Thin-Client Recommendation and related question

harryting

Lifetime Supporting Member
Join Date
May 2002
Location
Puget Sound
Posts
2,594
We got one installation that have most of the Win10 PC in a rack above the control room. In the past they always used various flavor of KVM switch and extenders but as one can imaging, the cabling is a mess.

My thought is that it would be a lot simpler, at least with cabling and also add more flexibility to use thin-clients and RDP over to the machines. I used Lenovo thin-clients before and liked it but the model I used seems to be unavailable so I'm looking at Dell(Wyze) products. They have the 5070 and the 3000 series. Looking at those I can't really tell what the capability is. I will need the ability to support 2 monitors through RDP. Does anyone have experience with these?
 
I used Wyse with GE's thin client manager and it worked "out of the box" (basic settings). It wasn't even a new unit, but the units IT decommissioned when they gave laptops to "everyone" so not the greatest and latest.

Do bear in mind that if you use some product like Thin Manager, you should definitely check compatibility... P+F were kind enough to refuse a PO of one of their Thin Clients because it was proven there were potential for issues with my version of it.
 
Why not just use a small industrial PC and RDP to your existing computers and avoid all the thin client compatibility issues. Just make a script to start RDP and connect upon bootup.

OS compatibility and cyber security is one. Locking the work environment so the operator doesn't navigate to Space Cadet Pinball would be another one.
 
I'll take a a look at OnLogic. For this smallish site with only 2 or 3 clients it may be better just to get tiny PC. thanks.

The operator already got their pinball game on internet enabled machine so that shouldn't be a problem :)
 
Update:

We found some refurb Dell Wyze 5070 Thin-client for about $120 on woot (Amazon). They work great except..... all remote connection info is lost on a power loss. After some research, it seems that this is now a "feature" of Wyze ThinOS.

https://www.dell.com/community/Wyse-Windows-10-IoT/Wyse-5070-losing-configuration/td-p/7639848

I got to say, that's a bit crazy but I guess most thin-client user are not control folks. WMS (Wyze Management System) standard is free so I might take a peek at that.
 
I'd like to pile on to this thread - but from both a user and admin perspective.

We are considering thin clients purely for the cybersecurity aspect of them. IT dept at the site is all on board to make that happen too. They had a failed attempt with VDI in the past and this will be a guinea pig for them.

How transparent is the user experience to the user?

Do they deal with dual screens OK?
Are they high bandwidth, High latency, stuff like that

I have not used a thin client since the green terminal days in school so I am woefully out of touch on these.
 

Similar Topics

I admittedly have never set up a Rockwell Thin Client / ThinManager but I need to step in because a vendor is having trouble making the connection...
Replies
4
Views
621
I support plants with small number of HMI each, mostly 2 or less HMIs per system. they all got different HMI package, some WW, some iFix, etc...
Replies
7
Views
3,245
This topic has been discussed before in this thread. http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?p=691496 Even though I had worked with Citrix...
Replies
5
Views
1,833
I'm trying to find a cheap solution to deploy a few web browsers attached to the back of LCD monitors. For testing purposes, my Raspberry PI has...
Replies
3
Views
2,242
Hi. I am thinking about how to provide a monitor in case I have a PC (for example for the HMI/SCADA) installed in the control cabinet. The PC...
Replies
16
Views
6,084
Back
Top Bottom