Large Display Screens (TV) - Scrolling data

EICS

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This is a general question to find what systems/products are in the market (if at all).


Operations Manager in my plant has a request of me.


he wants a large TV screen that will scroll data , that is the displayed screen will have one type of input for say 10 seconds then change to the next for 10 seconds and so on.


this is a concept idea he has and he has no specifics yet. since my plant has a SCADA (Citect) this will more than likely be one input and possible an alarm server of some type will be another.


since TV's don't have those smarts i will probably be looking for something that can take multiple inputs, have some configuration utilty and then output to HDMI to the TV.


anyone got some recommendations on Vendors and links i can research.


a programmable alarm system that would interface from my SCADA to a large TV display would also be beneficial.
the plant has lots of flashing lights and audible alarms everywhere, we keep getting request to "add another alarm because X,Y,Z happened once" we have a SCADA (Citect) a SMS Alarm notifier system (WIN911 - which is excellent) but production people still want old school alarms. hence a more flexible, programmable large TV display would better suit.
 
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My operations Manager wanted this, but he is sort of an IT type. I am collecting data from all of my machines and sending it all to one Micrologix 1400, from there it is all collected by my PC running RSLinx OPC, I have a large flat screen in my office displaying an Excel
sheet with Graphs and stats on machines. He created along with a web page that he uses chromecast units to display individual machine data at each machine center. The machine centers he has constantly updating production stats along with throwing in Safety notices, Plant info and everything else he wants to show. I don't know how much attention employees pay to it but customers touring think your doing something right.
 
The Red Lion and Maple Systems devices are both excellent ways to get a large TV display to do the functions of a conventional dedicated purpose HMI device.

But I don't think they are necessarily appropriate for this application. Your data is coming from multiple sources: PLCs, current Citect runtimes, and historical databases.

I'm not a Citect guy, unfortunately, but I do think you should be looking at PC-based HMI products with good integration either with Citect or with SQL.

To narrow down the application requirements, start asking your managers (and programmers) about the format of the status, alarm, and event databases they want to get data from. If they're proprietary, ask about their export features and whether or not they can be changed or migrated to SQL.

At the same time, sketch up and enumerate the functions you want this bigscreen HMI to have.

This is a scope and functions exercise right now, not a hardware selection exercise.
 
At work, there's cheap TVs running a slideshow of pics. A manager saves PowerPoint or Excel pages with data links as photos to a USB stick and the TV cycles through every so many seconds. Getting live data is not easy because we would need an unlocked computer on the corporate network.
 
I have not used a PTV, but I have noticed this:

Build 702.002 (9/11/17) download
Fixes and Updates:
Added 240 words-per-transaction limit to Ethernet Native Tags driver
Added ability to access L5K encoded add-on instructions
Added CAN Generic 11-bit/29-bit Identifier communications driver
Added support for SQL Queries

I don't have that version at home, and with my Green Acres Internet, it would take until dawn to download it. The PTV hardware may not even support that feature, but the Crimson software would make quick work of creating nice displays from any data it can collect.
 
many thanks to you all for the response, much appreciated.


i have some homework and research to do!


i love this forum, the collective knowledge is amazing, ideas flow from you guys and its an on-line version of putting smart minds in a room to brainstorm.


thanks again one and all.
 
I have not used a PTV, but I have noticed this:

Build 702.002 (9/11/17) download
Fixes and Updates:
Added 240 words-per-transaction limit to Ethernet Native Tags driver
Added ability to access L5K encoded add-on instructions
Added CAN Generic 11-bit/29-bit Identifier communications driver
Added support for SQL Queries

I don't have that version at home, and with my Green Acres Internet, it would take until dawn to download it. The PTV hardware may not even support that feature, but the Crimson software would make quick work of creating nice displays from any data it can collect.


Hi OkiePC,


do you have any web links for this or more info Please?
 
The "PTV" that OkiePC mentioned is the Red Lion "ProducTVity Station".

http://www.redlion.net/product/productvity-station-plant-floor-communications-solution

Red Lion's HMI screens and data loggers/data concentrators have a great reputation for flexibility, ease of use, and value. Their controllers are basically a headless version of their HMI.

The PTV is sort of an in-between product; it introduced support for very large screens, but shares a chassis and most of its features with the mature G3 HMI and DataStation Plus products.

Some G3/DSP/PTV family devices have had an SQL Sync feature for several years; it basically just backed up their data logs to SQL tables on an offboard SQL server periodically, so you would have access to that data for further processing and history work. Here's a technote on it: Link

But the "SQL Manager" feature is new and I'm not familiar with it. My 2017-era copy of Crimson 3.0 version 702.004 does't appear to have it. . Download the Crimson 3.0 software (not Crimson 3.1) and have a look at the User Manual, Reference Manual, and software itself to see what kind of queries you can run with it, to bring SQL table data into Crimson 3.0 Tags.

From my brief review, it does not look as powerful as a PC-based HMI with a scripting language that allows you to create custom SQL queries or to call Stored Procedures, but there's certainly a lot you can do with it. Red Lion HMIs really are a fantastic toolbox of PLC communication and data handling features in a small, durable, reasonably priced (and American-made) platform.
 
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