Turn Key DAS

[viSci]

I was dismayed when a large client announced they are abandoning their sizable investment in NI cDAQ HW to go with the Siemens LMS SCADAS system.   It got me wondering why NI does not offer something to compete with this type of Uber DAS system and software.  Certainly NI has the HW covered, although LMS has a better take on DAS HW with multi-functional inputs (voltage, current, PWM, etc).  I would love to hear your take on the subject... Just a side note that the systems I am talking about are fairly small < 32 channels, so it is not the large network based scalability of the LMS that is the selling point.  Rather it seems to be the desire to have full featured, fully integrated, off the shelf software supported by a larger company that is the draw.

Edited October 4, 2016 by viSci

[Tim_S]

The LMS SCADAS page looks to be only hardware. The connectors on the hardware are nice as not all of the C series cards have that (usually terminals or D-sub for the ones I use). There is mention of synchronizing with CAN and video; I've not tried that with cDAQ, so not sure how easy.

Up in the LMS Testing Solutions are some software screenshots, presumably software that works with the LMS SCADAS hardware. These look like pretty basic screens one would use for the applications. There is mention of a networked central data repository, but no indication of how to access the data. There's very little information quickly available.

I'm seeing a system that has a bunch of canned packages that you can use with it. If you live within the canned packages, then this will likely work well. It has a lot of features that make it attractive (immediately checking data via bluetooth, central data repository...). I expect the down sides to this system are the ability to step outside the confines of it and the cost. NI prices aren't cheap, so system cost may be comparable. At the same time, I've never seen Siemens give anything away that doesn't directly lead to buying more Siemens stuff.

[ShaunR]

Moves like that are almost never due to technical capabilities. They are either political or the sales engineer has worked hard for a long time and negotiated some enormous discounts and concessions to break NI lock-in. Have there been any changes to the decision-making management recently? Say. An ex Siemens employee?

[MarkCG]

On 10/4/2016 at 0:40 PM, viSci said:

I was dismayed when a large client announced they are abandoning their sizable investment in NI cDAQ HW to go with the Siemens LMS SCADAS system.   It got me wondering why NI does not offer something to compete with this type of Uber DAS system and software.  Certainly NI has the HW covered, although LMS has a better take on DAS HW with multi-functional inputs (voltage, current, PWM, etc).  I would love to hear your take on the subject... Just a side note that the systems I am talking about are fairly small < 32 channels, so it is not the large network based scalability of the LMS that is the selling point.  Rather it seems to be the desire to have full featured, fully integrated, off the shelf software supported by a larger company that is the draw.

 

I would bet that part of it is they see not hiring consultants to set up and write software for the system as a plus as well.