Programmable logic controller cuts development time

With multiple serial ports, HMI430 offers OEMs a way to flexibly integrate a touchscreen into their solution for small- and medium-sized industrial control applications. The touchscreen—a 4.3in 470x272 pixel screen with resistive touch and 64K colours—comes with a repertoire of standard buttons, fonts, and other screen elements and support for alpha blending, image files, and Z-ordering.

“With the advent of smartphones, all controller applications—medical, industrial, building control—are affected by the end-customers’ expectation of a GUI-driven interface,” noted David Stonier-Gibson, CEO of SPLat Controls. “The HMI430 with an integrated colour touchscreen enables OEMs to respond to this ‘iEffect’ and provides the innovative edge that helps small- and medium-sized equipment manufacturers make their products smarter and more competitive."

Geared to address a wide range of control applications, the HMI430 offers an ideal control interface for equipment in fields as diverse as HVAC, dairy, packaging, pump control, commercial food processing, mining, health and fitness, and patient care. Early adopters have implemented HMI430 for a microbrewery-bottling machine and leisure spa hydrotherapy tub control.

“Reduction of production costs while maintaining superior quality is an ongoing challenge for a microbrewery,” confirmed Simon Ross, of MicroBrewTech Ltd in New Zealand. “The HMI430 enabled me to control and coordinate multiple processes behind an interface that was easy to understand and use. The number and variety of I/O ports all coordinated with a simple multitasking interface enabled me as an application-focused developer to achieve much better efficiency and control. And when I ran into challenges, SPLat Controls offered exceptional customer support guiding me through development and product integration

The PLC uses a 120MHz ARMâ Cortexâ-M4F processor with hardware floating point, onboard graphics control and 512KB of flash memory for program storage. The display is supported by 8MB of flash for images and fonts. A 16MB display buffer allows glitch free re-writes. The digital outputs can directly drive relays and solenoid valves up to 500mA at 24V, and the inputs are compatible with industrial NPN type sensors. The two analog inputs provide 12-bit resolution and can measure voltage, current, or temperature. There is also a 0-10V, 10-bit analog output.

The MultiTrack cooperative multitasking operating system offers reliable, non-stop operation, free of hazards like resource locking and priority inversion that can lead to unnecessary downtime. This safe, easily understood environment enables OEMs to develop sophisticated real-time applications tailored for small- and medium-business environments. A single unified application program operates both the control and the display functions, ensuring that any updates to an OEM’s program only require a single download by the end user.

The module offers one RS485 port and two TTL level serial ports, with built-in Modbus and the ability to implement custom protocols. A serial expansion port supports a range of existing SPLat “Xwire” special function peripheral boards such as pH measurement, Internet connectivity, data logging, and temperature measurement. A new range of matching I/O expansion boards provides additional digital I/O, relays, and analog I/O, and can be linked together via RS485 to create a distributed processing system