Written by Pradeep Menon – Business Development Manager – Energy and Infrastructure at PHOENIX CONTACT Middle East
PLCnext Engineer
HMI devices can now be developed using a PLC programming software called PLCnext Engineer (a free of charge software) and stored on the PLC. It allows users to utilize popular programming environments to have real-time control with advanced computation. Customers have the possibility to use any HMI from other suppliers or a laptop, a tablet or all of these at once.
In the scenario when any of these HMI hardware devices break, you can simply swap it with a new one. You only need to browse the IP address of the PLC and your new HMI is up and running. This is because the HMI programming pages are stored on the PLC.