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Operator screens, built from your PLC tag data.

HMI Forge is an AI-first, vendor-neutral builder for industrial HMIs. Bring an I/O list, a PLC export or a live device, design the screens by chat or on the canvas, and export a validated project to the platform your site already runs.

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Works with a cloud AI model, a local model, or the built-in assistant with no AI at all.

The HMI Forge editor. The design chat on the left lists the nine screens it built from 27 tags. The canvas shows a driller's console in the glass style: a large dual-needle gauge for hookload and weight on bit, dials for standpipe pressure, top drive torque, return flow and pit gain/loss with recent history inside each dial, two readout tiles, and an active alarm banner.
Screen
Driller's console, built from the 27-tag drilling sample
Mode
Try as operator, simulated values
Style
Glass
Checks
Ready to export

From tag list to running screen

Three steps. The third one is gated: nothing leaves HMI Forge until it passes validation.

  1. Bring the data

    Drop in the tag data you already have, or point HMI Forge at a device. Tags are grouped into equipment, and whether a tag can be written comes from the source system, not from a guess.

    • Excel and CSV I/O lists, Modbus maps
    • Rockwell Studio 5000 L5X
    • Siemens TIA Portal tag tables and DBs
    • OPC UA NodeSet2 files and live servers
    • Modbus TCP, HTTP JSON, MQTT, TCP and UDP devices

  2. Design by chat or on the canvas

    Ask for “a driller's console with big gauges for hookload and standpipe pressure”, or select widgets and say “make it digital”. Every change is a numbered revision you can revert in one click.

    • Cloud AI providers or a local model
    • A built-in assistant that needs no network
    • Snapping, alignment, copy and paste, undo
    • Components that bind a whole pump or tank at once

  3. Export, validated

    Bindings must point at real tags of a compatible type, write controls need writable tags and ranges, and navigation targets must exist. Errors block the export; warnings are listed for review.

    • Ignition Perspective 8.1 and 8.3
    • FUXA
    • Node-RED Dashboard 2.0
    • Standalone web HMI for a panel PC

Gauges that show whether it has been fine

The round dials, needles and limit colours operators trust, with the context they usually have to leave the screen to find.

Gauges in the glass style: a dual-needle hookload and weight-on-bit dial with segmented blue low and red high limits, a standpipe pressure dial zoomed five times around 3200 psi, a return flow dial and a gain/loss centre-zero dial with live history traces, an arc gauge for top drive torque, and readout tiles for ROP and active pit volume.
Glass style. The standpipe pressure dial is zoomed (×5) because the value is steady.

  • History in the gauge

    A live chart inside the dial or readout covers the last 30 seconds to an hour, with the min–max envelope and every excursion past a limit marked in the alarm colour.

  • Precision zoom

    The scale re-ranges 2 to 20 times finer around a steady value. Any alarm, bad data or fast change returns the full scale at once.

  • Console instruments

    Dual-needle dials for hookload with weight on bit, centre-zero dials for gain/loss, linear bars, compasses, stack lights and operating envelopes.

  • Bad data looks bad

    A silent or unreachable device shows #### in the comms colour, never a false zero.

Gauges in the console style with the detail panel open for standpipe pressure: 3193 psi, good quality, a 10-minute chart, min 3137, max 3223, change per minute, 100 percent within limits, and precision zoom set to when steady.
Console style, with the detail panel open on standpipe pressure.

Tap a gauge for the detail

The live value with quality and age, the active alarm, a larger chart, min, max, rate of change and the share of the window within limits. Operators can change the history window and zoom for that gauge. The panel never writes to the process.

Three styles, one project

High performance (ISA-101) by default: grey, with colour only for abnormal states. Console and glass styles for drilling and control-room consoles, set per project and overridable per widget.

Live data, and a runtime for the panel PC

Connect a device while you design, then run the screens on the machine next to the equipment.

The Import dialog on the Live device tab: protocol HTTP JSON, a gateway URL, a successful connection test that found 10 values, the raw JSON reply, and a table of signals with suggested names and units such as psi and percent, ready to add as 9 signals.
Connecting an HTTP JSON gateway. Units are read from key names such as pressure_psi.

  • Connect a device

    Choose the protocol, give the address and click Test connection. JSON becomes named signals. Modbus registers and binary frames are never guessed: you see candidate decodings and name the values you recognise.

  • Standalone web HMI

    A runtime for any PC, panel PC or Raspberry Pi, with Modbus TCP and OPC UA drivers and simulation built in. It ships with a Dockerfile, a sandboxed systemd unit and a Windows start-up task.

  • Honest about the connection

    The runtime reconnects with backoff and shows values as bad quality while a device is silent. It keeps an hour of per-second history for every gauge, so charts are complete when a screen opens, and every browser sees the same values and alarms.

  • Modbus TCP
  • HTTP (JSON)
  • MQTT
  • TCP stream
  • UDP datagrams
  • OPC UA

Writes are deliberate. Exports are checked.

The assistant can propose anything. Code decides what reaches a screen, and what reaches the process.

A validation gate on every export

Bindings must point at real tags of a compatible type, alarm limits must be in order and navigation targets must exist. Errors block the export.

Enforced invalidator and every exporter

Writes only through explicit controls

Buttons and setpoints go only on tags the PLC marks writable, with a min/max and a confirmation. In the runtime, writes stay off until an engineer enables them and sets an operator PIN; each request is checked for tag, value and range, rate-limited and audited.

Enforced invalidator and runtime

AI changes go through checked operations

Unknown tags are refused, write confirmation cannot be turned off, and PLC ranges and alarms cannot be changed. The model never sees PLC addresses, and every change is a revision you can revert.

Enforced indesign chat

Nothing generated runs as code

Screens are declarative and exporters emit fixed, reviewed templates. Bool commands pulse, so a stuck client cannot latch an output.

Enforced inexporters and runtime

Interlocks and permissives belong in the PLC. A generated HMI is not a safety system.

Export to the platform the site already runs

One neutral project, four targets. Each export includes its import steps and a manifest with SHA-256 checksums.

Ignition Perspective

8.1 and 8.3

A Perspective project and a Tag Browser import. No scripts anywhere.

FUXA

Open-source web HMI

One project file to open in the FUXA editor, with devices, screens and alarms.

Node-RED

Dashboard 2.0

One flows.json with dashboard pages and the Modbus or OPC UA nodes.

Standalone web HMI

PC, panel PC, Raspberry Pi

Server and operator UI with no npm dependencies, unless the project uses OPC UA.

Any model, or none

Cloud providers such as Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, GroqCloud and Mistral; local models through Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM or llama.cpp; or the built-in assistant, which needs no network and suits sites where cloud AI is not allowed.

A shared library for the team

Components saved to the library are available to every project on the server. They hold layout and slot names only, never tag names or PLC addresses.

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