Components

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

HMI Navigation Engine (HNE)

Post your questions or feedback on the HMI Navigation Engine (HNE) component here.
Message 1 of 12
(14,671 Views)

Is anyone using this yet?  What are the advantages?

 

0 Kudos
Message 2 of 12
(14,395 Views)

Rick,

 

We have used this component and reference design with several customers as they develop their machine control applications. The purpose and benefit of the HMI Navigation Engine is that it simplifies the basic design of a touchpanel based HMI application.

 

Using a Windows CE-based Touchpanel you do not have individual windows like you do in a Windows XP or Vista-based application. Instead the top level VI occupies the entire screen. In addition the tab control is not supported in Windows CE. Therefore in order to switch between different panels (UIs) in the application you need to add support in your UI such as buttons to switch to other panels. The HNE provides a basic template and design for implementing this panel switching code.

authored by
Christian L, CLA
Systems Engineering Manager - Automotive and Transportation
NI - Austin, TX


  
0 Kudos
Message 3 of 12
(14,368 Views)

OK, thanks for the info.  Is there a memory or other advantage to using this in a situation other than one you describe using the touchpanel?

0 Kudos
Message 4 of 12
(14,364 Views)

What do you mean by memory advantage?

 

The HNE does not load the individual panels dynamically, so all of them are in memory while the application is running. You could update the design to load the panel VIs dynamically to reduce the amount of memory used by the application by not loading all panel VIs statically.

 

Otherwise the HNE is probably no better or worse in terms of memory then if you programmed this yourself. But it is already done in a clean and very flexible and scalable design.

authored by
Christian L, CLA
Systems Engineering Manager - Automotive and Transportation
NI - Austin, TX


  
0 Kudos
Message 5 of 12
(14,349 Views)

Apologies - I should have been clearer.  We are in a single-PC WinXP environment with NI cards in it (no external cRIO, etc), using a touch screen as the main WinXP monitor and HMI.  We are being led to believe that there are performance benefits (memory footprint, CPU loading) to using the HNE even in our environment because the HNE does something like a page swap, which it sounds like is not the case.  It appears that the HNE is geared more toward an environment in which a full PC is not leading?

 

0 Kudos
Message 6 of 12
(14,342 Views)

You are correct. The HNE is mainly targetted at HMIs based on Windows CE touchpanels (LabVIEW Touchpanel module). Due to Windows CE the LabVIEW touchpanel module does not support all of the features in LabVIEW for Windows. The HNE addresses some of these differences.

 

For your application the HNE will not offer any memory or CPU advantages. With the current design of the HNE, panels are linked statically in the main VI and loaded at startup. The HNE does run each of the panels sequentially, so only one panel will run at a time, which in some way does minimize the CPU usage. But this is not very different from what you would likely implement yourself. In any case the HNE is still a solid flexible architecture that can be used in Windows XP/Vista to implement the HMI for an application.

authored by
Christian L, CLA
Systems Engineering Manager - Automotive and Transportation
NI - Austin, TX


  
Message 7 of 12
(14,338 Views)

Hi, I am a new TPC user (TPC 2106) and I am using the HNE and AMC for the first time. My application have different pages and I try to replicate the example showing in http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/5329, I don’t use the template, but I have create a new blank project and building a similar example VI (including subvis folders). The problem is that the buttons don’t switch between the VIs. I don’t know if I need configure the VIs node setup or some hierarchy for the VIs or the project.

Thanks

0 Kudos
Message 8 of 12
(13,032 Views)
The AMC Read Next Message has an “Exit”default value in the Termination List node. How my native language not is English I had change this word in the AMC Send Local message and not had change the default. Now it´s right!
0 Kudos
Message 9 of 12
(13,025 Views)

That is good news - glad to hear it's working now.

 

0 Kudos
Message 10 of 12
(13,023 Views)