HMI web server update...

Today we released a new version of the HMI to expand the built in web server features. The web server has several new features.

·        The  server now tracks who is logged on and if the user is inactive for a configured length of time, the user will be logged off.

·        The server now allows to define a target page for the first time a user logs on.

·        HTML pages created outside the HMI can now be used.

HMI release...

Yesterday we had an HMI release containing two new features.

The first is a method to view trend histories. Before this release a user had to use a window with a trend graphic element and a command to instruct the trend graphic which date to use for display. With the new feature a supplied window has a calendar on the left side and a trend display on the right side. The calendar indicates the days containing data for the trend and by using the mouse and clicking on a date the trend data is displayed. It is a fast and easy way to view trend histories.

The second feature is a new 'Alarm panel'. The HMI has an 'Active Alarm' window and graphic elements that can be used in user created windows to view alarm information. This new graphic element is very configurable and includes buttons for all the normal operations regarding alarms. Each button can be visible/invisible, the alarms displayed can be limited to an alarm group (or all groups), configurable colors for each field or by alarm type and many more options.

Graphics...

Today we release a new version of our HMI that contains several changes and a new graphic element.

The new graphic element is a radio button list. Much like the checkbox list it controls one analog point and uses the bit number to read/write each radio button value.

While using the graphic editor we discovered an anomaly with 'arcs'. It manifested when the start and end angle of an arc had certain characteristics. After additional testing we found the cause and implemented a solution.

We also changed the way grouped elements are stretched. Now, when using the selection rectangles to stretch a grouped element the group is scaled. This maintains the size of the elements and the position of the elements to each other at the same ratio as before stretching.

Two new graphic objects...

The HMI has buttons, sliders, drop down list, indicating pushbuttons, etc. and today we added a simple checkbox and a checkbox list. The checkbox uses a single digital point and the checkbox list uses a single analog point. The 16 individual bits in the analog point are used for indication and control in the checkbox list.

HMI update...

Today we released two new features for the HMI.

The first new feature is the ability to play a video file embedded in a graphic window. AVI, MPEG and any other format that has a codec (coder-decoder) installed in the OS. The playback can loop, pause, resume, etc. WAV and WMA files can also be played (audio files).

The second new feature is for the camera inputs. The HMI has always provided the option to record the video image to an AVI file. The start and stop of the recording was under user or script control. While this worked fine, it could use a large amount of disk space and require the recording to be on all the time to catch some event.

The new looping feature provides for the video stream to be recorded in a "loop" and under command the loop will be copied to another file.

For example, a machine is randomly faulting. The fault condition is known, but not why the machine is faulting. The video port is configured to maintain a 10 minute loop. When the fault condition is detected, the HMI can be commanded to save the loop. Later the video can be viewed and possibly the cause of the fault will be determined. (A squirrel ran across the sensor light beam, a passing cart bumped the stop switch, etc..)

New communications protocol...

Today we released a new version of our HMI that supports Fatek PLCs using the native Facon-PLC protocol. The HMI supports RS-232/485, TCP/IP and UDP/IP.

New graphic element...

Yesterday we released a new graphic element that provides for viewing, editing and printing of Microsoft Excel XLS files during runtime operation. One nice feature is Excel is not required to be installed on the computer running the HMI. XLS is the file extension for Microsoft Excel 97-2003. Newer versions of Excel can save to the XLS format.

This release also included several more features/changes.

·        A runtime window to allow masked string entry, like entering a password, the actual characters are not displayed, under project control.

·        A two button window for Boolean runtime operations. (three and four button already exist)

·        The ability to configure a user name and settings and then use a 'force log on' command, to always have a user logged in. The user must be configured for 'forced log on' for the command to succeed.

·        A change of the ODBC logging thread for better performance.

·        A reduced 'watchdog' timer logging selection for the MODBUS RS-485 port. This prevents slave devices that are off-line, on purpose, from filling the event log with timeouts.

·        Additional event logging.