The HMI in your pocket

[BobO]

A reply to a super old post, but what's Host's temperature on such a project nowadays? I know a lot has changed in the world since this was started 8 years ago, but the need is still there, arguably more-so? I'd love a (Host designed/manufactured) full-featured solution.

Quite frankly, I think the C-More line falls flat on it's face in several aspects. It can graph, but graphs won't survive a power cycle or program update. It can do remote access, but the experience over phone or PC is fairly grainy, doesn't utilize the device's keyboard, etc. The dev software doesn't even have a find function, let alone replace.

This is just scratching the surface really. I've started using Weintek devices that do much, much better in these departments, but no symbolic access, only native Do-more. Still better than modbus only, but once you start modularizing your code, doing logs, etc, it would be so much easier to be able to access User Data Types natively.

I don't know how it looks on your end, if it would be something that is built into/activated in the next generation Do-more, or a standalone device similar to RHMI's currently. These are just "legacy" type solutions, and I've not used CODESYS/WebVisu, but it seems like they do a lot of things "differently" than the old status-quo. The market is full of HTML5 HMI's nowadays, make it work with that?

It remains a desire. I have had a vision for two level solution. Level 1 is a simple table based HTML generator that makes it easy for users to generate pages that look and feel like BRX built-in web pages. Not an HMI, but a simple monitor that requires virtually zero programming. Level 2 would be full HMI pages built in a DmD based HMI page editor. Not sure if the display would be browser based or app based, possibly both. Rather than have a conventional HMI, there would be a hardened "terminal" that could log into any PLC to view the HMI pages in that PLC.

As part of the Gen2 engine we are working on, I'm sure all of this will get new discussion.

[Garyhlucas]

Wow! Totally blows me away that I started this thread 8 years ago!  Today, I am even more interested in a phone app. I am developing a product that can only succeed if I can get the cost down and eliminating the HMI would be huge.

[Kristjan]

If you will be creating a phone app then you are probably interested in the new Sparkplug POM, or at least the MQTT part of it. A very exciting implementation that I am looking forward to try out.

And it would be interesting to see what you create, you could post some screenshots on this thread to give us some inspiration

[BobO]

If you will be creating a phone app then you are probably interested in the new Sparkplug POM, or at least the MQTT part of it. A very exciting implementation that I am looking forward to try out.

And it would be interesting to see what you create, you could post some screenshots on this thread to give us some inspiration

Our initial effort will likely disappoint...it isn't a phone app (unless you count the browser), just an instruction for user generated web pages. The pages will look very much like the existing BRX web pages, since it is using the same generation code. We are wanting to add some simple widgets...simple meters and maybe a very simple trend line...but mostly the emphasis is textual/numerical displays of live PLC status. Not designed to replace an HMI, just to provide some user generated status pages to be viewed on anything with a web browser.