In, out, and about HMI: Digital readouts, OI panels, touchscreen, hand-held computer spring forth

Trees are budding, flowers blooming, and new HMI products are proliferating. Among new devices being introduced this spring are a family of digital readouts, operator interface panels, a resistive touchscreen, and a hand-held computer for RFID applications.

By Control Engineering Staff April 14, 2005

DM family of digital readouts from Fluid Components International includes three models that digitally display flow rate, totalized flow, and temperature readings from the company’s ST and GF Series thermal-dispersion mass flowmeters.

Trees are budding, flowers blooming, and new HMI products are proliferating. Among new devices being introduced this spring are a family of digital readouts, operator interface panels, a resistive touchscreen, and a hand-held computer for RFID applications. More information on these devices follows, along with links to their manufacturers’ Web sites.

DM family of digital readouts from Fluid Components International (FCI) digitally displays flow rate, totalized flow, and temperature readings from FCIs ST and GF Series thermal-dispersion mass flowmeters. A choice of three meters is designed to meet a wide range of installation locations and process requirements. Installed near the pipe, these meters can be used with blind flow transmitters as their readout, with integral display flowmeters as a remote mounted additional display, or as an auxiliary display mounted anywhere along a flow control loop.

Model DM10 display is a loop-powered LCD readout meter that can be inserted anywhere in a flowmeter’s 4-20 mA output loop. Unit is scalable to +1999 digits and features oversized 1-in. high characters for easy viewing. Model DM15 display is an ac-line powered meter with a bright red LED readout. Unit features user scalable push-button +9999 digit display and will accept either the 4-20 mA or 0-10 V dc output signals from any FCI flowmeter. Model DM20 is a miniature, panel-mount 8-digit (0 to 99999999 counts) flow totalizer. It accepts pulse output from FCIs ST50 and ST75 Series flowmeters for a local or remote digital readout of total flow.

V7 Series operator interface panels from Monitouch HMI connect to virtually any PLC and a range of temperature controllers, variable frequency drives, or motion controllers.

HMI550H-005 Classic operator interface touchscreen from Maple Systems has a 10.4 in. TFT 8-wire analog resistive touchscreen display, features 256-color graphics and three types of animation, and is priced at $1499.

V7 Series operator interface panels from Monitouch HMI connect to virtually any PLC and a range of temperature controllers, variable frequency drives, or motion controllers. Ethernet, serial, and several fieldbus network communication protocols are supported. Three serial ports and a LAN port enable a single unit to communicate to two protocols simultaneously. Microsoft Windows-based programming software provides for convenient screen editing. All units include 32,768 colors for realistic illustration display and are available in sizes from 6 to 12 in. with up to 800 x 600 pixel resolution.

Jett-RFID-Mi hand held computer from Two Technologies Inc. is suited for a variety of applications that use RFID technology.

HMI550H-005 Classic operator interface touchscreen from Maple Systems includes a full range of features including pop-up window display keypads and a fast-selection window that lets an operator quickly jump to commonly used screens. Software features include scripting, tag database, macros, and recipes that allow the unit to be configured for complex tasks. Touch objects can be overlain so that the operator can initiate several functions with a single touch of the screen. Unit comes with an extensive library of common objects, including buttons, meters, graphs, lamps, piping, valves, and tanks. It has a 10.4 in. TFT 8-wire analog resistive touchscreen display, features 256-color graphics and three types of animation, and is priced at $1,499.

Jett-RFID-Mi customizable hand-held computer from Two Technologies Inc. has a Microsoft Windows CE .Net 4.2 operating system, Intel XScale technology processor, and a 13.56 MHz reader/writer that supports MiFare (ISO 14443A), MiFare (ISO 14443B), and MiFare UltraLite tags. Designed for a variety of applications that use RFID technologies, the unit can read tag IDs and read/write data blocks. It supports software encryption; average read range is approximately 3 in. Standard model comes with the ability to select various antenna positions for ease of use in multiple orientations.

—Jeanine Katzel, senior editor, Control Engineering, jkatzel@reedbusiness.com