Design of a SCADA Graphical User

Interface for an industrial process

1Vighnesh Chodankar
1Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Goa College of Engineering
1vighneshchodankar@yahoo.in

Abstract: Nowadays, Automation is the need of the hour in almost every industry. Automation
reduces the amount of manual intervention on the industrial processes. A remote monitoring of
the industrial processes is also carried out in most of the industries in order to get a complete
view of the industrial process from the comfort of a control room; popularly known as SCADA.
SCADA refers to Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition. In this paper, SCADA system for a
wagon loading operation carried out in cement industry is designed. The SCADA Graphical User
Interface (GUI) is designed using Autohotkey automation software. The validity of the graphical
user interface is obtained by interfacing appropriate system controller; usually a programmable
logic controller to the designed SCADA.
Keywords: SCADA, Autohotkey, gui, PLC.
1. Introduction
Traditionally in large manufacturing industries like cement, fertilizer, sugar producing industries; all the
processes are monitored and controlled by operator assistance and human labour intervention. This
results in employing a huge amount of manual labour in such industries. Thus, automating the process
monitoring and control operation is the need in such large manufacturing industries. Automation; in
simpler terms means use of machinery which is used to do any work on its own without the help of human
beings. Process monitoring in industries is usually achieved through design of a SCADA system. SCADA,
which refers to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, is trending nowadays in almost every industry.
SCADA systems provide real time information about the industrial process identifies any errors/faults in
the process operation and takes corrective measures through assistance before the system could
become a failure. Thus, SCADA system makes the process operation favorable and optimal. SCADA
systems have made considerable progress in industrial field in terms of performance, optimization and
scalability. In this paper, a SCADA system is designed and developed for a remote monitoring of the
industrial wagon loading operation. The system is implemented based on interfacing with a remote
controller (Programmable Logic controller).
2. SCADA system
A typical SCADA system usually consists of remote devices such as Programmable logic controller,
RTUs, sensors, etc which are located in the field and a central supervising computer located at the main
central site where all processing is carried out. A SCADA system gathers information through data
acquisition, such as where a fault or error on a pipeline has occurred, transfers the information back to a
central site, alerting the home station that the fault has occurred, carrying out necessary analysis and
control, such as determining if the fault is critical, and displaying the information in a logical and organized
fashion on operator screens. The communication between the remote located devices and the central
supervisory computer is carried out by open standards and protocols. One of the commonly employed
open standard protocol in industries is Modbus protocol.

In earlier days, relay logic was used to acquire the data from the field sensors. This data could be either
in analog or digital form. With the advent of microprocessors and microcontrollers, manufacturers
combined relay logic circuits with microprocessors to form a programmable logic controller which is widely
used nowadays. As the technology and needs grew, PLCs were replaced by distributed networks known
as distributed control systems.

Fig.1 A typical SCADA architecture

Figure 1 illustrates the 3 layer SCADA architecture. It consists of 3 layers viz. supervisory control layer,
process control layer and field instrumentation control layer.
I.

II.

III.

Field instrumentation control layer: This layer is situated at the industrial process area or
manufacturing site where all the field devices are located. The field devices usually include
sensors, actuators, transducers, etc. The field devices perform the tasks and actions
depending on the data obtained from the supervision layer.
Process control layer: This layer consists of remote terminal unit such as programmable
logic controllers (PLCs). The PLCs obtain data from the sensors located at field
instrumentation layer and carry out appropriate control actions. The data obtained can be
either analog or digital. Thus there is analog to digital conversion carried out since PLC
operates only with binary data. PLC also contain analog and digital modules inside it, the
number varies depending upon the application. Typical analog input module has 4, 8, 12, 32
inputs. The analog inputs are converted into digital values by analog to digital conversion and
sampling process. All processing and operations are carried out on this digital data and
converted back to analog representations, which is sent back to field devices like actuators
through output module. The analog output module has 4, 8, 12, 32 outputs. Digital input and
output modules are used in counting current or voltage pulses in order to give status or an
alarm signal. Digital modules can only identify binary values, i.e. 1 or 0, closed or open [1].
Supervisory control layer: This is the layer where main central computer is located. This is
also called Master station. The data from the PLC is transferred to this layer where all
monitoring and control actions are performed. The control actions are then transferred to the
field devices via PLC. There can be one or many master stations connected together via a
field bus or Ethernet. The entire SCADA network is connected through computer bus
architecture such as Profibus or fieldbus.

