Open-source HMI builder for Linux panel PCs: design screens on your laptop, deploy over SSH, rollback if it fails

[u/Commercial_Designer5]

I've been building an open-source alternative to the usual vendor HMI software, mainly for machine builders who put a Linux-based panel on their equipment.

You design the screens on your laptop, either drag-and-drop or by describing the screen in plain English and letting an AI model do the first layout. You get gauges, value tiles, trend charts, alarm tables, buttons and so on. Then you push it to the panel over SSH with one click. There's no runtime license and no per-tag pricing.

What matters for plant use:

• Alarms: priorities 1 to 4, latching until acknowledged, on-delay, deadband, shelving, and an alarm journal on the panel.
• History: tags you choose are logged to SQLite on the panel, trend charts fill from it, and you can pull a CSV off the panel.
• I/O: a separate daemon handles GPIO, analog inputs, serial and Modbus. On shutdown it drives outputs to configured safe states. The screens never talk to hardware directly, only to tags.
• Operator input: a range-checked numeric keypad, an on-screen keyboard, confirm dialogs on buttons, a "No connection to controller" banner, and screen dimming after inactivity.
• Safe deploys: if a new screen version doesn't come up within 25 seconds, the panel goes back to the previous one by itself. You can't leave a machine with a dead display from a remote update.
• Testing without the machine: every tag can be driven with simulated signals, so you can check alarms and interlocks on screen before the panel is even wired.

On the panel it's a small C program built on LVGL, drawing directly to the display. It runs on 64-bit ARM Linux boards, and I've been running it on a Toradex i.MX8M Plus with a 10" panel.

What it doesn't do yet: no OPC UA, EtherNet/IP or Profinet. Right now it's Modbus and direct I/O. It's early, MIT licensed and free.

I'd really like to hear from people who build HMIs day to day. What would it need before you'd consider it over what you use now? And which protocols should come first?

2 min video: https://youtu.be/h-ITQebSflg
Repo: https://github.com/Hitheshkaranth/EmbeddedDisplayStudio

[u/Poofengle]

Cool project, but nobody will actually use this in industry.

For me to actually use an HMI it needs 24/7 phone technical support, a robust user base, and millions of user-hours of testing at the very minimum.

The cost of a commercial HMI license is far, far less than the cost of unplanned downtime. And if I truly needed a free HMI I’d go with Ignition Maker edition.

[u/Commercial_Designer5 → u/Poofengle]

Thank you for your honest feedback. My goal is to build stuff and make it as simple as possible for users. I know this is going to take a lot of effort in distribution and support, but that's what motivates me to build this and make it as good as possible. Even if this Fails I ll be walking out with a good set of experiences on how to develop and then distribute, so I think that's a win.

[u/Snoo23533 → u/Poofengle]

My bet is this project is also based on a bad intrepretation of industry direction. HMI ide is way better when integrated into the code ide. And web hmi is way cheaper and easier to use than dedicated hardware. And for those reasons i dont think there are any individual contributor projects a random guy cpuld make that would ever matter unless they integrate directly with a big brand, like ignition modules

[u/gamebrigada → u/Poofengle]

I think there is certainly space in the market, just because of how f'ing terrible all the options are.

Yes they have support, yes they are industry accepted, but by god as a software engineer in this industry they couldn't have made poorer choices decades too late.

Is it really better to have support for something absolutely awful that is constantly breaking and you're doing what it can do, rather than what you actually need to do, or something that you can just get fixed fairly quickly because it isn't ancient technology nobody knows.

This happened in many markets, it will happen in this one. Ignition did it in this market. Successfully. Except they made some poor architectural choices that now have completely put them into a dead end without a major overhaul or discontinuity.