Creating an HMI application using LV & DSC on a Windows CE Touch screen PC

[Soroush]

Hi,

I'm creating an HMI application using LV & DSC on a Windows CE Touch screen PC.

will it be OK if I only have LV & DSC?

I've read some threads related to Win CE, but most of them are so old that I prefer to ask it again. Do I need PDA Module? I'm not familiar with PDA module, but NI always points to handheld and PALM PCs when talking about PDA module. here we'll have a touch screen Panel PC (probably from Advantech).
their processors are Intel Pentium III, IV and Celeron.

If having PDA module is a must for industrial PCs, then I guess that NI should bundle DSC and PDA in a new product package, because using DSC for industrial control applications mostly results in using some kind of rugged hardware such as industrial PCs.

I'm eager to hear about your experiences of creating such applications.

Thanks in advance

[tst]

I haven't used the computer version of CE (only the PDA one), but I know there are some differences.

In any case, I'm fairly sure that standard LV (and even more so DSC) is only supported on "real" windows (XP) and not on CE.

If this is so (it's only a "fair certainty"), it will mean not only that you can't use DSC, but that you will also need to use the PDA module, which is significantly inferior to the PC version.

The other side of this is that you don't have to use a CE PC. There are industrial touch panel PCs which can easily run XP (but will obviously cost more).

[Grub]

For industrial applications, have you considered using Compact Fieldpoint?  We have successfully deployed many projects using labVIEW real time.  We use a touch screen for interface to the CFP controller via RS232 or TCP/IP.

Grub

[Soroush]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your replies.

to Grub: surely, there are lots of architectures and possible combination of hardware and software.  We don't have a PC based control system. the main control algorithm is implemented by a number of PLCs. these PLCs are then networked and their data is passed to the PC. Therefore, some parts of our solution is done before and adding this HMI is somehow an upgrade to a higher level and more integrated control system. it is important for such an HMI system to be able to handle large data sets, store them in DBs, handle Alarms and Events and all the functionalities that are accessible by using DSC module.

to tst: I I'm coming to the point that you are correct by suggesting PCs with win XP. I had a discussion with the hardware consultant on selecting our model. It seems they are all designed to work in hard conditions of the field and they have windows CE because it is important to use real time applications installed on them as embedded applications. I do not face so hard real time limitations. If the PC only runs out HMI application there will be no problem ( I guess) and NI Keyboard filter of DSC provides useful features. the control room is also a clean place with no shocking noises. I even may use a common  laptop with a PCMCIA card that adds several acquisition ports to the system.

THe most effective way that you, forum members can help me is telling me if you have done such a project with LV and DSC. I remember that unclebump and Ben Rayner have some valuable experiences using DSC (they answered some of my elementary questions on DSC). It is my first sirious work with DSC and answers to these questions are so valuable to me. I am not asking how it can be done. I'm asking if it can be done. these are some questions that seem so common to my boss (!), but I can not confidently answer them. you know, when you start such a work, you must find how it can be done, but you must know if it had been done before by others

some of my questions: ( a yes/no answer by an expert is quite enough)

1- Will an LV-DSC application be designed to work on a common PC?

2- Will it work on a win CE platform? (I'm not sure about the answer yet, if it has a certain yes/no answer)

3- How many OPC tags had you in your application? did you feel malfunction because of the number of tags?

4- Is citadel DB the best way? (surely the easiest way, but have you faced some problems in the middle of the way, that brings you the result the you sould have used other DBs)

5- networking features: is publishing the panel in an HTML page a secure way? I mean can we have seperate login prompt for remote users?

This is not a message, I shall make a forum for this topic !

Just emphasing that I don't expect you consume a lot of time answering my questions. just yes/no answers, useful hyperlinks and hints if any. It is my own responsibility to track them. thank you for sharing your knowledge Co-Forumers (NAW)

[Soroush]

I really hope that the right person will have enough time to read the long story above

If you are him and only little time you have, may you answer this question:

is DSC, on a non-industrial PC, a real industrial solution?

e.g. siemens has WINCC which can be used to develop and run HMI/SCADA applications on windows CE.

NI suggests NI Lookout for HMI applications or LV with DSC as a more professional choice than lookout. Is it really industrial? robust enough?

[Donald]

Saroush,

Overall Disclaimer: I'm not the "right" person and definitely not an expert, I'm just some guy.

