unHMI 9.2.0
Introduction

Master copy of this document is at git repository. Last released version is at EDMS:2377503

Purpose of this Document

This users' guide provides an introduction the "new" UNICOS HMI (main application window) provided with the "UnHMI" component. The operators of UNICOS control systems as well as all users, engineers and developers of UNICOS applications and frameworks are the target audience. It is assumed that the reader is already familiar with operation concepts of a standard UNICOS application, and terms such as "synoptic view", "faceplate", "widget", etc.

Definitions, Acronyms and Abbreviations

  • WinCC OA: WinCC Open Architecture, previously known as PVSS: commercial SCADA system used to implement the supervisory layer of UNICOS.
  • UNICOS: UNified Industrial COntrol System project developed at CERN to develop complex and highly integrated controls applications with industrial components and standardized processes
  • HMI: Human Machine Interface or User Interface); after Wikipedia:

    ‍"In the industrial design field of human-computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, whilst the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process." In context of UNICOS, it is the computer application running on the operator console (or accessed remotely through e.g. terminal servers), that is used to interact with the control system; in other words, it is the part of the control system that is visible to operators in the control room, which presents synoptic views, trend plots of historical values, "faceplate" panels allowing for operation of various part as well as assorted set of other tools.

  • UNICOS HMI is therefore the main application window visible for operators, experts and engineers. The new UnHMI described in this guide is a functional replacement for the one used so far, aiming at improved flexibility, usability and ergonomic use of computer screens of various sizes and resolutions.
  • synoptic panel (or view): a part of the HMI displaying the status of a specific part of a control system; complex control systems may comprise many hundreds of them, with various level of detail, or focus on particular process, etc. They are developed/engineered by the process experts and often also by the trained operators to fit their needs in the best way. In WinCC OA terminology these have a form of "panels" - graphically-designed interactive and animated views that "execute" withing the HMI. To operate the system the operators may need to quickly navigate across many panels, organize them in hierarchies, etc.

Motivation and Background

The original UNICOS HMI was implemented with WinCC OA at the beginning of years 2000, and then extended and improved over the successive two decades of succesful use. In the original design, it was aimed for 19" computer screens available at that time, with resolution of 1280x1024 points. In addition, the technology available in WinCC OA required that all the application windows have fixed size; as a result, resizing the window resulted in scaling of its whole content (including all graphical elements, texts, but also all UI elements such as buttons, selection lists, etc). A positive side effect of this constraint was the standardization of the size of all the synoptic views in UNICOS (1270x835) and the standard window size (1274x996) filling the standard screen completely.

The challenging complexity of first UNICOS control systems such as the LHC cryogenics triggered a study of ergonomics and let to the definition of multi-screen consoles in the CCC as shown below:

Cryo LHC consoles with 7 screens in 2 rows
Cryo Experiments consoles with 8 screens in 2 rows

To maximize ergonomics the setup of the computer screens was combined with the definition of the content of each screen, e.g. some of them to show the historical trends, whereas others to display the synoptic of a particular sector of the LHC, etc. This, in turn, effectively defined the layout for many hundreds of "synoptic panels" that were necessary for operation: they were "drawn" to optimize for the available resolution of the 19" screens, in a particular geometrical arrangement on the operators desk.

Similar arrangements for the standardized resolution of screens have also been adopted for all other UNICOS applications in other domains, even though the setups were not as complex.

Due to the quick pace of evolution of both hardware and software technology, these ergonomics optimizations are not really applicable anymore nowadays.

Computer screens got much bigger, reaching 27" size for a standard commodity equipment, and their resolutions reaching 2560x1440 points (WQHD resolution). At the same time, the pixel density has also grown significantly. As a consequence of that, a complex synoptic panel that was readable with good eronomics on the old screens will be "condensed" in a new screen making it much less readable. The table below presents the comparison: as could be seen the size of each pixel is over 25% smaller in the modern screens.

Screen Size Resolution Dots Per Inch Dot pitch
OLD 19" 1280x1024 (SXGA) 86.3 294 µm
NEW 27" 2560x1440 (WQHD) 108.8 233 µm

The campaign of replacement of computer screens in the CCC (CERN Control Center) prompted the effort to revisit the UNICOS HMI application, allowing to remodel the available screen area while keeping the use of hundreds of existing synoptic views (panels) and restoring their ergonomic views. WQHD screens of 27" (as listed in the table) have been chosen, and for the Cryo island of the CCC the setups of 7/8 smaller screen need to be migrated to 4 large screens.

For the multi-screen setups, the adaptation seemed to be easy, as the horizontal screen resolution allows to display two UNICOS HMI windows side-by-side. However, around 25% of screen space below the windows remains completely unused as shown in the figure below:

Two HMI windows side by side on the new screen: 25% of space below it remains unused

Similarly, running the fixed-size HMI on certain mobile devices (through a terminal server session) with reduced vertical screen resolution (eg, laptops with "HD+" resolution of 1600x900) makes the use of the fixed-size window of the size that is larger than the screen resolution quite tedious, necessitating the use of scrollbars. In this case, the possibility of scaling-down the window to the available screen size, then zooming it in to specific detail would be of much help.

In terms of evolution on WinCC OA, significant improvements have been added for the screen management. First of all, the so-called layout management allows for resizable application windows which auto-adjust their content in response to resizing of the window, or hiding/showing some of the elements; this allows, for instance, the tables to provide wider columns that contain more content, etc. Secondly, the dock modules allow to compose the space around the main window by attaching resizable auxiliary windows (more on that later in the document); the splitter allowing to present two synoptic panels side-by-side in the same window and control freely the space split between them allows for the necessary composition option. The already existing zoom navigator complements these features allowing for scaled-down or scaled-up view of synoptic and live-animated previews.

With the necessity triggered by the computer screen modernization efforts, and armed with the new features existing in WinCC OA, the project of the "New UNICOS HMI" (UnHMI) was triggered, and through the series of prototypes and preview versions delivers an alternative to the "old" HMI. The two HMI solutions coexist and may be used in parallel at this moment, yet it is supposed that the new one will gradually replace the older due to its superior set of features.

Getting Started and Requirements

As of the unicos-framework-8.5.0 release the unHMI component is included in the standard distribution of UNICOS. However, punctual feature/bugfix releases are also made available at the component downloads page much often then the whole UNICOS releases.

It is strongly recommended to refer to the release notes of the last UNICOS release or the ones of the unHMI component for the up-to-date list of requirements, features and possible compatibility-related issues.

For the current version of unHMI, 9.2.0, it is required to have

  • WinCC OA 3.16 with patch P020 or later
  • UNICOS 8.5.0 (in particular with the latest versions of the unCore, fwCtrlUtils components)
  • unHMI should work in the UI manager on supported version of operating systems: CentOS 7 Linux, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019.

To run the new unHMI it is sufficient to start the WinCC OA UI Manager with the -p unHMI.pnl parameter specifying the panel to be loaded and executed on startup:

WCCOAui -proj MyProj -iconBar -menuBar -p unHMI.pnl

For development projects running standalone (rather than in servers) one may want to append a new UI manager to the project console, and specify the panel to run as shown above; the -iconBar and -menuBar flags are optional and prevent the GEDI menu/icons from being displayed.

The new unHMI may be used alongside (in parallel with) or as an alternative to the previous HMI (the vision/graphicalFrame/unicosHMI.pnl panel.

Running the HMI for a particular frontend application is technically possible yet the setup of such configuration requires expert skills at this moment (to be resolved in the future release of the unHMI component).