K
It was hinted in another post that Android tablet could be a good all in one PLC, including HMI (Armin Steinhoff, I believe said this). Rather than hijack that post I thought I'd get some comments in a new post. I'm interested in it purely from an HMI perspective, and would like to discuss that primarily. I'm speaking of a replacement for the 6"-12" HMIs that you plug in and they boot rather quickly and then display some pages that you designed in some programming package. All ideas and comments are welcome. It should be noted that I don't have or never have used Android devices, or even the iphone/ipad.
I've now seen some of these devices with wired Ethernet in the 7"-10" screen sizes for very low cost. I've looked at some of the SDKs for Android and it seems that they have facilities for XML based GUI layout, as well as some WYSIWYG designers. I'm assuming web based layout is not an issue as well ;-)
So why use an Android or other device instead of a commercial HMI? Well nearly infinite connectivity (if you are willing to code it or use others code) is one thing. The other is additional functionality that will evolve over time. Database reports, logging, etc, are not limited to what the HMI developer has locked you into. "Open" in the sense of being able to program your own or use others code (Lets not get into an open source discussion per se....).
OK, so why use Android vs. an embedded panel computer? Well, for one the platform is designed for navigation and use via touch. This has always been a problem for me in developing for windows or linux using touchscreens because the default buttons on everything were not coded to be a useable size for real fingers, not to mention lack of a good on screen touch keyboard (yes, you can probably install add on keyboard packages, but likely not as well integrated as iphone or android). Sure, you could code around these things for your particular application, but what about third party apps like web browsers, file viewers, database reporting packages, etc?
So what is involved in using one of these things as an HMI? Does anyone know if there is a simple method by which an automation professional could easily learn the programming tools given some predefined HMI type of widgets to do some simple screen layout? I'm now looking at Visual Studio or the open source SharpDevelop as easy to use WYSIWYG layout editor for drag and drop custom HMI widgets onto a screen to get some HMI functions. This is promising, but at the same time the embedded targets for .net are a bit funky. I've seen some windows CE machines that can run .net forms apps, but they aren't exactly growing on trees either (Maybe I'm wrong, I'd like to know this as well). Beign completely locked into Microsoft is disturbing, although using an embedded panelPC running linux with Mono is a good alternative. And, as I've mentioned the user interface experience with a touchscreen is not startling.
There are perhaps some minor "problems" with using Android tablets in the factory. For instance, when the machine shuts off your battery based tablet is probably going to stay running until it runs out of battery rather than shut off with the rest of the machine as is the case for a commercial HMI like from the big players. Can you "boot" your Android tablet or phone and have it automatically start up your HMI application? Can simple apps be simply FTP'ed over and run immediately, or do you have to go through some kind of registration/publish and then install process on the tablet itself?
Like I said, any thoughts are welcome here.
KEJR
I've now seen some of these devices with wired Ethernet in the 7"-10" screen sizes for very low cost. I've looked at some of the SDKs for Android and it seems that they have facilities for XML based GUI layout, as well as some WYSIWYG designers. I'm assuming web based layout is not an issue as well ;-)
So why use an Android or other device instead of a commercial HMI? Well nearly infinite connectivity (if you are willing to code it or use others code) is one thing. The other is additional functionality that will evolve over time. Database reports, logging, etc, are not limited to what the HMI developer has locked you into. "Open" in the sense of being able to program your own or use others code (Lets not get into an open source discussion per se....).
OK, so why use Android vs. an embedded panel computer? Well, for one the platform is designed for navigation and use via touch. This has always been a problem for me in developing for windows or linux using touchscreens because the default buttons on everything were not coded to be a useable size for real fingers, not to mention lack of a good on screen touch keyboard (yes, you can probably install add on keyboard packages, but likely not as well integrated as iphone or android). Sure, you could code around these things for your particular application, but what about third party apps like web browsers, file viewers, database reporting packages, etc?
So what is involved in using one of these things as an HMI? Does anyone know if there is a simple method by which an automation professional could easily learn the programming tools given some predefined HMI type of widgets to do some simple screen layout? I'm now looking at Visual Studio or the open source SharpDevelop as easy to use WYSIWYG layout editor for drag and drop custom HMI widgets onto a screen to get some HMI functions. This is promising, but at the same time the embedded targets for .net are a bit funky. I've seen some windows CE machines that can run .net forms apps, but they aren't exactly growing on trees either (Maybe I'm wrong, I'd like to know this as well). Beign completely locked into Microsoft is disturbing, although using an embedded panelPC running linux with Mono is a good alternative. And, as I've mentioned the user interface experience with a touchscreen is not startling.
There are perhaps some minor "problems" with using Android tablets in the factory. For instance, when the machine shuts off your battery based tablet is probably going to stay running until it runs out of battery rather than shut off with the rest of the machine as is the case for a commercial HMI like from the big players. Can you "boot" your Android tablet or phone and have it automatically start up your HMI application? Can simple apps be simply FTP'ed over and run immediately, or do you have to go through some kind of registration/publish and then install process on the tablet itself?
Like I said, any thoughts are welcome here.
KEJR