‘HMI Tools’ is a software package used to transfer program and data files between a PC and an E1000 HMI. Amongst other things, it can be used for transferring trend information, alarm lists, recipe data, html files, Java applets and bitmaps to and from a terminal via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). BUT there’s another way…

Now, if you’ve used HMI Tools before I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a powerful and useful tool, there’s no doubt about that, but for those of you who haven’t got it installed and just want to quickly extract a few files from your E1000, you don’t want to have to run an install from disc – especially if you’re out on site and don’t have the disc with you! And the other good thing is, you can do this method over Ethernet – no need to wait around for serial comms!

So let’s jump straight into it! Here’s what you need:

• A PC with an Ethernet port
• An E1000 HMI (not applicable with the E1012 or E1022)
• Cross-over Ethernet cable
• E-designer software installed on your computer

Step 1:

We need to first find out what IP address the HMI currently has assigned to it, the easiest way to do this is from E-designer. Click on Setup > Peripherals, you should see the following window:

As you can see, my IP address was 192.168.8.135.

Step 2:

Next we need to match the IP address of your PC to the range the HMI has, i.e. it needs to be 192.168.8.X. This can be done from your Network and Sharing Center: From the screen shown below (left), click the properties button (circled), to show the following (right):

Wireless network connection status step 2

From the second screen (right), double-click on the “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) to show the following screen:

Internet Protocol Version 4 Step 2

From this screen the only thing you need to enter is the IP address which matches the range assigned to the HMI, in my case it was: 192.168.8.10. The subnet mask will populate itself once you tab across to it. As for the ‘Default Gateway’ and the ‘DNS’ settings, they can all be left untouched.

Step3:

So at this point we have made a connection between the HMI and PC over Ethernet – feel free to put that serial CAB30 back in your bag and connect the Ethernet cable. The next step is to prepare the HMI for use over FTP. From the project manager, double-click ‘Network Services’ (left) to show the window on the right:

E-designer Network Services step 3

From the Network Services window ensure that the ‘FTP Server’ option is ticked, then press the Exit button. Now simply transfer the whole project to the HMI – be sure to select TCP/IP transfer from the communication properties before trying to transfer.

Step 4:

Now we can now use any internet browser to access the files we want to view, but I found that using windows explorer was quicker – either way the process is the same. Type in ftp://[Insert HMI IP address here] into the address bar. Like so…

Windows explorer FTP Step 4

As you can see, we now have access to Alarms, Images, Trends, Recipes, HTML and if you click into the INFO.TXT file you even have access to basic information about your HMI such as: firmware version, IP address and spare memory etc. If you click into these folders you’ll find they contain .CSV files, which you’re able to open in a Spreadsheet, Ta Dah! This concludes this blog post, thanks for tuning in!