flat screen TVs.

Edit: Now having typed this out, it's just a mess for what should be so easy to do.



1. Standard FTV SE app. Is that distributed or stand-alone?

2. Stand-alone you will need to use a multiple-monitor setup; 1 license.
You will need VBA code to "send" your FTV displays to the different XY locations across all of your monitors. It's a mess, but less license dollars.

Distributed gives you more options by using full client licenses; 1 license per monitor. But you can use thin-client computers to run your monitors (TV or other).
VMWare can send to thin-clients.
Microsoft Remote Desktop.
Rockwell's ThinManager (just makes the MS option easier).


3. Screens depend on your solution (see 2).

4. Viewpoint is needed for web browsers. You need licenses for Viewpoint and it may only work with FTV SE distributed (? check with RA on that one).
So ViewPoint ends up being expensive, unless you already have a large distributed project and just want to add web browser support.

5. Viewpoint is now HTML5 so it should work on any modern browser.

6. Viewpoint is good for easy client (web browser) and auto-scaling the displays to your device screen. But it does not work with VBA code or client commands, and the trend and alarm objects are totally different.


Just like Bryan said, you need to be aware of the aspect ratio for all of your monitors. Sometimes, the pixel resolution matters too.
Ex. A computer LCD, Microsoft Surface Pro and a TV could all be widescreen.
But it will not be easy to get them all looking great from a single set of displays.

Just an FYI: That aspect ratio and resolution problem is common to ALL HMI vendors. It's not unique to Rockwell.
 
Hi Arlen..thanks for your reply

To be honest I have only ever used FTV ME. I know very little about FTV SE other than its is supposed to be better for site wide SCADA style systems, collecting and serving data, user input and generating alarms over multiple machines and users on a site.
At the moment our factory is just a group of machines each with a separate FTV ME HMI in each machine (almost).
We probably only require 2 large screens to start with so strapping a thin client to the back of each one could allow us to grow the system over time and would allow, as you pointed out, adjustments for local hardware differences.

Another possibility might be to upgrade one machine HMI in each area so that it could publish a single Web Page to a local smart TV. This way we could continue to use FTV ME and improve a critical machine in that area. The HMI and network connected local PLC could provide any User interaction required and local processing etc. Would this approach be too short sighted for future system growth?
But we had intended to use the server to run Transaction Manager, as well as FTV SE, to collect data from the plant
A lot the think about
Cheers
ian
 

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