IVC Displays offers OI with Windows CE.NET

-- Control Engineering, 9/1/2003

Saline, MI—IVC Displays, formed in August 2003, has introduced its IVC NP-600S, a low-cost, 6-in. operator interface (OI) with Microsoft Windows CE.NET.

National Instruments also will sell a version of the OI, called NI LabView PDA, which seemed to get a fair amount of attention in mid-August at NIWeek 2003 in Austin, TX. NI’s LabView can be used to develop a human-machine interface for the product. Microsoft and InduSoft are among IVC’s other partners.

IVC NP-600S flat-panel OI has a 5.7-in., super-twisted nematic (STN) LCD color display and an Intel StrongARM 1110 processor, for low power consumption and high performance. The unit has a 10Base-T Ethernet port, analog-resistive touchscreen, NEMA 4/IP65 front panel, an Ethernet port, two serial ports (RS-232/485), no fan, one compact flash (CF) slot for application storage, and an SDK platform. Microsoft Windows CE 4.1 has real-time capabilities and IE 5.5. The RDP thin client can be programmed with Visual Basic.NET, Visual C++, Visual J++, and Visual C#. Real-time processing has 256 priority levels and nested interrupt support, with XML Web Services, SOAP, and WSDL.

IVC reports that it has more than 20 years of experience with operator interfaces. Tony Rebottaro, IVC’s VP, says that, “IVC brings simple-to-use products directly to the customer to provide the best price/value in rugged hardware.” Company representatives told Control Engineering they’re pleased to offer the NP-600S through NI to complement its LabView software, Compact FieldPoint, NI PXI Real-Time, and other products. IVC plans to offer 8-in. and 12-in. screen sizes in the future.

As an embedded partner of Microsoft, IVC meets its standards of support and expertise for embedded Windows CE and PocketPC products. Indusoft’s WebStudio is a collection of automation tools to develop HMI, SCADA, embedded instrumentation, and control applications. Web Studio runs in native Microsoft Windows NT, 2000, XP, and CE environments, and conforms to industry standards as .NET, OPC, DDE, ODBC, XML, SOAP, and ActiveX.

Control Engineering Daily News Desk
Mark T. Hoske, editor-in-chief
mhoske@reedbusiness.com