Control.com - Nerds in Control

As an HMI package, Conductor NT leaves a lot to be desired so we're looking to replace it. Has anyone gone from Conductor NT to Process Portal "A"? If so, was the migration a smooth transition or a painful one? Any comments on Process Portal "A" you would like to share?

Process portal A - or PPA - or 800xa is all the same. It is a web based HMI that is viewed thru I.E., consists of seveal dual Pentium Dell towers, a massive amout of software. It uses 2003 server and XP Pro, soon to be obsoleted by Microsoft. This HMI product has a 3-year life span before costly upgrades.

Today the graphics are built on Visual Basic, soon to be obsoleted by Microsoft. A future graphic re-conversion will be at your expense.

Data update rates tend to be rather slow. The product is fully licensed... every tag and every atom operates because a license grants its use.
There is no 24 hour service to get replacement licenses if a machine fails.

The software installation book is over 500 pages and it easily takes an expert 3 days to load the software before configurations.

As an example, if you have a UNIX based workstation for your operator station and want to replace it with this product, leaving the controllers in place, it will be close to $ 250,000 to change out three Unix machines like this. This is not a friendly product and you better be Microsoft certified to even touch it.

Dave: This HMI product has a 3-year life span before costly upgrades.

This is true, as is the case for many HMI systems. However if you set the system up with sufficient spares and training you should be able to continue to support the system for between 5-6 years. I have worked with systems that were unsupported (10 year old system) by the vendor officially, but the vendor still helped me as much as they could.

Dave: Today the graphics are built on Visual Basic, soon to be obsoleted by Microsoft. A future graphic re-conversion will be at your expense.

This is true as well. But how many other people out in the world are still using VB for development (I would assume a lot). Considering ABB have a developer relationship with Microsoft I'm sure there is some migration plan.

Dave: Data update rates tend to be rather slow. The product is fully licensed... every tag and every atom operates because a license grants its use.

Are you saying that every data update requires license validation?

Dave: There is no 24 hour service to get replacement licenses if a machine fails.

Do you have a support agreement with ABB?

Dave: This is not a friendly product and you better be Microsoft certified to even touch it.

And you don't need UNIX experience to manage and support UNIX hardware? What is the difference?

But back to the original question. Conductor NT is still a supported product. It has currently hit version 6 and it will work on Windows XP. If
you are converting from Conductor NT to 800xA you need to redo all your graphics. Any custom faceplates or graphics that are tied to particular DCS logic will need to be engineered to work with 800xA. The link from 800xA is basically OPC connectivity from what I can see, using a Harmony Connectivity Server. The good thing about 800xA is you can link ABB Bailey (Harmony) ABB Advant and the new 800xA hardware to the same HMI.

Although Conductor NT it is a bit klunky I would still say that the Conductor NT system is a good HMI for the ABB Bailey (Harmony) DCS. It is significantly less hardware intensive than either ABB Process Portal A (800xA) or Process Portal B (which has hit end of life). Quite simple to use and maintain.

It might be worth waiting to see if ABB changes PPA (800xA) to use SL-GMS for graphics.

So for the moment I would stick with Conductor and wait for a better migration path to come along. Unless you are looking at using some of the extra features of 800xA as justification for capital expenditure it probably isn't changing from Conductor yet.

Just my 2 cents.

Chris Jennings

The PPA will not be going to Sharon Lubinsky graphics. Nor will it be moving to VISTA.

Support agreement or not. If a machine fails off business hours, there is no way to get new license strings to restart the replacement machine. Also every tag and every atom in PPA is licensed check before permission is granted to use it.

A power plant in the US has over 10 monitors arranged in their control room to hold a different graphic each because the update times are over 6 seconds each.

Yes, it will be moving to Vista towards the end of 2009.

No it will NOT be moving towards VISTA!!!!

It will be looking at a new graphics package however to replace Visual Basic.

Today PPA is at release 5.0 with SP1.

This is about to obsolete so anyone buying this package today is on the brink of obsolesence with a very expensive upgrade coming probably in 2009. This is a very costly product when considered over the life of ownership.

A solid 10 year solution for your existing Advant controls is to move up into hi performance UNIX with your existing licenses and have absolutely no problems and no upgrades to worry about.

Sharon Lubinsky must be Sherrill Lubinski's cousin. :)

Chris