SCADA to scale: Making mobility legible

InduSoft study notes data readability is an issue when dealing with hand-held devices

February 20, 2014

Making SCADA data available in mobile formats is one part gathering data and one part displaying it to supervisors. With the emergence tablets and smartphones in two different format languages, the challenge sometimes is not whether the data is valuable, but whether it is legible.

A new white paper from SCADA provider InduSoft notes that such issues can get overlooked. “Incorrectly sized screens also make remote access cumbersome as excessive scrolling is often required to view text and graphics information,” the report notes.

The increased use of apps vs. the traditional browser displays can help optimize the data for portable use, but the InduSoft report that it’s not a one-app-fits-all concept. “Care must be taken when designing browser-based remote access from SCADA servers, as information must be presented in a format consistent with the hardware limitations of the platform,” the report states. The report also states the issue of Android vs. Apple is being overcome as more developers use the open-system HTML5 format to write SCADA programs.