September 9, 2008 — The “Video Process Monitoring” white paper by Steve Rubin, president of Longwatch, discusses the newest trend in HMI/SCADA: Embedding video into an HMI screen, so operators can actually see what is happening in a process plant, along an assembly line, or in remote areas. A video process monitoring system continuously archives live video from multiple cameras around a plant. When an “event” occurs, the system can provide video from before the event and during the event, and put it on the HMI screen for the operator to view - as many times as necessary for the operator to understand what happened.
Video clips can also be stored in an historian, logged with time stamps and event information, and used to confirm that process steps were performed properly, help diagnose intermittent problems, and train operators. For example, video clips can be archived to prove that the proper ingredients were added to a batch. The white paper describes the hardware and software elements of a video process monitoring system, how it uses the plant’s industrial network to transmit video to the control system, and how the video images appear on HMI screens.
Download a copy of the white paper from www.longwatch.com/solutions/whitepapers.php
About Longwatch
Longwatch, Inc. was founded by industrial automation and software veterans with the goal of simplifying video delivery over existing SCADA, HMI and distributed control networks. The result is the Longwatch Surveillance System™, a portfolio of products that enables SCADA system users to view events and easily verify alarms at local and remote sites using both legacy and new networking infrastructures. The system integrates video and system alarms on the same display for fast, reliable operation and decision-making.
