MBlogic HMI

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Thread Starter

Bar-d-gol

Can someone tell me how to create a new HMI in MBlogic? The demo HMI seems interesting. Also, how actually the ladder logic connection to HMI? Appreciate if there's some sort of manual.
 
I'm the author of the software, and I will be happy to answer any questions you have either here or on the MBLogic forums on Sourceforge.

There are several different programs in the MBLogic project. Since you mentioned ladder logic, I assume you are interested in the soft logic system. The HMI system is however identical in both the soft logic platform or the stand alone HMI.

The documentation is in two forms. There is a built in web server which you can access with your web browser which you to the web based system management pages. You can customise the port number, but in the default (demo) install it is at:
http://localhost:8080/statussystem.html

If you are accessing it from another computer, you will of course have to change the IP address from "localhost" to whatever the real address is.

Once you have the system status page displayed, click on the "help" tab in the upper right section of the page. The same menu tabs will remain visible, but the list of help topics will appear down the left column of the page. When you select one of these, additional detail topics will appear.

The same documentation is available on line from the project web site.
http://mblogic.sourceforge.net/index.html
Click on the "manuals" tab and then select the program you want documentation on. For example,
http://mblogic.sourceforge.net/mblogichelp/hmi/HMIIntro-en.html

This shows the list of topics for creating HMIs. The "Assembling web pages" gives you a step by step procedure.

A quick word count indicates approximately 150,000 words of documentation for help system for the MBLogic soft logic program, which is about 10% larger than a typical PLC manual that I compared it to. The project web site has a bit more than 400,000 words, but some of that may be due to duplication. There is a fair bit of documentation available, but if you still have any questions I am more than happy to answer them. The software does a lot, so I realise it can be difficult to digest it all on your own.

I will give you a brief summary here however.

The actual graphical screens are assembled by using a free drawing editor called "Inkscape". I don't provide Inkscape, but you can download a copy from their web site (if you are using Linux, it will be in your distro repository). You just drag and drop the provided widgets (clip art) onto the drawing and set the "id" properties to give them unique names. This gives you an SVG drawing.

You then select the page templates you want to use (you can create your own custom templates if you wish), provide the scripting parameters, and assemble the drawing together with the templates. This step is manual at present, although I will in future be providing a program to do it automatically.

As for the relationship of ladder to the HMI, they are independent, although they use similar techniques. The ladder diagrams are created automatically from the soft logic program. I am working on the final release tests for the next version which has new features in that area. It includes a new ladder display, where if you click on the "monitor" button it will update the on/off status of the contacts and coils with live data from the running system. The update is continuous, with the status being updated in the background (this uses AJAX techniques, so this does not require a page refresh).

I've spent most of the time since the last release working on a ladder editor. It works, but it still has bugs so it won't be in this release. There is an improved IL editor however, so you can still do on-line editing and view the results in ladder (the ladder display will detect the changes and update itself automatically).

There are a number of other new features in the next version, including a real time clock for the soft logic system, native animations for the HMI (e.g. flashing pilot lights), and of course updated documentation.

The targets for the release following that are to integrate a number of new features which another developer has been working on, plus some other minor features I will be working on. I don't know at this time if the web based ladder editor will be included.
 
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