How to Get Data From an HMI to Another PC

I'm sure it can be done, as the FIX was sold with software to interface to a variety of other systems. Is the other PC also running Windows? Are they networked together?

Worst case (I think) at the FIX PC, but the data in a file, then, from the other PC, grab that file over the network. (BTW, my question about Windows is pretty much beside the point, the FIX PC can be networked to a non-Windows PC as well.)

Apparently, Intellution was sold to GE, but you should be able to get help from GE. (The first response will surely be upgrade the FIX, but you shouldn't have to do that.)

Funny thing about HMI's, especially OLDER versions... they do not "natively" store data. I have to assume that the data you seek to move is process related. You will only get this type of data IF the HMI is configured to save historical records to the hard drive. In later model HMI's, this would typically be a flat file formatted in some proprietary way.

My suggestion: Use the built-in Help file that come with your HMI, and search for History files. The Help file will direct you to where these files are (IF they are being collected) and also how to enable History if it is not already. There are many versions of this particular HMI, so this may vary slightly from version to version. It wouldn't be prudent to rewrite the user manual in this forum. This documentation is almost always installed with the HMI... find it.

Your last hurdle will be the process of reading these proprietary files from another computer. More often than not, the HMI uses the data collected in History to display TREND data... and the Trend display is designed specifically to read this file.

All you really need to know is in the Help file... fairly certain. If your purpose for gathering this historical data is to improve your process, or root cause analysis, then inevitably you will need to upgrade to an HMI that stores this data into a relational database. Local HMI history is NOT typically high resolution... nor is it store for very long periods of time efficiently.

There are a million solutions for that scenario going forward... so make sure (if that is indeed your forward migration) you get a solution that is sustainable and easy to extend for future growth.

(Beside the point, but I gave you a GA, especially as your answer was better than mine ;-)

Re: Local HMI history is NOT typically high resolution... nor is it store for very long periods of time efficiently.

Actually, at the time (about 15 years ago now) that we chose the FIX as the HMI for a project, the history resolution was one of the things we were concerned about, and some of those HMI / Distributed Control systems have some pretty decent schemes. Unfortunately, now I can't remember them very well, nor which vendors used which approaches.

IIRC, most of them used an approach in which very recent data was fairly high resolution, and as data aged, it was "agglomerated" into lesser resolution averages and such. Often some scheme of data compression was used, often something like just recording when a change occurred (and just the magnitude of the change instead of the absolute value).

The FIX had one of the better schemes available at that time (iirc).