Deployment?

[busarider29]

I'm going to be using NI (National Instruments) Visual Studio tools in my project with AdvancedHMI, or at least that is my plan right now.  Using NI tools in the project, I am required to build an application using their builder tool and then install the software on the target machine.  Will AdvancedHMI still work by installing it on the target machine as a software application?  I ask this because from my understanding of AdvancedHMI, the "installation" process is simply grabbing the project folder and dropping it somewhere (desktop?) on the target machine?  That method won't work if I have NI tools in the project. 

[Archie]

What controls in the NI tools are you using? Something map already exists that can be used in place of it or can be created easily.

[busarider29]

Archie,

For tools, I have NI Measurement Studio and I'm using a few of the tools from there - numeric edit control, button control, scope control.  The numeric edit controls and buttons I can do something else and just use either standard Windows controls for those, or the AdvancedHMI controls.  However, I really need the Scope control from Measurement Studio and I don't think I can supplement that with something else(?), and would really prefer not to. 

More details on what I want to do and the project:

I have NI hardware (Ethernet 4-slot  cDAQ chassis with 16 channel analog input module) in the machine that I want to integrate.  Currently, the machine controls are separated from the NI data acquisition portion.  So, for controlling the machine, we use a PV1000 touch panel talking to a SLC 505.  There is a PC with monitor next to the machine that the operator is required to use to start the data acquisition, which is a totally separate software program and not integrated or communicating with the PLC of the machine in any way.  I wrote VB code for this same NI hardware and integrated it on another machine, so now that other machine's HMI and data acquisition are contained all within one software program.  However, that machine uses a Beckhoff CX2040 embedded PC, so building a software application for that (using Visual Studio and some tools from NI Measurement Studio) and installing on the CX was not a problem.  Of course I had to write all the communication to/from the VS project to/from the PLC project but it wasn't that bad (after the headaches of figuring it out of course).

Now I'd like to do a similar thing on the machine in question, but as stated, this machine uses an older SLC 505 Allen Bradley PLC, hence I need AdvancedHMI for its communications to the SLC (unless there's an API out there for communicating from VS project to the SLC?).  My thoughts are to re-create the HMI in AdvancedHMI, then I'll take code that I wrote for the NI data acquisition for the Beckhoff machine, and "copy" it over for this project since the code is already written for that. Once the application is written and ready for deployment, I'll deploy it onto that PC that is next to the machine (currently used for data acquisition only), so then the machine controls and data acquisition are fully integrated into one software application, like I did for the Beckhoff controlled machine.  Lastly, I'll get rid of the PV1000 and add it to our surplus.

Attached are a couple snapshots from the UI on the Beckoff controlled machine that have that shows the Measurement Studio tools I'm using.

Don