CHA-070WR - 7" Water-Resistant Human Machine Interface (HMI) Panel PC

ComfileHMI Panel PCs are WYSIWYG-based development platforms designed specifically for HMI projects. They provide flexible interfacing with a wide range of PLCs and microcontrollers, including CUBLOC, MOACON, FA-DUINO, MODPORT, and virtually any controller supporting Modbus communication.

Unlike conventional panel PC solutions, ComfileHMI supports Comfile Studio, a dedicated HMI design software. With an intuitive, presentation-style interface similar to creating slides in PowerPoint, users can easily design and build user interface screens without extensive coding. This significantly reduces development complexity and enables rapid project completion.

Comfile Studio and the ComfileHMI product family were first released in 2014 and have been continuously maintained with regular updates and improvements. As a result, the platform has achieved a high level of stability and reliability. Today, ComfileHMI is widely used as a UI solution by numerous companies and is actively supplied to markets worldwide.

Looking to develop a product with a professional user interface in a short time? ComfileHMI is a solution well worth considering.

• Supports Modbus RTU, ASCII, and TCP
• Water-resistant and open-frame models are available
• No branding on the hardware's front panel (logo-less)
• Supports TrueType fonts and Unicode for creating multilingual user interfaces
• Supports PNG, JPG, and BMP image files
• Water resistant front panel models support audio output (e.g. .wav files)
• microSD card support for additional memory (Included with purchase)

FAQ

Q: Why doesn’t ComfileHMI support as many PLC brands as other HMI vendors?

A: That’s because we are targeting a different market. HMI-focused vendors such as Pro-face aim to support as many PLC brands as possible. Those combinations are typically used in traditional factory automation, where flexibility across multiple PLC platforms is a key requirement.

ComfileHMI takes a different path. Rather than focusing on large-scale factory automation, our primary target is mass-produced, single-device products. In these applications, using a high-priced PLC is often unnecessary. Instead, manufacturers prefer cost-effective controllers such as CUBLOC, Arduino, or custom MCUs that are better suited for volume production.

For that reason, ComfileHMI is optimized to work seamlessly with these controllers, prioritizing simplicity, cost efficiency, and ease of integration over broad PLC brand coverage.

Q: Can HMIs from other vendors connect directly to an MCU?

A: In theory, yes—but in practice, it’s not that simple. HMIs from vendors like Allen-Bradley or Siemens are designed with factory automation in mind. Because of that, they expect the device on the other end to support the full Modbus function set.

What this really means is that your MCU has to implement every Modbus function the HMI might request. Only then can it properly respond to all HMI queries. For an MCU engineer, that’s a heavy and often unreasonable burden. ComfileHMI takes a very different approach. We introduced a concept called Simple Modbus.

Instead of requiring full Modbus compliance, Simple Modbus supports only the six essential functions needed for real-world HMI operation—primarily bit and word read/write operations. This dramatically reduces the amount of code required on the MCU side.

As a result, MCU development becomes much simpler, faster, and more reliable. To make things even easier, we also provide ready-to-use sample source code for MCUs.

Dimension