Are HMIs the Forgotten Edge Gateways?

Key Things to Know:

• Edge Intelligence and Gateway Functionality: Advantech integrates industrial computing with intelligent communications hardware to create sophisticated solutions, enhancing edge intelligence and gateway functionality across various applications.

• HMI as a System Gateway: Often overlooked, HMI devices can serve as intelligent edge gateways, centralizing data convergence and application deployment, which simplifies system design and enhances operational efficiency.

• Versatility of HMI Software: HMI software not only provides interactive interfaces for operators but also offers the flexibility to operate independently or in conjunction with other edge devices, acting as both a control panel and a data processing hub.

• Comprehensive Integration Solutions: Advantech’s HMINavi SCADA system exemplifies seamless integration, offering advanced protocol compatibility and no-code configuration that simplifies connections to enterprise systems like AWS or Azure.

Introduction 

Advantech are regularly engaged in customer projects that involve using edge intelligence to provide gateway functionality. Their market leading range of industrial computers, complimentary software and intelligent communications hardware enable complex solutions to be configured to meet a wide range of requirements. 

There is one system component which is often overlooked when considering the requirements of a gateway. A lot of time can be spent considering the provision of an industrial rack or box PC to provide intelligence at the various edge points within a system architecture. For geographically diverse architectures, consideration is given to edge computing via the deployment of intelligent cellular routers, which are capable of hosting software for applications such as protocol translation or AI inference. In many of these discussions, the architecture will also include some requirements for visualisation, either at the local machine level, for site/production line overview, or to monitor an entire system operation. These HMI devices are often viewed as local endpoints for data being sourced or created within other devices, and yet this misses an important opportunity to simplify overall system design by instead using the HMI device as an intelligent edge gateway in its own right.  

Key Role of HMI Software in Automation 

HMI software, whether supplied as an integral part of a display panel, or as a separate software application for installation on a panel or industrial PC, is a fundamental component of automation architectures, providing information to engineers and operators, and allowing them to interact with the underlying processes and devices. 

The Standalone Controller 

Even in today’s ever more connected world, there are still cases where process plant operators either cannot, or do not want to connect to external systems and devices. A typical example would be where an older or more basic PLC style device is used within a machine or process line. It is still necessary for operators and engineers to interact with the system, but the underlying PLCs do not support wide area cloud connectivity. 

In these cases, an HMI of appropriate size and capability can be used as a standalone controller, providing an interface which ranges from simple mimic panels and virtual pushbutton control of a single machine up to a sophisticated visualization, historian and alarm package for an entire production line or distributed process, offering a mix of pushbutton and recipe based control options. The HMI effectively becomes a single-screen, self-contained SCADA system, providing a cost-effective option for users where a multi-screen setup is not required. 

The Graphical Endpoint 

In this use case, the HMI panel is considered as a visualization package for an industrial PC or similar which provides the edge intelligence for the machine, line, or process. 

Here, an edge device provides the site intelligence, typically acting as a gateway, providing data enrichment, aggregation, and filtration, leading to actionable insights that are subsequently communicated upwards to the enterprise. It may also host user applications designed to manipulate the local data in order to layer control and management strategies on top of the devices connected to it. In such cases, the HMI may simply be a touchscreen display driven by visualization software running on the edge device, but more typically, it will provide functionality very similar to that of a standalone controller. Indeed, in many cases, the HMI operates independently of the edge device, interfacing directly with the underlying process to recover its base data. 

The HMI as a Gateway 

The concept of using an HMI device as a system gateway makes a lot of sense. Architecturally, the gateway is a point at which data converges from lower-order devices, and this is obviously also true of any HMI deployment point. 

By providing mechanisms through which user applications can be deployed on the HMI hardware and interface to the data in the HMI, users are able to leverage the device protocol and data recovery capabilities of the HMI system, potentially saving man weeks of development effort and concentrate their application efforts around their paradigm expertise and industry experience. Further, using HMI software, such as Advantech’s HMINavi, means that interfacing upwards to the enterprise using IT protocols such as MQTT, SQL and ODBC or via direct connectivity to cloud services such as AWS or Azure can be achieved through simple, no-code configuration, again potentially saving significant development effort for users.  

Why Source Hardware and Software Together?  

Of course, there are a number of suppliers who provide HMI hardware and a further set of suppliers who provide SCADA software, so why buy both from a single vendor? The answer is that there are a number of advantages to this approach: 

Reduction in the number of vendors 

Every vendor that companies purchase from carries a hidden cost. Terms and conditions need to be agreed, quality needs to be audited, orders need to be expedited and so on. Sourcing both hardware and software from a single vendor eliminates the costs associated with a second vendor. 

Hardware / Software Compatibility 

Sourcing hardware and software from a single vendor ensures that the software will run properly. This is obviously important at the time of initial purchase but is even more important once equipment is deployed in the field. It is a reality of the modern world that software gets patched for all sorts of reasons. Bug fixes, security updates or simply ongoing development all raise the possibility of introducing an incompatibility with the underlying deployed hardware. When only a single vendor is involved, these incompatibilities are much less likely to occur. 

Scalability 

Often, users have a variety of HMI applications, varying both in complexity of the data processing and visualization requirements, as well as the underlying panel size and environmental characteristics. Independent software vendors typically have a minimum platform requirement, which will preclude deployment on the simpler, small panels typically used for single machine control, whilst suppliers of simple machine operator panels rarely offer the comprehensive functionality required for higher-order SCADA-type operations. This means that engineers need to learn to operate and maintain multiple software packages, again incurring a hidden cost for the operator. 

Advantech’s HMINavi Solution 

HMINavi is a highly functional SCADA package optimized for deployment within a single-screen HMI environment, which is particularly relevant to OT engineers looking for a way to visualize PLC data and integrate it within IT cloud environments and MES systems. It is available across a wide range of data panels, panel PCs and industrial PCs, encompassing both general-purpose and specialist application hardware platforms. This enables users to deploy a consistent environment across a wide range of applications, significantly reducing the hidden costs involved where different display packages are used at different points. 

It inherits a constantly evolving list of protocol drivers/device maps for over 500 common devices such as PLCs, allowing easy integration into virtually any process automation environment, together with uplink protocols enabling it’s use as a protocol gateway, translating and passing data between otherwise incompatible peer systems, or interfacing between the OT and IT environments through simple point and click configuration. 

A comprehensive set of dynamic graphics primitives enables data-rich and intuitive operator interfaces to be built and deployed, whilst real-time trend displays are also supported to provide visualization of emerging behavior. Output operations are well catered for via a range of bi-direction graphic primitives, together with recipe blocks, scheduling, scripting and macro execution. A full alarm package provides operators with proactive notification of out-of-bounds conditions via a variety of optional methods, together with the ability to go back and analyze the events leading up to the alarm condition via a data historian capable of exporting data in a number of formats. 

This combination of classic HMI functionality, coupled with flexible uplink capabilities and the ability to coexist and share data with other applications running on the same physical HMI hardware, makes HMINavi a compelling proposition for users implementing any of the architectures mentioned earlier. HMINavi enables the operator panel to become the central hub for all functionality, leading to lower complexity, cost and risk associated with the site deployment. Further, the high levels of functionality provided by the no-code configuration environment can save significant amounts of development time and cost when creating a system. 

Authors: 

Tim Taberner - IIoT Technical Sales Director Advantech Europe 

ChiaHung Hung  -IIoT Product Sales Management Advantech Europe  

Advantech Europe 

00800 2426 8080 

customercare@advantech.eu  

www.advantech.com/en-eu 

PR/2087 - HMIs the Forgotten Edge Gateways