Hi all,

When iPads were first introduced, there was a flurry of speculation about the potential for applying them in factory automation. Some applications mentioned include:

- Human Machine Interface
- Monitoring (including alarms)
- Data collection

At the same time, security concerns were expressed primarily because of their wireless connectivity.

We're a few years down the road now, so what are you seeing in actual application? Have you found ways to address security issues, or do you just limit the use of this technology to noncritical applications?

I love my iPad, but haven't started using it for much work-related activity.

Ken Crater
Control.com Founder

 

Hello,

I had a similar thread and these were my opinions/observations about iPad and Android consumer tablets for HMI:

- Would need to be plugged in and/or charging all the time if mounted permanently on a machine (Probably do-able but hokey).

- Wireless doesn't work right in an industrial environment (at least for me... especially if you need to keep sockets open).

- You'd be chasing your tail trying to keep the hardware and software consistent from project to project.

- Development environment didn't seem to include a WYSIWYG type of editor (web based stuff might be exempt here).

- Can you "embed" the tablets such that they always power on with your machine?

- Can you "embed" the tablets such that you lock down apps and have it auto launch your HMI program?

These are the reasons we chose to use an embedded PC plugged into an industrial touchscreen computer for our HMI. Its overkill but we have much more choices. We are prototyping with Elo touchscreen monitors and a mini ITX motherboard with Embedded windows installed. I haven't gotten all the hardware yet to test, but it seems to be the lowest common denominator.

KEJR

 

We are seeing them all over manufacturing plants. Some companies have given up banning them. Companies are trying to figure out how to use them properly. I was visiting a wastewater plant this morning where it is possible to run the entire control system on an iPad using "LogMeIn" which is a very safe tunneling protocol.

The only places they aren't penetrating (at least officially, Ken) are hazardous areas. I bet there are people who carry them into Class I Div 2 areas anyway.

They are just so darn useful as HMIs.

Walt

Walt Boyes, FInstMC, Chartered Measurement and Control Technologist
Life Fellow, International Society of Automation
Editor in Chief, Control and ControlGlobal.com
[email protected]

 

> - Development environment didn't seem to include a WYSIWYG type of editor (web
> based stuff might be exempt here).

This can be used with C++ or Delphi:
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/firemonkey

> These are the reasons we chose to use an embedded PC plugged into an
> industrial touchscreen computer for our HMI. Its overkill but we have much more
> choices. We are prototyping with Elo touchscreen monitors and a mini ITX
> motherboard with Embedded windows installed. I haven't gotten all the
> hardware yet to test, but it seems to be the lowest common denominator.

I've invested a bit of time in recent months working to get ReactOS operating on some embedded hardware. More info avail here:
http://www.turbocontrol.com/reactos.htm

 

Thanks, Ken E, you raise some excellent points about embedding iPads. I guess I was thinking more in terms of roaming use of tablets, which may involve the use of a web interface as opposed to customized HMI software.

My thinking is that this is definitely NOT for every application. For most machine control applications, I'd still like to see that big red E-Stop palm button and a dedicated touchscreen (or whatever) for setup.

However, the picture of a maintenance engineer or plant control engineer being able to check status of a production line from anywhere in the plant seem pretty compelling, especially when combined with the general usefulness of the device as an information tool. (Maintaining a library of PDF manuals for in-plant equipment on an intranet server might be useful, for instance.)

Does anyone have this sort of environment?

Ken Crater

 

> We are seeing them all over manufacturing plants.

Thanks, Walt. Your examples are the sort I was hoping to see. I take it that the installations you cite use the iPad as a remote interface into a central control system (DCS or whatever) which has its own dedicated HMI as well -- is this correct? So, the tablet provides an adjunct roaming capability in addition to the dedicated control?

Interesting that the first reaction to any new technology is to ban it . Same thing with PCs, for a very long time after they were introduced (yes, I'm that old).

Ken Crater

 

In reply to Paul Breneman...

