Operator Configurable HMI?

seth350

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Join Date
Jul 2011
Location
Over yonder
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373
Good afternoon folks,

I was wanting to ask the community if anyone has heard or seen an operator interface that allows the operator to pick what they would like to monitor or control and display it on a screen or multiple screens?

Some background...
I am putting together an HMI for a process that involves many process variables that need to be monitored and trended. While this is not something new or difficult, the end user however is not the typical operator. The folks that will be using this are engineers and giving them a cookie-cutter HMI solution that only does what I program it to do, just won’t do. I would rather allow them the ability to configure what they find important to them. The ability to configure monitoring, trending, specify limits, alarms, and aggregate the data as they need.

Suggestions?
 
There are several ways you can do that. Off the top of my head, without giving it a lot of thought, since you are talking about engineers looking at the data, you could use indirect or indexed addressing where a value can be entered in the HMI that is read by the plc whic is the address of the variable the HMI operator wants to see. So, for example, the operator wants to look at N7:1 The HMI has an address that is displayed but it gets it from the entry by the operator. I don’t think that is very hard to do but the operator is either going to need a cheat sheet or you are going to have to display the address with a description on the HMI. Seems a lot easier to me just to program them all in the HMI and have as many pages as you need if you have enough memory. You actually would not need any form of indirect or indexed addressin to do it but if you may be able to accomplish it with less entries by the operator if do that.

If they know the address of the data , set points etc, they want to display all you have to do is give them the PLC address the HMI is looking at to read it.
 
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Have a "Dropdown" box with various TagNames". So now all the engineers have to do is select from a "DropDown List the various TagNames, and once selected the value fields will be populated with the correct value.
 
A couple years ago I was contracted to develop an HMI for an OEM. Their specification showed screen layouts with multiple panels. Each panel contained a list of variables to display the values and allow them to click on it to edit the value. The original specification called for INI files that defined what variables would be displayed in each pane. It just seemed so dated of a way of doing things, so I created in-app editors to let the operators add/remove what variables were listed in each pane. They would log in with the admin level password, then editing icons would appear on each pane. They could then click the icon to pop up the editor window.

Also part of the in-app editor was a variable editor in which they could create new variables and set everything from description to limits to the tag name in the PLC.

It worked well when it was all done, but the down side was that you could never expect any untrained person walk up to the machine and operate it. It was not intuitive at all because you only seen lists of variables with their description and values. But for a very experienced person with the machine, it worked well.

I don't have any good pictures, but the attached will give you an idea of the panels. You will also see some Chinese in the mix and that is because it is bilingual with the click of an item, but the language file had to be complete for everything to translate.

HMIPanels.jpg
 
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Thank you all for your suggestions. Currently I do have indirect addressing on multiple arrays of data containing standard deviations, setpoints, limits, averages, max,min,etc.
I access those data points by moving the requested data into a buffer array that is then tied to labels and numeric displays.

My concern is that for any other calculations they may want to do, I would have to add that. It would better serve them to have the ability to pick from a list of variables, drag them into a trend chart if they need to be trended or drag them into a computation block to perform their own custom arithmetic.
I think this goes beyond the common use of an HMI, where it just shows one pressure or puts a process in manual mode. Rather, it’s more or less handing the operator an HMI design sandbox. Provide the bucket of toys for them to play with, and then let them have at it.

I have seen some videos of Labview and it sounds like just that. Is that correct?
 
Take a look at the Android Suppanel app, the supervision panels can be created and modified in the same application, it has its own built-in editor and the panels can be switched instantly from design to run mode and vice versa.

http://www.suppanel.com

I'm Suppanel author ...
 
In Siemens you could use multiplexing. Create an internal tag and an index which points to the tags you need.
You would need to do some scripting to change setpoints tho, but you could use the same index to achieve that.
 
The Suppanel app looks like it would do it, but we do not have any Android devices. Only iOS and Windows 7 & 10.

Thank you for the suggestion though lfe.

Anyone have any experience wi H Labview? Could it do what I am asking?
 
Yes, We have a setup in use with Intouch WonderWare where the user can pick analog or discrete tags from an extensive list and then track them in a scaleable 12 hour trend. It's rarely used, except by mostly maintenance and controls technicians.
 
I belive that InTouch can handle indirect tags and adresses in such a way that you can write the tagname from the screen under a button for instance, and then process that name as the adress.

But wouldn't it be easier in this case to sell them a developer version of basically any HMI?

Taking into account your loss of future business...
 
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The functionality you are looking for is not really the job of the HMI. You're looking for a historian.

The historian would log and save all values of interest and the engineers could use that to view trends, analyze and whatever they choose. The historian itself would be network connected with data connections to excel and whatnot so the process engineer can sit at his computer and analyze things.

It's a standard tool in the process industry.
 
Pete, can you recommend a historian?
Is it something that is intuitive that a chemical engineer could use?

I am using a B&R controller and would like to stick with OPC UA.
 
Pete, can you recommend a historian?
Is it something that is intuitive that a chemical engineer could use?

I am using a B&R controller and would like to stick with OPC UA.


I would look into using Ignition by Inductive Automation. Its architecture is built very well to handle this sort of thing.
 
B&R have a product for data collection and visualisation. Can be used with or wo hardware. Forgot the name.. but it's their brand of the "configure trends and logging and have them sent to a Web page". I have the quote in the office.
 
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