Many types of commercial and industrial equipment, such as HVAC or air conditioning systems, offer post-sale diagnostic services that require some type of diagnostic tool. The growing trend is to eliminate printed user manuals and instructions about how to operate the tool and run diagnostic tests. Instead, an HMI command center can be embedded in the diagnostic tool to display the latest information for easy access by the technician.
Design Challenges
To add or upgrade a diagnostic tool’s HMI command center with a large touchscreen and graphical interface that enables easy navigation through a variety of functions and features, you may need:
- A high-performance microcontroller (MCU) or possibly even a microprocessor (MPU) to drive a larger screen with a high-resolution color graphics display
- Expansive data storage, such as DRAM, to render graphics
- An easy-to-use embedded graphics tool to shorten your development time
- Wired and wireless (Wi-Fi) connectivity between the equipment and the control center for:
- Diagnosing or updating the latest firmware on the equipment
- Getting access to the database on the command center
Block Diagram
The block diagram below illustrates how to implement a diagnostic tool with a graphical HMI command center for diagnosing an air conditioning system as the example end equipment.