The firemonkey product is interesting, I will have to give this some thought. We are pretty far invested into .NET at the moment as far as software goes, but in the end its about making the right investment in technologies that is the most important. I'd thought of using Mono with linux but so far its quite slow with winforms because of the way it was implemented. I know there is monodevelop with GTK# as an option but it had some issues with the way their WYSIWYG editor is implemented as it is not as slick as Visual Studio with regard to resizing objects and moving them around the screen. Not bad, but not great. If you use it everyday I'm sure its fine, but a machine programmer is going to be doing so many other tasks you don't want to be bogged down in these things.

Also, regarding Firemonkey, I went to this site and found that you need to export to a MAC machine to compile an IOS (iphone, IPad) application:

http://www.andreanolanusse.com/en/video-delphi-xe2-and-firemonkey-app-on -windows-mac-and-ios/

For someone coming from an industrial setting most of our programs run on windows and to have a Mac machine around would be a bit of a stretch. I was almost sold on the firemonkey development until this point in time. The ipad simulator built into the IDE seems like an amazingly cool tool.

Your comment about ReactOS is interesting. I'm not sure if I knew this existed. I'm assuming since it is compatible with windows that one could copy the .net libraries over or use something like mono for win32. Have you tried this yet?

Thanks
KEJR

 

In reply to Ken Crater:

I realized after my first reply that I had responded with some questions/arguments regarding my particular application which tends to be HMI *at the machine*. In this sense its hard to get over all the problems I've had with wireless, but I have to admit that I don't have any smart device (phone or tablet). In this case how can you tell the operator they can't stop the machine because the wireless is not working?

Certainly for monitoring *without* direct machine control I would think HTTP browser on a tablet would be perfect. This relies somewhat on your machines already reporting information to a database server or something like that unless your machine has a HTTP server on board. Our newer machines have this capability but we are thinking to bring everything to a central server so that everything gets handled the same way regardless of the PLC/controller type.

I'd certainly ban tablets if it meant that plant managers no longer visited the manufacturing floor! ) (But then again I'm just an engineer so it doesn't matter what I think....)

KEJR

 

Yes We have created an entire separate "Systems Group" network for control, maintenance and Engineering with library etc available from iPhone and iPad. Are just experimenting with HMI, so far doing as VPN as most web based are not comparable yet, but we are "playing".

Works well for library and VPN admin / engineering access. Have played with RSLogix on iPad via VNC and HMI via VNC/ remote access.

Dave Ferguson

Sent from my iPhone

 

> Your comment about ReactOS is interesting. I'm not sure if I knew this
> existed. I'm assuming since it is compatible with windows that one could
> copy the .net libraries over or use something like mono for win32. Have you
> tried this yet?

I doubt .net will work on ReactOS at the current state.

 

Ken E said...
>I had a similar thread and these were
>my opinions/observations about iPad and
>Android consumer tablets for HMI:

By the way, the thread that Ken E mentions is here:
http://www.control.com/thread/1307114280

Although it's android-centric, there is some good discussion about the issues involved in using a tablet as an embedded HMI.

Ken Crater

 

I think I forgot that there is a QT port for android. It almost make me want to buy a tablet to play around with.

)

KEJR

 

On Android you can use http://pvbrowser.org client.

pvbrowser is based on Qt.
Qt is available for Linux/Unix/OS-X/Windows/Maemo/MeeGo/Android.
Up to now there is no port of Qt to iOS and WinPhone.

 

In reply to PVBrowser:

Do you happen to know if the Visual designer for the QT IDE is supported in android? I looked at Mono for Android and it seems that they have just wrapped the native widgets with c# calls and you essentially program it like you would in java.

Thanks,
KEJR

 

In reply to Ken:

> Do you happen to know if the Visual designer for the QT IDE is supported in android?

You need the Android NDK and necessitas.
http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/home/necessitas/

I do the development within an Ubuntu VM.
Necessitas provides the Qt Creator IDE including Qt Designer.

Your Qt application stays as it is. You will only make optimizations for the small screen and the input methods.

But compiling your application will result in a shared object library not in an executable.

The Qt Creator IDE will create a stub in Java around this which will receive user inputs and then make calls to your Qt application within the shared object library.

Also a installation package "name.apk" will be created.

The development environment also includes an android emulator where you can test your application on different android versions.

For pvbrowser see section "Android" on
http://pvbrowser.de/pvbrowser/index.php?menu=6&topic=6