A Free HMI with Eye Catching Graphics is Now Available

George Graziano said:

OK, I tried going from 75, down to 55 still locks up. As soon as I put it back to 50, it starts working, but then I get that error again. I am using an older laptop, with winXP service pack 2 if that matters.

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Are you changing this line of code:

tmpPA.PollRate = 50


Set that line and also this line with is about 15 lines down:

tmrTemp.Interval = 50


Change both of them to 500. That will set the poll rate to 1/2 second

Archie,

That did it. It doesn't update as quick, but that is OK. Thank you very much for helping me get it going.

George

Hello Archie,
Any more drivers added ? You said you are working on S7 200 PPI driver.
I tried out Modbus RTU , was very close to doing it but could not conlude the project due to other project committments. What I was actually trying to do was, " use VB6.0 Modbus RTU code " in your HMI . well , if time permitts I will give another try. Whenever successful I will send you the code.
[email protected]

shrirampendse said:

Any more drivers added ? You said you are working on S7 200 PPI driver.
I tried out Modbus RTU , was very close to doing it but could not conlude the project due to other project committments. What I was actually trying to do was, " use VB6.0 Modbus RTU code " in your HMI . well , if time permitts I will give another try. Whenever successful I will send you the code.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I have been overwhelmed with projects so I have not been able to work on any of the new drivers except an ADS driver for TwinCAT. I do have a working S7-200 driver, but it needs more testing and a lot of clean up before it is ready to be released.

A good Modbus driver would be a welcome addition. There is one that I hacked through, but it is not very well done. The drivers for AdvancedHMI can get complicated because of the Subscribe function and optimization.

Hi Archie

Am I being too ambitious?


I have had enough of the major HMI providers, they don't do the hardware I need and I am getting silly prices for using my own hardware and their Windows software. My mind came back to this exciting project and I wondered if I could use it. I don't know if the raw version will do all I want but I also don't mind doing some coding in Visual Basic. I had a play over the weekend and created a multiform project with one form calling another and then closing itself. I had some issues with transparency of text over background images but there did seem to be solutions mentioned on the web (this is a Visual Basic issue not a problem with Advanced HMI).


Here is what I need:
Numerical data read/write (byte int, word int, double word int, real)
Text (Unicode) data read/write
On screen keyboard for numbers (decimal and HEX) and text (Unicode)
Multiple forms (over 100)
Auto display of some forms depending on PLC signals
Password entry to different levels
Some buttons only to display according to Password level
Recipes to store all the settings
Print out of data (Unicode)
Multiple alarms with printout option
Might be asking a bit much but allowing access to two PLCs would be useful
Rock steady performance


I know that Advanced HMI probably does a lot of what I need but I can't test it properly because I don't have a suitable PLC. If/when there are some bits I can't code I would be happy to pay to have it coded and then added to the free version facilities.


Finally, I know that there is a 'Windows CE Toolkit' for Visual Basic, is there any chance that Advanced HMI programs could run on a Windows CE computer? Windows XP/Vista/7 give greater flexibility but CE gives greater stability.


So is a large project do-able with advanced HMI or am I being over ambitious?

Thanks

Bryan

Bryan

I have used AdvancedHMI on a number of projects, most 10 pages or less running on a touch panel PC, but there is no reason it couldn't handle many more pages. I have a standard snippet of code that I use on all forms that will stop communications for the objects on that page if it is not visible. That keeps updates fast and the system responsive even if the project uses a large number of forms.

One of the big advantages to using Visual Studio (Visual Basic Express) as the design environment is that anything a PC can do is possible to be done with some programming. Since .NET is an object oriented language, if you have an existing control that is close to what you need, you can inherit all that functionality into a new control and add the features you need.

In 3 weeks, I have plans to post the next major release that includes a lot of improvements. One thing I have done is to clean up the code to make it much easier to create new or modify existing controls. Another big improvement is the Ethernet drivers will allow access to more than one PLC.

Everything you mention in your list is all possible to do with AdvancedHMI. Some with with current existing controls, some with a few lines of code, and others may require custom components.

BryanG said:

Finally, I know that there is a 'Windows CE Toolkit' for Visual Basic, is there any chance that Advanced HMI programs could run on a Windows CE computer? Windows XP/Vista/7 give greater flexibility but CE gives greater stability.

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I have used some of the AdvancedHMI components on Windows CE devices (with a few minor modifications), but lately I have been hesitant to continue its use. Microsoft did not include support for CE in Visual Studio 2010, which makes me wonder what their future plans are for the product. They seem to be heavily focusing on the Windows Phone operating system and Silverlight.

Hi Bryan,

I made an HMI for a small tugboat's alarm system last year using AdvancedHMI with the EtherentIP driver (and forgot to post the results... sorry!) and it worked OK, but I was seeing some strange behaviour which I had to find work-arounds for.