Q: "is DSC, on a non-industrial PC, a real industrial solution?"
A: Sure (at least for some people).

If you go to sites like control.com and do a search for "LabVIEW" you'll come across a few threads with statements like "LabVIEW/LVDSC is not a real …", but you'll also find threads slagging/denigrating/belittling Citect, WinCC, WonderWare, etc., etc. There are a lot of biases/opinions out there as to what a "real" industrial solution is.

I almost exclusively use LV/LVDSC for inhouse R&D work, but my one LVDSC v6.0 RunTime license has been running in a steel mill a long way away for the past 4 years. No problems with the LVDSC HMI. It's running on a non-industrial PC in a control room (relatively clean) and talks to a couple of Siemens PLCs. We could of gone with WinCC or Citect, but we faced an incredibly short timeline for developing/piloting/building/installing the system, and sticking with LabVIEW was the only way for us to do it. It worked for us.  Might work for you.

LVDSC isn't perfect, but NI seems to be improving things as the version number increases: DSCv6.1 is better than v6.0; there are things in v7.0 that I would love to have; etc.

unclebump is a better source of info for high tag counts, I've only had a couple of hundred.

[unclebump]

I have run the DSC module on industrial pc's and laptops. I have used the serial, modbus plus, and ethernet ports on the laptop and the ethernet port on the industrial pc. I would use caution with a laptop and modbus plus PCMCIA card. I bought a refurb Gateway Solo 5350 with win98 on it. It arrived with winXP on it. I had to get partition magic and put win 2000, win98, and DOS on it. Win98 was the only operating system that works with the modbus plus pcmcia card. The Texas Instruments cardbus controller in win2000 and winXP does not work with the pcmcia card. Only thing I would recommend is to max out the memory in the computer. I used the kepware opc server program to get the data into the tag engine. I like the 7.0 DSC module much more than 6.1, it seems much more stable. Store your Citadel data on a second hard drive. Structure to your code is very important. I'm self taught and should probably redesign my application. I tried to get a quote before I started and could never get the designer to produce a proposal. I wouldn't recommend using the HMI wizard for a large application. Tag groups can really help when reading multiple values at one time. Naming sequential tags with 0001, 0002,... helps to keep data in the proper order when reading tag groups. Citadel is great for storing historical data, it automatically handles creating new files when more space is needed. However, if you want to look at data from several directions, the datamining application may be a better solution.

The flexibility to create clusters of different data types is really powerful when combined with plc data. I've made multiple channel(10) logic analyzers for plc inputs and outputs to find out was what causing machine faults. I read a tag group and sent the data values to a chart. I've also used it to track a machine that presses valve guides and valve seats into a cylinder head. It tracked 32 bits from the probe station for parts already in the cylinder head, the pass/fail results of additional press cycles. All of the pass/fail results were written to memory tags for historical tracking. Then a page would show bar charts for the number of rejects by hole location and machine fixture position. The data even revealed some logic issues in the machine when parts were loaded back into the process.

[Soroush]

Thank you for your replies.

I've chosen to install the application on a laptop with win XP using a PCMCIA card with 4 serial ports. each of these ports are a data channel. one of them comes from a modular chiller with its own controllers, one from the mechanical room, one from a weather station and one from a research greenhouse building. We are using MOELLER mini PLCs as the core of control in each of these 4 channels. Moeller OPC server is configured to communicate with PLCs and DSC tag engine talks to it. each of these channels have about 300 I/O tags and perhaps I should use about 150 memory tags too.

Thank you for ensuring me to choose the hardware. I really needed to know if anybody else has done the same kinda work. It is the most important step.

unclebump's message is very reach in advice I bookmarked this thread and I think I need to re-read this message when I got more experienced. in the primary stages, I'll stay away from HMI wizard and try to structure my tags into structured groups (as we also dicussed in an other thread about 2-3 weeks ago).

I will also mention some advances of the project here later and ask related questions in this thread. hope that it will become a useful resource for others.

feel free if you wanna add any comments here that might not be easy to learn by reading manuals.

Shairng is always advantageous and enjoyable

[tst]

Hi Soroush,

I actually also want to communicate with Moeller PLCs now (for I/O purposes) and am having trouble due to lack of proper documentation.

Ideally, I would have prefered implementing their protocol myself or using Modbus, but OPC could probably do as well. I'd appreciate any details you have with regards to what is needed for configuring the system (SW and HW) and talking to the PLCs.