B&R Industrial Automation's HMI Software

Dec. 10, 2004
Worldwide HMI changes text, language, icons online
Automation Software
Automation Studio software provides online language switching by changing texts and their fonts,   keyboard layouts and key displays, and measurement units and process variable scaling according to each respective country. The number of languages and fonts the software can handle is limited only by the amount of available RAM Other enhancements include a single development tool that allows seamless integration of controllers, drives, visualization, communication and software. Remote Display Functionality
Process visualization projects developed with B&R Automation Studio can be controlled remotely over any TCP/IP connection. This is suitable for all modem, intranet, or Internet connections. In addition to the actual display, B&R visualization devices support the configuration of a virtual display which can be transferred to and controlled by a remote PC. This allows machines and systems to be monitored and operated from a main office. It is also possible to access several visualization devices at the same time. The remote display only needs to be started more than once on the remote PC. Configuring a remote display is done in B&R Automation Studio by simply adding it to the system configuration. Clients are available for both the Windows and Linux operating systems. Terminal Mode
B&R Power Panel 100 devices are visualization terminals which can be connected over TCP/IP to additional controllers, industrial PCs, or even other Power Panel Terminals. It is possible to operate the visualization device remotely from the controller. This reduces the load on the connected controller by using the PP100's computing power to handle the visualization task. On the PP100 display units, various visualization projects can be operated in Terminal Mode. It is also possible to operate several PP100 display units in one visualization project. The visualization project on the PP100 terminal is created together with the control project. The PP100 only needs to be connected to the Ethernet interface on the controller. When configuring PP100 terminals, this is the same as local panels connected via a serial or CAN interface. Unicode Support
Configuring process pictures for worldwide usage is a challenge for every manufacturer of visualization hardware. The B&R Automation StudioM Software can not only master online language switching by changing texts and their fonts but it also can switch keyboard layouts and key displays. Additionally, the software can handle measurement units and process variable scaling according to the respective country. An essential part of language switching is the integration of Unicode True Type fonts. These fonts do not just make it possible to display the 256 characters used in the Western European and American languages but they also handle the several thousand symbols and characters used in Asian languages. Languages
The number of languages and fonts the software can handle is limited only by the amount of available RAM. B&R Automation Studio uses the IME support included with the MS Windows operating system. This means that entering text can be done in the usual way, just like in any other word processing program. Additionally, text translations frequently done by translation agencies can be avoided thus making the export/import functions in B&R Automation Studio that much more important.