In one example, communication with the PLC worked when I had a large number of components using PLC addresses in the same register. To this form I then added a component with a PLC address in a different register, and the communications seemed to stop working.

Bearing in mind that Archie is building AdvancedHMI in his spare time, it really is a remarkably large and useful system, and it does have the potential to do what you need. Archie says he has improved the Ethernet driver for the next release so you probably won't see many glitches like the one I just described. I can post more information on my project if you or Archie think it will be useful.

Hope this helps,
Dan

I am going to have to get an AB PLC and play some more. I think the next stop will have to be ebay.


Bryan

Hi Archie

Have a question for you.

I have been looking again at the libnodave library for Siemens PLCs, it provides a dll that can be used in VB.Net that gives:

A free communication library for Siemens S7 200/300/400 via
' the MPI adapter 6ES7 972-0CA22-0XAC
' or MPI adapter 6ES7 972-0CA23-0XAC
' or TS adapter 6ES7 972-0CA33-0XAC
' or MPI adapter 6ES7 972-0CA11-0XAC,
' IBH/MHJ-NetLink or CPs 243, 343 and 443
' or VIPA Speed7 with builtin ethernet support.
' or PPI access for the S7-200 (I know you have a driver well in hand)

That lot covers Siemens MPI, PPI and ISO over TCP/IP for S7200/1200/300/400. It would be a major boost to the userbase for Advanced HMI.

Would you be OK if I got a programmer friend to try to make these communications drivers available to Advanced HMI. I will understand if it is a problem, Advanced HMI is your baby and you may not want other people messing with it.

Bryan

BryanG said:

I have been looking again at the libnodave library for Siemens PLCs, it provides a dll that can be used in VB.Net that gives:

A free communication library for Siemens S7 200/300/400 via
' the MPI adapter 6ES7 972-0CA22-0XAC
' or MPI adapter 6ES7 972-0CA23-0XAC
' or TS adapter 6ES7 972-0CA33-0XAC
' or MPI adapter 6ES7 972-0CA11-0XAC,
' IBH/MHJ-NetLink or CPs 243, 343 and 443
' or VIPA Speed7 with builtin ethernet support.
' or PPI access for the S7-200 (I know you have a driver well in hand)

That lot covers Siemens MPI, PPI and ISO over TCP/IP for S7200/1200/300/400. It would be a major boost to the userbase for Advanced HMI.

Would you be OK if I got a programmer friend to try to make these communications drivers available to Advanced HMI. I will understand if it is a problem, Advanced HMI is your baby and you may not want other people messing with it.

Click to expand...

Bryan
I encourage others to make components for HMI and contribute to the project. It's orginal intent was to make it a community project.

I have a copy of libnodave and have looked over the possibility of converting it to VB. I work with very little Siemens equipment, so I'm far from an expert on the hardware. I have written a working driver for the S7-200 over PPI, but it is far from complete. That driver will be posted with the next release as an alpha version (preliminary). The PPI protocol is actually very close to the MPI protocol.

Writing a driver is one of the most difficult parts of the whole project. There is an ICommComponent file that defines the interface necessary for a driver to work with the rest of the components.

Just found a different program to communicate with S7300 & 400:
http://s7net.codeplex.com/

From what I can find by using Google translate it is simpler to use and understand than libnodave. However it is only available in C#.net though there are programs to convert C#.Net to VB.Net

Hi Archie

How are you dealing with data types for the S7-200? Have you added at 'Data Type' property for each control or are you getting the user to add a data type extension to the Memory Address i.e. VW100.UI (unsigned integer) or VD200.R (Real).

My efforts with integrating libnodave may take a bit longer than I had hoped. My coding guru hasn't got in to the whole 'Visual' and 'IDE' side of things, he prefers to code using the Linux equivalent of Notebook. He tends to look down on anything that isn't Linux or pure C++ and he likes to 're-invent the wheel' so all the useful 'Classes' are the work of evil forces. In years gone by I think he would be the one taking a hammer to those new fangled Spinning Machines.

Regards

Bryan

BryanG said:

How are you dealing with data types for the S7-200? Have you added at 'Data Type' property for each control or are you getting the user to add a data type extension to the Memory Address i.e. VW100.UI (unsigned integer) or VD200.R (Real).

Click to expand...

The S7-200 driver I put together is very basic. It reads based on the address and only read M, I, and Q. For eample, if you use the address MW0, it will read a word. MX0.0 will tell it to read a bit, etc.

Hi Archie

I couldn't understand how you were dealing with Data Types for the AB drivers, until I downloaded an AB manual and saw that their data types are part of the address. How would you like to do Data Types for other PLCs where the Data Type isn't part of the address? I think that the easiest and most logical from my point of view is to add a Data Type property to the control but obviously that is more work for you.

Bryan