3. Communication in a SCADA system

The PLCs, RTUs, sensors, actuators communicate with each other as well as to the master station using
RS 232/484 standard, microwave, radio, satellite, Ethernet, X.25 packet protocol etc. Most of the
automation industries use modbus protocol for data transmission and communication as it is the most
widely used industrial standard protocol. Modbus is a serial communication protocol which is simple, easy
to maintain and can be used for wide industrial applications.[1]

4. System layout and software method used

In this paper, an industrial wagon loading process is taken as an example where cement bags are loaded
inside the wagon and a SCADA remote monitoring system for the same is designed. A conveyor belt is
used for transferring the packed cement bags from the bagging discharge unit towards the railway wagon.
The bagging discharge unit is interfaced with the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt has two sections. One
section is fixed and non rotatable. The other section can be rotated through 180 degrees inside the
closed type of railway wagon. The entire operation of wagon loading and cement bag stacking is
dependent on the PLC control. Thus, the entire operation of loading the railway wagon is carried out by
the conveyor belt mechanism. No human assistance is required in this loading process. In this paper, a
SCADA system is designed for this loading and stacking process.
The automation software tool used for designing the SCADA system is Autohotkey. This software is
widely used in practical and industrial SCADA applications. The software is very easy to use and freely
available. AutoHotkey (AHK) is free, open-source macro-creation and automation software for windows
that allows users to automate repetitive tasks. It is driven by a scripting language that was initially aimed
at providing keyboard shortcuts, otherwise known as hotkeys that over time evolved into a full-edged
scripting language. Autohotkey is a very good tool to create lightweight application and to automate tasks.
Any script can be converted into executable file that can be run on computer which does not have
autohotkey installed in it.
5. SCADA design and results
SCADA graphical user interface (GUI) is designed using the above explained autohotkey software so that
user gets an interface to the wagon loading operation from the comfort of a control room. The user can
view, edit, and make changes to the system operation from a distant location sitting in one control room.
Thus, there is no need of any manual intervention on the system operation if a suitable SCADA system is
designed. To create a SCADA GUI, we first open autohotkey software and create a new autohotkey script
file by saving it with .ahk extension. To write the gui code, we open the saved autohotkey file with
notepad and write the gui code in it. After running the gui code, the gui gets displayed on the computer
screen.
The main part used in the field instrumentation layer is the Programmable Logic Controller. The selection
of PLC depends on the number of inputs and outputs available in the field. Usually most widely,
Schneider PLC is used in industrial SCADA applications. In this paper, a prototype of the PLC used in
wagon loading system is assumed and SCADA system for it is designed. This work aimed to
communicate the PLC to SCADA PC using RS 232 serial communication.

PLC I/Os

Table 1 PLC I/O connections

Prototype Component

I/Ps

Conveyor belt proximity sensors

O/Ps

Conveyor belt Motors

The Table 1 and 2 shows the PLC input-output connections and process status description on the
SCADA screen respectively. The SCADA screens for conveyor loading system and stacking system is
shown in the figure 2 and 3 respectively. For conveyor loading system shown in figure 2, the conveyor
belt is represented by boxes with colours red and green. Each box is interpreted as a conveyor module
containing the bag at that location on the conveyor belt. The red colour on the box indicates that a bag is
not placed on that module of the conveyor. The green coloured box indicates that the bag is placed on
that module.
Table 2 Process Status
Sr. No
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Status Description
Motors ON/OFF
Proximity sensors
Completely stacked
Unstacked
Stacking incomplete

SCADA Indication
Green/Red
Green/Red
Green
Red
Yellow

The system status, the logical step status and the alarms are displayed on top of every screen. The
control panel is also shown on top of every screen. The control panel includes the START, STOP,
PAUSE, RESET, RESUME buttons. The real time and date also gets synchronized after running the
SCADA gui program.

The fig. 3 shows the stacking system of the project. The figure shows the representation of the wagon
having two doors. Each box in the figure represents how the cement bags are placed inside the wagon in
a particular stacking pattern. Each red box indicates that no bag is placed at that location inside the
wagon. A green box indicates that the bags are completely stacked at that location inside the wagon. A
yellow box indicates that some bags are stacked at that position and are yet to be completely stacked. A
number indicating how many bags are stacked at that location is shown on the box. The number varies
depending on the number of bags stacked at that position inside the wagon.

Fig. 2 Conveyor loading system

Fig. 3 stacking system

6. Future work
The paper was focused on the need for remote monitoring of the industrial wagon loading process and
designing a suitable SCADA system for the same. Appropriate PLC code can be written, simulated and
interfaced to the designed SCADA gui to show the feasibility and working of this approach. Furthermore,
a SCADA database can be created to facilitate data recording, storage and archival of the daily, weekly or
monthly records of the wagon loading details.

7. References
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