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HMI (WinMachLite®)

WinMachLite® is the result of extensive research and experiments conducted by Automata in the development and application of machine control systems. The Workbench Editor (Wbedit) – the environment with which WinMachLite® is developed – runs on an embedded operating system generating a powerful run time and ensuring high performance and reliability.

The revolution brought about by WinMachLite® lies essentially in its architecture: a relational database makes up its nerve centre. Access to the database is open to application modules that exchange information with the field (e.g. drivers) or interact with the operator (e.g. graphic items, alarms, trends, formulas, etc.). The speed and efficiency of the WinMachLite® architecture can be better appreciated if one considers that all the relevant modules of every single item are automatically updated every time the item is acted upon.

User Manual | 3,39 MByte (PDF)

Connectivity
WinMachLite® is designed to ensure ease of connectivity and communication with the commonly used standards:
- TCP/IP Ethernet
- LAN, WAN
- Internet
- Field bus
- Soft-PLC (Codesys)
- Supervision systems (Wire, OPC Server, FIMS, ecc..)

For specific requirements, WinMachLite® can use internal Script written in BASIC language and external libraries written in high level languages such as C, C++ .

Templates
The allocation of standard information on the monitor is easily managed by Page Template which displays data in terms of:
- synoptic boards, where all the items are displayed;
- alarm board, which shows alarm messages from known memory locations and automatically updates them with high priority;
- message board, which shows informative messages from known memory locations and automatically updates them with low priority;
- editing board, which shows what is being edited;
- description board, with descriptions and limits of the parameters in question;
- button board, typically to switch pages.
In addition, Page Template allows the operator to change or cancel default screens.

Descriptors
WinMachLite® makes it possible to act on information as it is transferred from the controller to the operator terminal. This means that control system readings, whose format is not always intelligible, can be converted into engineering units by associating descriptors to them. Several conversions can be used in parallel to express a given quantity in different units of measure; alternatively, one may shift from one unit to another (e.g. from °C to °F) based on the operator's settings. These conversions can be dynamically modified by acting on the conversion parameters.

Attributes
WinMachLite® makes it possible to change the way an item is displayed on the synoptic boards by simply modifying the dynamic attributes associated to the item, i.e. Text, Colour, Position, Size, Picture, Contrast. These features, together with a database variable, determine the dynamic character of an item and can be attributed or modified by the configurer at any time.

Multi-language Editor
Designed and developed for companies that trade internationally, WinMachLite® includes Multi-language Editor for fast, easy processing of multi-language texts. The translation of all the words contained in an application is tabulated in a special matrix – with no restriction as to the number of languages – which makes the requested language available on a real-time, dynamic basis. The length of the terms used is controlled, so that there is no need for manual sizing of captions.

Run time
The run time generated by WinMachLite® requires an extended real-time, multi-tasking DOS environment. The choice of the Operating System is dictated by the need for a robust, reliable software architecture with relatively small memory capacity requirements, something that allows the system to operate also on solid memory.