HMI Development Software with Advanced Graphic capability

I am in search of a non-PC based, non-SCADA based HMI and software that allows the ability to dynamically draw graphical objects on the screen to represent a pattern.

For example, this machine will allow a user to type in a number of radial rows to drill holes in, and how many holes in each row. So concentric circles of different numbers of holes (usually evenly spaced).

I want to be able to "draw" a picture or diagram of this configuration on the screen for the operator to be able to visually check that the pattern of holes looks as expected. Possibly even dynamically add text in locations to label certain points. I know of PC based HMI apps and SCADA packages that offer this flexibility, but I can't think of any canned HMI package that allows this. AB, Siemens, Mitsubishi, etc. Anyone know of an HMI package that just allows me to simply "draw" a bitmap (lines, circles, colors, etc.) at various locations.

Not exactly what you are looking for but many HMI packages allow you to set the size and position of objects like circles, lines, rectangles... dynamically.

So, if you are always dealing with circles and you know the maximum number of circles you will need, you can draw that number of circles on a page with the visibility off. Through the PLC or scripting on the HMI, set the size, location and visibility of the circles you want to see on the screen.

Probably doable on a lot of packages. For sure I know that would work in JMobile by EXOR and Galilieo by Eaton.

Any of the codesys based PLCs that include the visualization will do that no worries.

Take your pick:
https://devices.codesys.com/device-...r&tx_eondevicemanager_guest[controller]=Guest

ndzied1 said:

Not exactly what you are looking for but many HMI packages allow you to set the size and position of objects like circles, lines, rectangles... dynamically.

So, if you are always dealing with circles and you know the maximum number of circles you will need, you can draw that number of circles on a page with the visibility off. Through the PLC or scripting on the HMI, set the size, location and visibility of the circles you want to see on the screen.

Probably doable on a lot of packages. For sure I know that would work in JMobile by EXOR and Galilieo by Eaton.

Click to expand...

It is any where from a few hundred holes, to well over 2000 holes. My experience has been if the graphics are object based it will bog the processor down to its knees (I've tried it before with other things). That coupled with pre-allocating 1000s of objects is both tedious and daunting.

To be clear, an object based solution is not going to work. Particularly if they need to be predefined, but even being able to dynamically generate the objects at runtime would completely overburden the processor with the shear number of them we are talking about.

I had a customer that was drilling heat exchanger tube plates, we never did come up with a viable solution.

As a workaround we gave them the ability to port in cad drawings (Autocad if memory serves) that gave them visualiztion that they needed on the shop floor.

I'd be very interested to hear what you come up with for a solution.

I’ve never run across any good options for this type of work in HMI software. Those types of applications are typically pretty limited in what they can do. You want to create the objects dynamically as opposed to other suggestions to just position pre-existing objects dynamically.

I would just write an application for this.

My preference/suggestion would be to use SVG in React with TypeScript because it’s easy, scales well, and you can just run it on a web server on an SBC in kiosk mode connected to a touch screen (or let it run as a separate display without a touch screen if you don’t need operator interaction).

Hardware is cheap and software is free.

But other options like WPF would work as well. In any case, writing the GUI yourself will give you the most flexibility.

DamianInRochester said:

It is any where from a few hundred holes, to well over 2000

Click to expand...

Those number of points are in the CAD or CNC realm. I don’t think you will find a basic HMI that will handle them. With that many objects I suspect you will need some panning and zooming features to be able to properly convey the information without creating a messy blob of dots on the screen.

Is this a CNC type machine? If that is the case perhaps you should consider CNC controllers and not just basic PLCs?

Siemens Comfort Panels can actually do it.
I do something similar with the f(x) trend view to make scatter plot of measuring points.
It takes some scripting to get it going, but works fine for me. Each measuring point will be displayed as a dot that is a no of pixels in diameter.
Not sure if it can handle up to 2000 points.

It has already been established on a PC based control decades ago and If done well it can actually look just fine. I have included an example image that has around 480 holes or so.

https://imgur.com/a/ZqQTOxY

I wanted to just import bitmaps into the HMI recipes and do the offline generation of the picture using point tables generated off the CAD data, but the customer is adamant that they need the ability to affect this right at the screen by the operator, and that they no longer want a PC based solution.

The motion itself isn't sophisticated enough to warrant a CNC based solution. The idea was to try and keep everything as simply and easy to understand as possible so that they could support it in house.

Jesper, thanks for the suggestion. I actually have a comfort panel I can test that out on. I did consider the notion of possibly being able to do it with a graph or trend element but wasn't liking the results with the software I tried it on. I will let you know how I make out.

It is not so trivial. Be sure to get the sample project from Siemens for f(x) Trend on Comfort Panel.
https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ww/en/view/109481693
I can also explain a couple of things that are not obvious.

Define "non-PC non-SCADA."


Would RaspberryPI fit the bill? This would be trivial assuming drivers exist to communicate with the process, but then you would have to implement the rest of the API, which might or might not be trivial. In the end no different functionally from a PC-based solution, I suppose.



What HMI interfaces are needed to control the process?

Do you have to use circles? Could you define an array of string elements each one character in length and with a value of "x" or "o" or "+" and place them using x and y coordinates and visibility? If the diameter of the holes can vary, perhaps use font size to indicate that.

Agree on too many colors and fancy pics part. I am not a fan of bloating HMI screen with colors and animations either. I am looking for something that looks simple yet modern. Cannot it be both at the same time?