touch panel networking

[JChec]

Hi,

I'm looking to log data and compare against alarm levels at numerous controllers and send this data back to a server over the LAN. My experience with Touch Panels is limited. Does anyone know if touch panels are a good solution as the controller or will there be any networking problems. Not sure on the limitations of Win CE

Thanks,

[AdnanZ]

You should explain your project, software and hardware components in more detail. From an NI perspective, there are definitely lots of tools provided that are supported on Windows CE, but again, it's not as robust as working on a Windows XP/Vista machine. Provide more details as to what exactly you want to do and we could help out more.

[JChec]

I'm looking to acquire temp data through a ni usb 6008 at various places (4 or 5 sensors at each place) seperated by a few km. and a display is required at each place. The data needs to be sent back to a server. Reliabilty is not a big issue, hence why I'm looking at using a Touch panel as a display and controller instead of a compactrio (which seems like overkill for temp monitoring) with an external display. Thats really all the specs there are to the system. In terms of software... just needs to handle the comms over the net to send the temperature data and display it at client and server sides as well as log extremes.

[JChec]

Also, does the TPC 2106 support Usb daq?

[AdnanZ]

The TPC 2106 should work and does support the USB 6008. The only cavaet is that you will need to use DAQmx Base, which cannot multithread. So, you won't be able to run analog inputs and outputs simultaneously. What that means is that if you are only running analog input (any number of channels), you should be fine; but if you want to do digital i/o or analog ouput, then you will need to stop analog input, then start analog output, stop that and then start digital i/o. Hope that makes sense. So, you for your application, the TPC 2106 should be fine to use with the USB 6008 using a DAQmx base driver.

For networking, you have a choice of using shared variables or TCP/IP communication; both communication methods are supported on the TPC 2106.

[JChec]

Perfect answer Adnan. Just what I needed to know.

Thanks