We have an Automation Direct C-More EA9-T8CL that was recently brought onto the network. There's an FX3 that it interfaces with, but I'm hoping to avoid serial connections wherever possible.
Has anyone had luck connecting one of these HMIs to Ignition or KepServer?
That family of devices support AB basic Logix tag protocol, so should be able to connect to my EtherNet/IP module's "Adapter Option" virtual PLC. They also support EtherNet/IP I/O as an adapter, to which my module can directly connect via the "Scanner Option". The latter connection allows the reliable use of momentary buttons on that touchscreen.
I haven't looked lately, but I'm sure they also support Modbus TCP, so my Modbus Server driver (in My Advanced Modbus module) should also work.
I don't know that the HMI will allow Ignition to access tags defined on it. In our similar use case we did a one way PLC1 -> HMI -> PLC2 -> Ignition transfer of data because PLC1 didn't have ethernet comms (circa 1990 PLC) and we wanted monitoring in ignition.
In the C-More editor we defined several 'Tag Copy' events to move the data from the HMI to the second PLC's tags in the HMI. If you are looking for monitoring only then this approach while having Ignition behave as a modbus server will probably work.
The fastest rate these tag copy events run is once per minute. You can technically run a tag change event off the internal HMI system tags (250ms, 500ms and 1s) and define tag copy actions there, but I would be careful of the load on the HMI processor.