Major Feature Updates to OnPing HMI

One of the best features of OnPing is its constant refinement. We hope that every user of OnPing sees it getting better and better suited to them as they use it. We love to hear ideas for these improvements and try and implement as many as we can. Our latest batch of improvements to OnPing HMI are all the result of customer feedback and they have already improved many of our user’s workflows. The most recent are:

Real Time Data:

OnPing’s HMI application was created to provide users the kinds of rapid status display and control features that on-site workers have access to in traditional HMI screens from anywhere. The recent addition of real time updates to data in HMI makes this even more powerful and similar to onsite displays.

You don’t have to do anything to enable this. HMI is now just set to update continuously. You can pull up an existing HMI panel and see the data updating right now.

Thermometer Gauge:

Temperature is often a very important piece of information in many industrial processes. We’ve had a few customers over the years request a thermometer be added to HMI to display current temperature levels.

As usual, we made this new temperature indicator very customizable. You can change almost any aspect of the thermometer gauge. You can change size and details of appearance including its text, markings, color, units etc. Also, we’ve made it possible to have color changes at any level you’d choose. You can set colors for ranges on the thermometer so an unsatisfactory or unsafe temperature level can be seen instantly. Temperature related setpoints can also be indicated to make it very easy to see when they’re about to be met.

The new thermometer gauge can be added to any HMI in OnPing in the same menu where tanks, pipes and other tools are found.

Variable Aspect Ratio:

As with many digital platforms, many of OnPing’s daily users are relying more and more on mobile screens. This has presented challenges for HMI and its distinctly visual nature.

To provide the best immediate solution for this, we now have the ability to choose an HMI aspect ratio to fit different displays. When you add a new HMI to a panel, it will ask you to choose an aspect ratio. The drop-down menu provides many options for mobile displays, laptops and TV or desktop monitors. We’ve seen several customers creating mobile HMI dashboard panels with alternate versions of their current HMI’s to work flawlessly on their mobile devices.

Data Import Export:

HMI has always had an import / export feature to make it easy to migrate existing HMI layouts from location to location. Until very recently, this would do a great job of moving the visual elements and layout over but it was still necessary to go through and manually add all the data connections.

Well now HMI has an import / export function centered around a .dhall configuration file. Export it from an existing HMI and use as a template to add parameters in bulk to a new site. This makes creation of HMI’s at new sites much easier, potentially saving many hours of work.