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The How’s and Why’s of HMIs

One of my favorite parts of automating a system is designing the HMI. Laying out an HMI screen to be both informative and visually pleasing to an operator can be fun and challenging. Many times, “leaving well enough alone” is a good phrase to go by to avoid over complicating the design. Animations, colors, alarms, sounds, etc. are all available to help you get the message across quickly and accurately. While pilot devices, like indicator lights and pushbuttons, can provide some of the same functionality, HMIs are much more flexible and provide not only cost savings with wiring and installation but can also keep you well informed with advanced features like email and data logging.    

In this series of articles, we try to answer many of the questions pertaining to HMIs in general, with a section focused on how to use C-more HMIs specifically. We hope these posts will help you with designing an actual HMI screen using the tools C-more provides. And if you or your boss is on the fence about whether an HMI would be beneficial in your next project, we’ll help with that too.


Learning ResourcesOnline BlogOperator InterfaceProductSimple PLCWhy HMI

What is a HMI? Human Machine Interface

It’s well known that human beings are visual creatures, and we would all choose a pretty picture over boring text any day. Just look at the popularity of image-based apps like Instagram or Snapchat and it’s obvious that images are king. But on the scientific side, it’s believed that our brains can process visual information…
+Tech TopicsLearning ResourcesOnline OnlyOperator InterfaceProductWhy HMI

Good HMI Software: What Capabilities to Look For

When searching for a touch panel HMI, there are lots of options. And while there are certainly differences in the available hardware, many of the available panels on the market have similar hardware capabilities. But the capabilities of the HMI software, and how easy it is to use, can make a huge difference for your…
+Tech TopicsAutomation NotebookIssue 13 – 2009Learning ResourcesNotebook IssueOperator InterfaceProductProgrammable ControlTechnical ReviewWhy HMI

C-more HMI With Enhanced Allen-Bradley PLC Driver Support (Part Two)

In part one of this two-part article, we discussed the types of Allen-Bradley PLCs that are supported by the AutomationDirect C-more HMI and covered in detail which protocol should be selected for your application. We also covered the various Data Types for Tags that are supported. The latest group of C-more drivers (seen below) supports the A-B…
Why HMI

HMI eBook

Check out all of our HMI content for basic to complex in one place, our new HMI eBook. Plus enjoy a section specific to the C-more HMI
+Tech TopicsAutomation NotebookIssue 12 – 2008Learning ResourcesNotebook IssueTechnical ReviewWhy HMI

C-more HMI With Enhanced Allen-Bradley PLC Driver Support

With the growing popularity of the C-more Operator Interface line, we have had many requests to add PLC protocol drivers. These drivers allow customers with different PLC brands to standardize on the C-more HMI product. This article takes a look at C-more’s PLC drivers and demonstrates how to import/export tags and optimize communication. Due to the abundance…
+Tech TopicsData and IIoTIIoT and DataLearning ResourcesOnline OnlyOperator InterfaceProductWhy HMI

Remote Monitoring with Embedded HMIs

If your company has remote sites that need to be monitored, and if you’re looking for a way to do this without making periodic rounds to check each site, then remote monitoring may be the answer. And if you’re looking for a cost effective yet powerful way to implement remote monitoring, embedded HMI is a…
+Tech TopicsAutomation NotebookeBookIssue 32 - 2015Learning ResourcesNotebook IssueOnline OnlyOperator InterfaceProductTechnology BriefWhy HMI

Pick and Place your HMI

There are many ways to irritate an operator working with automated equipment and a bad human-machine interface (HMI) implementation is right up there with the worst of them. Following these guidelines can help you pick the right HMI for your application, keep you on the good side of your operators and engineers, and also help…
+Tech TopicsLearning ResourcesOnline BlogOperator InterfaceProductWhy HMI

16 Tips for an Effective HMI

Do you have an HMI project coming up? Here are some helpful tips and guidelines for you to remember during your planning and implementation. 1. Story Boards are a Good Start A good starting point for HMI design is a text-based outline documenting each screen’s content. With the operator’s point-of-view and ease-of-use in mind, detail…
+Tech TopicseBookLearning ResourcesOnline OnlyOperator InterfaceProductSIDirectSimple PLCWhy HMI

System Integrators Talk HMI Projects

“Been there, done that,” – besides just being a great t-shirt logo, there is a lot of truth in seeking wisdom from those who can claim they’ve been there and done that. In this “System Integrators Talk” segment, we queried our System Integrators Group on LinkedIn with a question on HMIs, and gathered their collective…
+Tech TopicsApplicationCommunicationsData and IIoTData System MonitoringeBookIIoT and DataLearning ResourcesOperator InterfaceProductWhy HMI

Layered Security Goes Beyond Hardware In IIoT Implementations

Industry is certainly starting to take note of the IIoT, which raises cybersecurity issues because it requires connecting field devices and other automation system components to the outside world, often through the internet. Connectivity capability is built into many automation components, typically via an Ethernet port, but can these connections be made secure?
+Tech TopicsAutomation NotebookIssue 10 – 2008Learning ResourcesNotebook IssueOperator InterfaceProductTech ThreadWhy HMI

Understanding the Advanced Recipe Function of the C-more® Touch Panel

Recipes are used in a multitude of control applications including batch processing for the food, beverage, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as complex applications such as robotics. Recipes, when used with an HMI, provide a simple and effective way to change the data in a large number of tags with the push of a…