Lookout or Bridgeview or ???

[ASM]

We are new to the NI product line and are considering their products for the
following application. Currently no hardware (PLCs,PCs, touchpanels, etc are
in place) We just have the machines.

A manufacturing floor has at least 5 machines that each need to be monitored
for 4 conditions. At this point they do not need to be "controlled" - just
monitored. The 4 conditions are (1-3) Down for: maintenance,materials,
engineering or (#4)machine running ok. The customer wants a light stack with
a different color steady light at each machine for each condition: Orange,
red, blue, green, respectively. They also want a key lock switch at each
machine to acknowledge a condition. We suggested a touch panel with Password
protection. We want to o
ffer them a system with or without PLCs (cost
comparison). They also want two monitoring stations(PCs) - 1 server & 1
client running WindowsNT. At this point they do not want these PCs
incorporated into their network. The customer also wants a LED message
display at each machine with approx 3 lines of text indicating the status,
time machine down, etc. They would also like a centrally located message
display with information about more than one machine.

They want to be notified by paging and possibly by e-mail (using
MSOffice).Reports need to be generated also. Historical data logging, etc..
This must be expandable - possibly 10 machines.
Which NI product would be most appropriate for this application?

Thanks!
ASM
mailto:amelick@accustandardcontrols.com

[Preston Todd Johnson]

Good Morning,

I presume that each of the conditions has some form of indicator, whether it
be a push button on the operator pad, or a PLC bit, or something that the
computer can use to determine which of the four conditions the machine is
in. The computer can monitor this status via a PLC server, or via a digital
input.

National Instruments offers a line of I/O called FieldPoint that will allow
you to send digital outputs to the light stack. Alternatively, if the light
stack speaks an industrial protocol, you can communicate over the industrial
comm bus using a NI server for the fieldbus or one of NI's industrial
communication boards. See www.ni.com/fieldpoint and www.ni.com/networks

For the LED message display, there are many available on the market. These
typically speak RS232 and take an ascii message to be displayed and have
some form of ascii commands to do things such as "clear, scroll, scroll
lock, etc". You can use ASCII communications from the NI SCADA software to
perform this function. See www.ni.com/lookout

From a Client/Server perspective, Lookout from National Instruments is the
best bet. Its Client Server functions are the easiest to implement. All
you need is for your computers to be networked with a TCP/IP network.

Lookout has a pager object built right in, so you can have the computer send
pages to the appropriate people when there is an alarm condition or some
other event.

National Instruments has a great team of field engineers that can help you
become successful with your first Lookout project. You might contact their
corporate office to learn who your field engineer is.

Overall, I think Lookout has the most correct feature set for your
client/server monitoring application. BridgeVIEW is great when you need to
use some of the National Instruments high speed data acquisition products,
computer vision, motion control, or advanced mathmatics for advanced
control. BridgeVIEW is a programming environment with data-flow
programming very similar but way more powerful as compared to IEC 1131 flow
chart programming. Lookout is better at client server applications and ease
of configuration. Both tools will work, just from what you have described,
Lookout may be the better fit.

Good Luck!

Sincerely,

Todd Johnson


"ASM" wrote in message
news:38ab6619@newsgroups.ni.com...
> We are new to the NI product line and are considering their products for
the
> following application. Currently no hardware (PLCs,PCs, touchpanels, etc
are
> in place) We just have the machines.
>
> A manufacturing floor has at least 5 machines that each need to be
monitored
> for 4 conditions. At this point they do not need to be "controlled" - just
> monitored. The 4 conditions are (1-3) Down for: maintenance,materials,
> engineering or (#4)machine running ok. The customer wants a light stack
with
> a different color steady light at each machine for each condition: Orange,
> red, blue, green, respectively. They also want a key lock switch at each
> machine to acknowledge a condition. We suggested a touch panel with
Password
> protection. We want to offer them a system with or without PLCs (cost
> comparison). They also want two monitoring stations(PCs) - 1 server & 1
> client running WindowsNT. At this point they do not want these PCs
> incorporated into their network. The customer also wants a LED message
> display at each machine with approx 3 lines of text indicating the status,
> time machine down, etc. They would also like a centrally located message
> display with information about more than one machine.
>
> They want to be notified by paging and possibly by e-mail (using
> MSOffice).Reports need to be generated also. Historical data logging,
etc..
> This must be expandable - possibly 10 machines.
> Which NI product would be most appropriate for this application?
>
> Thanks!
> ASM
> mailto:amelick@accustandardcontrols.com
>
>
>
>