Rockwell Automation has officially listed the 4″, 6″, and 10″ models of the PanelView Component as “end of life.”
According to Rockwell’s website, the first model to see an end of manufacturing will be the 10″ unit, with a “last make” date of January 31st, 2016.
It will be followed by the PanelView Component 4″ and 6″ models on Jun 30th, 2016.
As for the rest of the PanelView Component line, the 2″ and 3″ models are still listed as “active” products.
A short history
The PanelView Component initially launched in 2008 as a low cost HMI for use with Rockwell’s MicroLogix PLCs.
The fact that it supported the MicroLogix meant it could also communicate with the SLC-500 and PLC-5, although it doesn’t appear Rockwell ever promoted that fact.
Initially the product also came with a suite of third party drivers, but future releases dropped support for all but Modbus, which is still supported to this day.
Early adopters of the platform had to contend with sluggish development software, with common operations like placing an object on a screen seeing delays of 2 to 3 seconds.
This lead to early updates being focused on increasing the responsiveness of the development software, and also resulted in the release of a dedicated offline developer.
But even after the slowness of the development software was addressed, is still took years for offline validation and a simplified project download mechanism to be added.
That, and the fact that the PanelView Component didn’t natively support CompactLogix, led many small HMI users to avoid this line in favor of the PanelView Plus Compact or third party HMI’s.
A logical replacement
The PanelView Component “end of life” announcement comes just a few months after the release of Rockwell’s new component HMI line, the PanelView 800.
The PanelView 800 is seen as the logical replacement to the above mentioned PanelView Component models since it has the ability to run the same projects, and programs with the same software, Connected Components Workbench (version 8.)
However, with more memory, a faster processor, and greatly improved display resolution, the PanelView 800 hardware performance has been greatly enhanced over the older PanelView Component.
For more information about the PanelView 800, see our previous article HERE.
I hope the above information about the “end of life” of select models of the PanelView Component was helpful.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to share them with us using the “post a comment or question” link below.
Until next time, Peace ✌️
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Shawn M Tierney
Technology Enthusiast & Content Creator
Eliminate commercials and gain access to my weekly full length hands-on, news, and Q&A sessions by becoming a member at The Automation Blog or on YouTube. You'll also find all of my affordable PLC, HMI, and SCADA courses at TheAutomationSchool.com.
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