Alternative to AB Panelview

+1 Automation Direct C-More HMIs

C-More or Kinco

C-More is Cheap and fairly easy to use
Kinco HMI is dirt cheap, but difficult to use.

I'm not a big fan of the Cmores. They are seem to be missing a lot of simple features that other brands have had for 25 years and the software seems poorly laid out.


The Redlion HMIs are awesome though. Can't go wrong there.

No mention of ignition? Might want to check it out.

PreLC said:

No mention of ignition? Might want to check it out.

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+1 for Ignition. They have cost effective solutions for single clients. If you have several PVs, Ignition would probably be cheaper and a lot better solution. Single clients it may be more depending on what you need.

Also, AdvancedHMI. Quite a learning curve, but 100% free, just buy the hardware to run on.

I use a lot of CMore currently and it does most of what I need but I miss the global objects and tag substitution from FT View. Do any of the more budget friendly options offer something similar? Even just a basic way to substitute tags manually would save a lot of time.

durallymax said:

I use a lot of CMore currently and it does most of what I need but I miss the global objects and tag substitution from FT View. Do any of the more budget friendly options offer something similar? Even just a basic way to substitute tags manually would save a lot of time.

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Define budget friendly. Something for $100 is cheap to one and expensive to another.

I'm not sure why so many have mentioned using a C-More. They are good for basic functions, but to your point on missing global objects and tag substitution, they also have no way to do indirection (placeholders). That's a huge function missing.

My "budget friendly" is a moving target, but for simple projects 1-3k for a 10" sized screen.

Working in CMore again today and realized not having a way to export screens is painful especially when trying to add the user access workaround I created since Cmore is pretty poor in that region. There's no global login so every screen has to have a password re-entered. To work around that I moved all user passwords and info to the PLC. A user can login, setup their email, days/times on call, modify their pass code and an admin can set permission level. Then I just use invisible bitmaps to cover features with visibility tags corresponding to user permission level. It was a lot of work, I set it up for 8 users. On the screen it's about 200 objects. Having to click through those and change the array index one by one takes forever. I basically just saved a template now and that's what I start from on new projects but a way to copy/export/recycle from old projects would really be nice.

One other thing I've never understood is why it doesn't update your tags when you change them even if they have the same address. Sometimes I change my mind about the name of a tag, I'm sure I'm not the only one. Even with overwrite existing tags checked it still just creates a new tag with the same address and then I have to hunt down those old tags, open the objects and edit them. To get around that I will edit the tag names manually in C-More before doing another import.

An extra 1-2k for hardware looks pretty small if it saves a few hours programming.

PLC Pie Guy said:

I vote for Weintek using EasyBuilderPro.
Does everything except deal with parameter files.

I use mostly the MT series.

Iv had one beating around in my forestry processor for a good 2 years now. Hot cold and constant vibration. Cant' knock it.

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Another from me for weintek. If you buy the right one it comes with an EasyAccess license that will make remote access a breeze. The documentation kinda sucks, but the software is pretty good. You can get them from a member-owned site plccable.com for a good price. I've bought from there and been very happy.


C-More isn't actually all that cheap for what it is. If you are doing a project with an AD PLC and just doing basic functionality, they will make the project a breeze, though.

I'll just throw Schneider Magelis into the mix. Good range of panels with the smaller end very reasonably priced. The software is also free (last I checked) for the smaller panels (HMISTO, etc.) and very feature rich. I've used a few integrated with AB controllers and they have worked well. They have AB specific communications drivers for each family of AB controller. They also support many other third-party controllers and also support multi-PLC connectivity.

Regards,
George

I think it has been mentioned above, but Weintek do cheap HMI's and they can be rear mounted, so no ugly bezels on show. The screens are not as bright and vivid those as the Allen-Bradley ones, although my experience was close to 4 years ago and so they may well have improved now.

Cmore is good if you need cheap and something simple to accomplish. They have basic pushbuttons, alarms, lights. If you get deeper into it, you can do basic animations also.

mk42 said:

I've seen Logix + Comfort a fair bit in the Automotive sector. It sounds crazy to be mixing a little Siemens in your Rockwell, but it seems to work well, and seems to be better bang for your buck.

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Probably won't save many $$££ BUT you don't have to use FT which is worth paying out of your own pocket for!!

Weintek HMI will be suited for you.
I integrate many times with SLC series, Micrologix.
Free software,cost effective.

alive15 said:

Cmore is good if you need cheap and something simple to accomplish. They have basic pushbuttons, alarms, lights. If you get deeper into it, you can do basic animations also.

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Maybe I overlooked it, but I needed interlocked and multistate pushbuttons and couldn't find anything that worked similarly on the cmore. It just seems like a lot of common features on every other brand i have used are missing on the Cmore.