Opto 22 recently announced a new mobile monitoring and control system called ‘groov.’
When you want to control a packaging machine or monitor tank levels at the far side of the plant, enjoying the convenience of a smartphone or tablet computer at home makes the long walk to a tethered HMI feel like you’re hitching your wagon to a horse to buy groceries. The increasing use of modern Web browsers and mobile operating systems, however, is allowing the development of industrial-strength wireless monitoring and control applications to make the jump to lightspeed.
I saw a great example of this recently during a briefing on Opto 22’s (www.groov.com) groov platform—an industrially hardened network appliance and associated HMI/SCADA build and view software.
This control system is the result of several years of research and determination by Benson Hougland, vice president of marketing and development at Opto 22.
“I had to learn HTML, JavaScript, PHP for SQL communications, and control code. I needed to create a serious toolset. I did it and it worked, but I found out I had to relearn all those tools to make a change.”
Hougland gathered a 4G radio, router and other off-the-shelf components, followed iOS and Android app-development guidelines, and worked with other Opto 22 engineers to create groov.
The end result, groov, can connect to different machines on the same network, monitor their performance, and control their operations all from the screen of a smartphone or tablet.
Read more about ‘groov’ at automation world.
