RS View SE Distributed on a server and clients

[Rob S.]

We have a main PC that has RS View SE Distributed on and we have 2 clients out in the plant. I had one client PC that crashed 2 days ago. Instead of dealing with FactoryTalk , and SE , that it seems like a pain. I would like to just go with maybe a C-More , Red Lion G3 , etc. Why have a complicated setup ? Why not go with just stand alone PC's or HMI's ? It seems like you are just representing the data that is in the tags , and also writing to the same tags in the PLC. Wouldn't each display change if a value in the tag would change. Like "Main Pump Off" would display red on all the screens , but once turned on from client station 2 then "Main Pump Running" would display on all the displays.

I hope this made sense ?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Ken Roach]

Three stations is pretty much the minimum setup for a "distributed HMI" system, so I can understand why you are considering individual standalone systems.

Reinstalling the FTView SE Client and pointing it to the Server isn't a complicated process. You've already paid for the engineering and licensing, so why not replace or repair the PC and go back to what you already had ?

If you replace just one FTView station with a standalone, dedicated purpose HMI, now you have a mix of products, a mix of spares, and two different development and maintenance and training efforts.

If your system really is doing nothing more than pushbutton and indicator replacement, then a distributed HMI that can do centralized data logging and user management and historical trending is overkill. That's a big IF.