Hello, Are there significant benefits to an online HMI? Why should I use it? Other HMI’s are also reachable online via IXON for instance. Arne
Hi Arne, Can you clarify what you mean by “Online HMI”, and “Other HMI” ? ~ Martin.
Hi Martin, With the PLCnext it’s possible to use the eHMI. My boss wants to know why we want to use it (or not), in stead of the Siemens HMI we are using now.. Arne
OK, I understand. With eHMI, the HMI screens are developed in PLCnext Engineer and stored on the PLC. You can then use any HMI hardware, including a laptop, a tablet, a phone, or a panel-mounted screen like the Siemens HMI, or all of these at once. You are not required to get your HMI hardware from Phoenix Contact - shop around! If any of these HMI hardware devices breaks or is otherwise unavailable, you can just swap it out with a new one, browse to the IP address of the PLC - and your new HMI is up and running - because the HMI pages are stored on the PLC. I am guessing that with the Siemens HMI, you must develop the HMI screens using WinCC or TIA Portal, and then store the screens on the HMI itself - and that HMI hardware must be bought from Siemens. The screens can then be viewed on that Siemens HMI. I don’t know how easy it is to view these screen on other devices like laptops, tablets, or phones. But if the Siemens HMI gets broken, it’s a bit more work to replace it - not only must you find exactly the same model (?) of HMI hardware, you must download the screens to it from WinCC or TIA Portal. Until then, you have no HMI, because the HMI pages were stored on the HMI hardware itself. So it’s not a matter of accessing the HMI over the internet, it’s about the flexibility to choose the best HMI hardware for your project - you’re not locked in to one brand - and the convenience of replacing or adding HMI hardware as needed. =========== EDIT: There are also good reasons to use a “dedicated” HMI like ones the one you have from Siemens (or Phoenix Contact, or Rockwell, or Schneider, or many many others). Because the eHMI on the PLC uses HTML5 to define the screens, this can have some limitiations that dedicated HMI hardware does not. One example is real-time and historical trending of process data - at the moment this feature is fairly limited on PLCnext eHMI, but dedicated HMI hardware running WinCC (or Visu+ from Phoenix Contact) is a lot more powerful and usually has many more “SCADA”-type feature. It depends on what exactly you need to show on the HMI for a specific project. =========== Hope this helps. ~ Martin.