Better than Ignition. Any SCADA?

General Discussion
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Are you talking about symbols in the image browser? As these, at least in the versions a I've used, are raster images which makes it difficult to re-colour. You should be using vector graphics for all your graphics really, as they for 1 don't pixellate, and 2. have the freedom to change colours etc. You can use the ones from symbol factory, but I tend to use my own.

Most of your issues seem to stem from your lack of experience in the product. Of course, there are good ways of doing things that will help you in future maintainability and expansion, as well as getting the highest performance from your clients, and there are terrible ways to do things. It's the same in other SCADAs as well, especially with the ones that offer you highly flexible and customisable applications. With great power comes great responsibility.

I haven't used wincc or intouch, but I've used a number of others (citect, ft, Cimplicity, Ifix, clearscada...) and hands down, Ignition beats them all.

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The opc item path for each respective driver is outlined in the manual, and by third party module developers.

Making the background of a symbol a dynamic color is also outlined in the manual, and also trivial. Depending on if you are using raster or vector graphics changes the method a bit, but it is no more dificult than any other HMI/SCADA platform on the market.

The language subsystem does need some up front thought, but if this had been done initially, this would not be a concern. It sounds to me like you had a bunch of static text entered, if the project had been engineered with the formatting separate from the label itself, this could have been an easy transition.

The slowness, I can explain that. You are probably using UDT instances inside of your templates/window. Either that, or you are performing some long running script when you open the window without handling the thread properly. It is probably the former.

No offense, but all of these issues are due to inexperience. This project should have had a change order issued from your side and you should have taken the time to get trained on using the product. There is a learning curve to Ignition, and it makes sense that you feel the curve is steeper than it should be, being trained in traditional automation platforms for over 25 years. I do not mean this in a mean way, so I hope you do not take it to be ill spirited. Ignition leans more on a computer science background than a traditional automation background, and most platforms will be leaning this way as the convergence of IT and OT continues. Look at it as an opportunity to get ahead of the curve.

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I’m pretty sure most people who dislike Ignition are more about the fact that it doesn’t come with turnkey templates and wizards to get you started. Sure, there are sample projects available for download, but that’s not what this class of user wants, they’re looking for to click some buttons, input an IP (if it doesn’t just autodiscover everything), and generate a bunch of tags and screens. The fact that pretty much no SCADA HMI offers that kind of package doesn’t mean they won’t be mad that Ignition doesn’t.

Practically no one really likes a blank canvas, though. Even good devs know the limitations of IU and the docs, and the vast unknown – and difficult to discover features – that will sneak up as they dip into it.

Telling people who don’t want to be developers to get good doesn’t really fix anything. They just want a whole other class of product, which might not exist today.

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To a thirsty, a drop is enough to quench thirst, to someone groping in dark a small ray of light is enough to guide the way , where as to a non curious mind, no amount of spoon feeding will satisfy.The amount of work gone in IU is incredible! Amount of online helps, documentation, SDK's, forums, etc provided by IA is unmatched by any other SCADA product. Despite this if people want something more then its not IA's fault. Ignition has democratized industrial automation and it is life blood of many SI's today.

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Just to answer the answer in title. (and some thoughts along all answers)

For me NO. There is no better SCADA than Ignition.

Started with PLC programming about 25 years ago and with SCADA 20 years ago. Used to be RSView32 which I agree has lots of limitations , but for me was very good as it was stable. Still, have some applications moved in VM over XP running like the first day. Since then, I have been through a lot, RSViewME, SE, FTView, WW, WinCC->TIA, Citect and others, and cannot say which one is worse. (Probably the one I am working on it on that time).

Around 2008 I have discovered Inductive Automation, registered on site , downloaded test software, but being busy did not try it. This is one of my biggest regrets, could have saved me lots of headaches, also could have get the free edition of Panel.

In 2016, after lots of headbanging decided to try again. Registered to IU, registered as integrator, after one year got certified, now waiting for gold. Using Ignition feels far away superior than anything else. Sure it have bugs, sometimes slow etc, still does not compare with competitors issues.

I have been about 4 years RASI, system integrator with RA. Help from support was a real jungle fight, through several layers of people without knowledge up the skilled ones with a primary goal to prove only that you are wrong, not to solve the problem. Several times had to appeal to management to get firmware fixes.

Even better with Siemens. Bought licences in the ten of thousands range, what we needed was not working at all, after months of discussions finally they agreed there is a problem and to be solved next firmware update. Perfect. So when it will be? Aaa, as usual November.Wait, but is April , need to start-up in June. Sorry, November… OK, we worked like crazy for a workaround. November came. Please update.Aaa, no, sorry, this piece of software is not anymore in our portfolio… . Imagine that. ( By the way , noticed that usually Siemens people are rigid and just living in their own bubble. They are living in Siemens world and they are finding very difficult to understand easier, flexible things)

So Ignition came along as breath of fresh air. Fast installing, you can see tags right away, no need fancy simulators, running on Linux, unlimited testing time, integration with free sql databases and so on. Support? Actually never submitted a ticket. Had some questions, answered right away on forum.

Therefore bugs and other problems are, again, by far more bearable than in other SCADA platforms.

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69

I really enjoyed reading the forum as I have spend quite a time comparing SCADA systems recently. I am quite surprised no mention of mySCADA. Comparing Ignition I find it simpler to use, faster with right set of function. We did not use it for large scale system yet so don’t know how it scale with Ignition.

Do you have any experience with mySCADA you would be willing to share?

So far I am quite excited by a good mixture of functions, simplicity to use and easily extensibility. I miss better documentation and I don’t see it much spread yet.

