HMI Management System

HELIO is available as an app for KEB's open automation platform "NOA". NOA is a toolbox that enables you to offer your customers new services, avoid downtime, plan maintenance and make processes more efficient – opening up additional opportunities for your business. As a platform, NOA offers the possibility to design your own automation solutions based on open systems. In addition to hardware and software products from KEB, the concept can be easily expanded – through the user's own expertise or the integration of third-party providers. This means that basic elements can be easily supplemented with knowledge from specialised companies. In combination with the appropriate control technology, drive controllers, motors and brakes, smart and powerful system solutions for plant and machine construction are created – all from a single source.

Develop HMIs particularly close to the machine by accessing live data from your machine when editing an HMI. The advantage: instead of a static image, you see the real HMI of your application. Editing is particularly efficient, as no compile steps are necessary between the editor and the finished HMI. This paves the way for rapid prototyping on the target hardware with real machine data. The duration of product development is significantly reduced thanks to the quick and easy options for testing new ideas.

With HELIO, the motto is: configuring instead of programming. You hardly need any programming knowledge to develop HMIs with HELIO. Thanks to its no-code approach, HELIO also allows team members such as project managers and UX designers to customise the HMIs. Overall, this reduces training and handover times and, as a result, costs for machine manufacturers. Industrial machines are often developed for highly specialised applications in small to medium quantities. This requires a high degree of flexibility for different systems and customer requirements. In this case, it makes sense to implement adjustments through configuration rather than code for faster implementation.

Industrial HMIs will have to be particularly flexible in the future – for a variety of reasons. For example, suppliers of control panels may change, larger displays may become available, or customers may want mobile solutions that allow shift supervisors to monitor machines remotely via tablet. The responsive design of modern HMIs is based on the principles of contemporary web architecture: the user interface automatically adapts to the respective end device. Whether desktop monitor, tablet or smartphone – HMIs developed with HELIO dynamically scale their display to the respective screen size. A separate layout for each device is not necessary.

HELIO is web-based and can therefore work across platforms on any device that runs a browser. Whether Windows, Linux, Android, Mac or Docker. This gives you maximum independence from the hardware or software you use. User interfaces are future-proof, because replacing hardware such as displays, computers or machine components has no impact on usability. The system supports input methods such as mouse, keyboard and touch – offering complete flexibility in operation. The result is a high level of resilience to changing hardware or software requirements, which is one of HELIO's most impressive features. In addition, other web applications, for example from third-party manufacturers, can be integrated quickly and easily, and the use of JavaScript/TypeScript with React provides everything you need for fast, modular UI development.

If you want to utilise the full potential of your machine, professional UX design is essential. This is because user interfaces that focus on users and usability are significantly more efficient. That is why HELIO is equipped with intelligent UX components to ensure the best possible user experience.

Ensuring a consistent user experience across different departments and teams is a challenge. This is because needs, requirements and technical conditions can vary greatly. With HELIO, the integrated design system allows you to create a uniform user interface that can be rolled out to all machines and systems in your company. This makes it quicker than ever to find your way around all HMIs and reduces training times.

Connecting and modelling data is particularly easy in the NOA environment: a "NOA Connection" establishes a connection to all data on the NOA system bus with a single click. In addition, connections can be easily established via OPC UA and MQTT.