Siemens HMI on VNC

General Discussion
1

Hi,

I have several HMI form remote machines in a Perspective project and on the Siemens ones, the mouse cursor disappears when moving over the VNC display. It works well on AB and other manufacturers HMIs.
Has anyone seen this before?

2

What VNC solution are you using? Guacamole? The noVNC portal resource from the exchange?

On the exchange resource I recently made some tweaks to add an arrow cursor that I can share if you need it.

3

Thanks for the reply.
I'm using the noVNC. Please share if you can

4

No guarantees with this as it's not fully tested in the field yet, but seemed to work in-house. I've upgraded noVNC to the latest v1.6.0 version also just in case any improvements there help.

Original Exchange Resource that was modified:

I've moved configuration/passwords for each connection from being parameters on the URL to extra entries in the hosts.json file and added an option to allow immediate control of the VNC connection.

Here's the help I put together for our in-house users:

  • Import the ICS-Modified-VNCPortal.zip file into your project

  • Modify the vnc/hosts.json file inside the Web Dev module in the designer as necessary to add names (called tokens in the scripting/URL) and the associated information for the VNC connection as follows:
    IP:VNCPort:Password:WebSocketPort:AllowControl:AllowCtrlAltDel

    • Follow the examples (the last 2 are boolean and must be 'true' all lowercase to be considered true)

  • Use the following URL to access the VNC connection in read-only mode
    http://<gateway-ip>:<gateway-port>/system/webdev/<project-name>/vnc/viewer?path=?token=<host-name>

  • Use the following URL to access the VNC connection in read-write mode with control enabled
    http://<gateway-ip>:<gateway-port>/system/webdev/<project-name>/vnc/viewer?path=?token=<host-name>&view_only=false&ctrl_now=true

  • Typically you'll use tag bindings to dynamically build out the URL inside a popup for the connection so that it works no matter what IP the client is using for access

  • Note: the WebSocketPort will be created on the fly and can't be the same port used by Ignition or any other software and must be open in the firewall to allow connections

  • Other URL parameters that can be appended to the end or the URL to make other changes:
    &cursor=arrow Use an arrow for a local cursor (Default)
    &cursor=dot Use a dot for a local cursor
    &cursor=none Don't show a local cursor
    &scale=true Scale VNC screen to fit browser window (Default)
    &scale=false Do not scale VNC screen to fit browser window
    &view_only=true VNC connection will be view only and not allow control (Default)
    &view_only=false VNC connection will allow control to be toggled between enabled and disabled with button
    &ctrl_now=false When view_only is true, will initially set connection to have control disabled (Default)
    &ctrl_now=true When view_only is true, will initially set connection to have control enabled

ICS-Modified-VNCPortal.zip (225.1 KB)