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Just looking at a getting started video for mySCADA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJT0--o1ub8) it doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near as customisable as Ignition, especially in terms of property binding capabilities. Maybe they just didn’t go into detail? It’s also not a live development environment (no live tag values), which imo is a huge benefit of Ignition.

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automation.iot.exper is clearly a spammer, just joined and first post about another scada system.

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Good point… They came to the wrong forum though, trying to convert drivers of ferraris to drive a Holden Barina (not sure of an American equivalent, but very low power and tiny!)

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I agree it’s probably spam and if he posted a new topic I probably would have deleted his post and account… but I’m gonna let it ride in here.

@jamacent you’re on thin ice as well. Your first and only posts have been external links.

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78

I mentioned it. mySCADA lack object oriented method for design to if have large project it is really hard for integrator.
It’s ok for Max 500 tag
It has to SQL support and of you want to log data it is limit to 10000 point of records.
So the best case usage for mySCADA is home automation like project with limited tag.
In nutshell it’s not good choose for modern SCADA at all.

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Ignition is on the right track ! Others are following suit (like Siemens is now having web interface to wincc )

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Hi…I’m also really interested in using Ignition. I haven’t used it myself, but I have seen it used with a company that has multiple facilities. The actual machine control is done via any type of HMI, usually FactoryTalk SE or ME, or whatever the vendor provided equipment might use. They have an Ignition server to set up to collect production information and other data, and the information is presented in a dashboard like format. Mainly used by mill managers and higher “ranked” personnel. They really like it. Cost vs features, it’s hard to compete with when you’re talking about a full featured SCADA.

pcb and small parts assembly

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I did one project with it and while it is ok for a small project, I couldnt imagine trying to make it work for something on a larger scale.

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Hi Nminchin,
Can you please tell us in more details about why Ignition dominates Cimplicity SCADA? I need to know it desperately to convince my Boss. I found couple of advantages of Ignition, but could not find anything about disadvantage of Cimplicity apart from its Tags Limitation according to the License paid for.

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I forgive you, as it appears that you’ve only just begun your enlightenment :laughing:
Also keep in mind I haven’t used much of Cimplicity in 3 years.

Ignition trumps (sorry to use such a dirty word…) Cimplicity in all aspects, in my opinion. There are too many to list, but here’re a quick few reasons:

  • tag UDTs - for faster creation, maintainability, and standardisation of tags and testing
  • far more customisable in terms of graphics and property bindings
  • template graphics (e.g. a pump symbol) are far simpler to setup and configure the instances
  • Python language is extremely powerful but also significantly faster to code in and more readable compared with VBA used in Cimplicity (in my opinion)
  • no licence required for clients, can start up from any PC on the network without having to 1) search for the install files and 2) licence the client
  • extremely tight SQL integration
  • ease of configuration of pretty much everything, compared to Cimplicity. Bulk Tag import and editing in Cimplicity is a nightmare having to use cmd prompt!!
  • designed to modern standards and expectations
  • can design nicer looking GUIs
  • the extensibility that it offers, if standard components don’t quite suite what you’re looking for. E.g. if you want drop down menu items to have increased height, you can modify this. You can also develop your own modules if you’re so inclined to pretty much do anything that you want
  • modular … modules that each offer set functionality that are able to be added or removed to keep licensing cost in line with what you actually need
  • licensing cost in general

Ignition is quite simply put, a breath of fresh air, and a pleasure to work in! Call me a fanboy if you must :grin:

Also, we converted a very large winery over from Cimplicity over 3 years ago now, and they haven’t been happier. We are able to deliver projects now in a % of the time it would take in Cimplicity. Happy customer, happy engineer

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Thank you very much.!! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Is Cimplicity based on .NET, Windows or JAVA? How does Ignition score over WinCC? (If you have used it!) On all above points and what more?

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Not sure what it’s based in, I doubt it would be .NET and it’s certainly not Java. It’s a pretty old codebase. I haven’t used WinCC before sorry.

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I’ve done this comparison a few years ago and I’m sure I was forgetting some…

Ignition Wincc V7
Install Time? 3 mins >3 hours
Unlimited Free Development Clients? Yes No
Unlimited Free Runtime Clients? Yes No
Unlimited Free Tags? Yes No
Unlimited Free Database Connections? Yes No
Unlimited Free Projects? Yes No
Unlimited Free Client Screens per Project? Yes Yes
Unlimited Free Devices? Yes No
Supports OPC-UA? Yes Yes
Zero Install Runtime Clients? Yes No
Zero Install Developer Clients? Yes No
Support for Active Directory Authentication? Yes Yes
Secure Client Communications Protocol? Yes Yes
Supports Redundancy? Yes Yes
Simple Redundancy Setup? Yes No
Third Party API? Yes Yes
SVG Vector Drawing Support? Yes No
Object Inheritance Support? Yes Limited
UDDT (User-Defined Data Type Support)? Yes Yes
Number of Concurrent Runtimes Supported? Unlimited 1
Number of Concurrent Development Clients Supported? Unlimited 1
Number of Concurrent Database Connections Supported? Unlimited 32
Free Download of Fully Functional Software? Yes Limited
Pricing Available on Website? Yes No (only for integrators)
Operating Systems Supported? Linux, macOS, Windows (all versions) Only MS Windows OS(7, 2003, 2008, 2012, 8, 8.1, 10)
Database Brands Supported? any SQL database(MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, IBM DB2, PostgreSQL, …) You must buy Industrial Data Bridge option

I’m sure that WinCC has also evolved in all these years, but we have stopped using it since 2014 and never look back.

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