What was AB thinking when they came out with this component series? My AB panelview component C600 experience was horrible. What a huge waste of time. I should have just used a standard Paneview and my builder software. I have programmed hundreds of HMI's over the years and this was by far the worst...sooo slow and confusing just to connect to to configure.
So I got hooked by the "configuration software builtin" feature but that feature is the unit's biggest downfall (although the construction is also cheesy...the clear front plastic slaps against the back window when touching the screen). Tech support will fully admit there are issues with this confugation setup.
Essentially, you program the thing through Internet Explorer browser so the panelview acts as a web server website so when you want to configure an application, you have to wait for all the configuration application to download to your browser including all the tools, menus and configured screens, etc...extremely slow. The "no software" claim is sort of false, if connecting using USB, need to install USB driver and the install not real straight forward. If configuring an application using the "emulator" lord have mercy on you as the Microsoft virtual machine needs to be installed which is an hour process and keep your fingers crossed it doesn't mess up your machine. The only thing the emulator does is display screens and navigate through the screens but can't "run" or connect to PLC. It does do a pretty good job of representing the extreme slowness of programming the unit as if you were actually connected to a real unit even though it is on your PC. Click on a tag or a screen that has not been loaded get the message "Please wait while data downloading" Five second delay just to get the blank box to manually enter in a new tag. As far as anyone could tell me, there is no way to automatically import a tag list so they all need to be typed in.
What were they thinking? Based on my fustrations and wasted time just trying to program this thing, I highly recommend NOT using the Panelview component series.
