Touchscreens widen the outlook for LabView

Jan. 12, 2006
A trio of touch-panel screens by National Instruments offers new options for displaying applications developed in the LabView graphical environment.

Three touchscreen HMIs from National Instruments Corp. include a 15-in. flat-panel display, a 5.7-in. LCD monitor, and a built-in PC running Windows XP. All three units include resistive touchscreens and a PDA-module deployment license for royaltyfree deployments of NI LabView's graphical-user interface.


A trio of touch-panel screens by National Instruments offers new options for displaying applications developed in the LabView graphical environment. The three new interfaces include a flat-panel touchscreen, a touch-panel computer, and a panel PC. A LabView PDA module deployment license comes with each interface.

The LabView modules also work with programmable-automation controller (PAC) products that include Compact FieldPoint distributed I/O and CompactRIO FPGA-based high-speed I/O.

The FPT-1015 is a resistive touchscreen built on an industrial 15-in. flat-panel color LCD. It connects through a standard VGA port and USB. Typical applications are high-performance testing and functional test systems on the factory floor. The display also works with the CVS-145x Compact vision systems.

The 5.7-in. TPC-2006 industrial touch-panel computer is designed for embedded or machine-control applications. The LCD monitor with resistive touchscreen runs Windows CE and .NET and is programmed with the LabView PDA Module. The module automatically compiles and optimizes LabView VIs for Windows CE. The TPC-2006 carries a 266-MHz Intel ARM9 processor and has no rotating media for the sake of ruggedness. A fanless cooling system complements the NEMA-4/IP-65 industrial ratings.

The NI PPC-2015 is a 2-GHz Pentium 4 computer system that also carries a 15-in. color panel LCD with resistive touchscreen. It runs Windows XP on a 40-GB hard drive and offers connectivity through Ethernet, five USB, two PCMCIA ports, and two half-length PCI slots. Typical connections are to PCIbased data-acquisition boards or external USB-based data-acquisition modules, as well as to motion or vision cards.

LabView applications running on these new touchscreen systems can connect via Ethernet to various PAC hardware from NI, and to that from other vendors. LabView routines will let these systems work with PLCs from Allen-Bradley, Siemens, GE Fanuc, and many others using OLE for process-control (OPC) servers. Engineers can also tie the touchscreen systems to factory networks using Modbus TCP/IP via Ethernet, DeviceNet, and CAN hardware.

MAKE CONTACT
National Instrument Corp.,
(800) 531-5066, ni.com

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