Automation Fair 2014

[curlyandshemp]

Anyone who attended, find anything new of interest on display?

I was curious about the new Panelview Plus 7. Other than that nothing for me.

 

[gbradley]

I looked at the Panelview Plus 7
Touch screen only. One controller only and I think she said no serial port.
They have kind of a Matte finish. I think it is for AntiGlare
The bigger units are really cool with Metal Bezels.

We had fun the night before at Disneys California Adventure

 

[shawnhimself]

Yeah I played around w the PV7 for awhile.

Different aspect ratio, widescreen.

To be honest the performance was as miserable as the PV6 when it came to tag and image refresh. Would be nice to see a capacitive option as well.

 

[CapinWinky]

They would only do capacitive if they were going multi-touch and they would only go multi-touch if they had a way to use it. Given the lack of development/innovation in View Studio, I don't think they will be coming out with that any time soon.

 

[gbradley]

Pictures of the PanelView Plus 7 on this Twitter account
https://twitter.com/MrShawnTierney/media

 

[Ken Roach]

It will be interesting to see what the differences are between the PanelView Plus 7 and the PanelView 800.

It makes sense to me that PV+7 is a successor product to the PanelView Plus and PanelView Plus 6. New hardware, same FactoryTalk View ME software.

But PanelView 800 seems aimed at the low-end terminal business that the PanelView Component is aimed at now.

Connecting to one controller sounds like a PV800 limitation, while "no serial port" might be OK for the PV+7, but not for the PV800. Hmm.

I wasn't there so I'm conjecturing and waiting for the post-Fair documentation.

 

[jkerekes]

New model VersaViews have Multi-touch.

 

[CapinWinky]

New model VersaViews have Multi-touch.

Makes sense, those are just computers, so you can actually make a multi-touch HMI in Adobe Air or something.

 

[Ken Roach]

I found a related touchscreen feature with the PV+ 6 terminal, running version 6.0.

My application uses PDF files for Help and Reference functions, so we launch the FoxIt PDF Reader from a button on a maintenance display. I launch it fullscreen and it covers the whole 15" display.

To my surprise, a swipe of the finger from left-to-right or right-to-left changes the PDF document page !

So the hardware has the ability to handle gestures like "swipe", at least.

But most HMI applications are going to have buttons all over the screen and not have much use for pinch-to-zoom or swipe-to-navigate.

I experimented for a while with a two-finger navigation "wheel" in Indusoft Web Studio and eventually abandoned it for a conventional navigation bar.

 

[CapinWinky]

I've actually been involved with some multi-touch HMI development (for PackExpo last month, but I last saw it 4 months ago). We were using multi-touch for two hand controls on a single 24inch wide screen (we discovered that we needed to require 2 fingers per hand to avoid people using their nose and reaching into the machine).

Other than that, we were trying to make up other "practical" uses of multi-touch on a real machine and didn't come up with many that made sense. However, we did use swiping a lot since it works WAY better on capacitive than a resistive touch screen (scrolling through lists and such).

 

[Ken Roach]

to avoid people using their nose and reaching into the machine

Your functional safety analysis meetings must be hilarious.

 

[rstech]

I sat in on the PanelView800 technical session and it will be the direct replacement for the PanelView Component except for the two smaller sizes since they aren't going to be offered (at least initially) in the PV800 series. Faster processor, more memory, slimmer design. They also said price would be the same as the Component.

 

[Usireland]

I am getting different information from different people about the PF527.

I know it will be launched in March (lets see if that holds up), but what I am really interested in is the possibility of it working as a "servo drive replacement". In some cases we have things where we need position control but it doesnt need to be exact (i.e. I need like 1/4" (5mm) precision not the 1/128" presision of a servo) so we use a VDF with an encoder. I think I talked to about 5 different people at AF14 and they all came back to me with different answers. I want to get my hands on one to see how it will work.

If it does not work as a "servo drive replacement" it seams like a great product for people who make one off machines, as programming it will be a lot simpler. For anyone who makes the same machine over and over, maybe its better to spend a bit more engineering time up front and pay less to use a PF525 drive.

 

[The Plc Kid]

I am getting different information from different people about the PF527.

I know it will be launched in March (lets see if that holds up), but what I am really interested in is the possibility of it working as a "servo drive replacement". In some cases we have things where we need position control but it doesnt need to be exact (i.e. I need like 1/4" (5mm) precision not the 1/128" presision of a servo) so we use a VDF with an encoder. I think I talked to about 5 different people at AF14 and they all came back to me with different answers. I want to get my hands on one to see how it will work.

If it does not work as a "servo drive replacement" it seams like a great product for people who make one off machines, as programming it will be a lot simpler. For anyone who makes the same machine over and over, maybe its better to spend a bit more engineering time up front and pay less to use a PF525 drive.

The video here may clear things up.

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/r...capabilities/drive-systems/powerflex-527.page

So not really a servo drive replacement jst programs the same way and uses the same instructions.

 

[Firejo]

I really liked the Data-Linc Group display but I’m kinda bias that way.