Hey there! If you’re a plant manager, automation engineer, or even just someone who’s messed around with HMI panels long enough to know how important data is, you’ve definitely wondered this at least once: Can B&R HMI store historical data? And as someone who’s been selling B&R HMI hardware, software, and support for coming up on 8 years, I get asked this all the time—usually right after “Why is my current HMI dropping logs when I need them most?” Let’s cut through the confusion, skip the jargon, and walk through exactly what B&R’s HMI line can do, how it works, and why it’s way more reliable than a lot of the cheap off-brand HMIs that end up causing headaches later. B&R HMI & Human-Machine Interface
First, let’s get one thing straight: A lot of people mix up “HMI” with just the touchscreen box you tap to start a machine. But B&R’s HMIs aren’t that basic—they’re part of their Automation Studio ecosystem, which is a whole suite of tools that ties HMIs, PLCs, motion controllers, and even IoT gateways together. So when we talk about historical data storage here, we’re not just talking about saving a dozen temperature readings over an hour; we’re talking about logging everything from conveyor speed to motor current to alarm triggers, and keeping it long enough to actually use it when you need it.
The short answer first, for anyone who hates reading long paragraphs: Yes, B&R HMIs absolutely can store historical data. No, it’s not some fancy add-on you have to pay an arm and a leg for (okay, some storage options cost a little extra, but nothing like competitors). Now, let’s dive into the real stuff—how it works, what it can hold, and the gotchas that most people don’t know about until their machine goes down.
First, let’s talk about the two main ways B&R HMIs store historical data, because that’s where most of the confusion comes from. A lot of newer customers think the HMI itself has a tiny built-in drive, and that’s it. But B&R actually splits it into local storage on the HMI panel itself, and then networked storage if you hook it up to a PLC or an external server. That’s a big difference, especially for people who have old factories with spotty Wi-Fi or no Ethernet at all.
Local storage on B&R HMIs: The base models—like the Power Panel 300, which is our best-seller for small to mid-sized lines—come with anywhere from 2GB to 16GB of built-in flash storage. Wait, flash storage, not that slow HDD garbage from 10 years ago—so it doesn’t lag if you’re writing data every second. For most small operations, that’s more than enough. Let’s do the math: If you’re logging 100 tags (like temperature, pressure, run time) at 1-second intervals, that’s about 3.6 million readings a day. Each reading is maybe 100 bytes max, so that’s 360MB a day. 16GB would hold that for over 44 days. That’s way more than you need for most troubleshooting runs—if your machine breaks down, you don’t need data from 2 months ago, you need it from 2 weeks back. But if you’re doing compliance for FDA or ISO, that local storage lets you go way further if you need to.
But wait, if you’re running a big factory with 50 machines, that’s 50 HMIs each logging data locally, and then you have to pull a USB stick from each one to get logs? That’s a nightmare. That’s where the other option comes in: networked storage via B&R’s PLC or Automation Studio. B&R’s PLCs—like the X20 series, which we swear by—can act as a central data hub. You can configure the HMI to send all its historical data to the PLC, which can have a way bigger hard drive (we can hook PLCs up to 1TB or even more storage) or send it straight to an MQTT server or even a cloud platform like Azure or AWS. That means you can have all your machine data in one place, no more running around with USB sticks, and you can pull logs from any machine from your office. I had a customer last year who was troubleshooting a packaging line breakdown at 2 a.m.—he just pulled up the cloud portal on his phone, looked at the historical pressure data, and realized a seal was failing, no need to wait for the on-site tech to bring a USB stick. That’s the stuff that saves you thousands in downtime.
Now, here’s the part that most customers don’t ask about, but is the difference between “this works when I need it” and “this data is useless”: how the historical data is structured. B&R uses something called Data Logging in Automation Studio, and it’s way more flexible than most competitors’ basic log functions. You don’t just have to log every second of every tag—you can set triggers. Like, only log motor current when it spikes, or only log alarm events. That cuts down on storage so you can keep data for months, even years, without filling up your drive. A lot of cheap HMIs force you to log every single thing, so you fill up your 2GB drive in 3 days and then it overwrites old data before you even need it. B&R lets you customize that—say you want detailed 1-second data for alarms, but hourly averages for run time, that’s easy to set up. No coding required, just drag and drop in Automation Studio, which is why we get so many engineers switching from other brands.
Wait, but can you actually retrieve that data? Like, it’s no good storing it if you can’t get it back when you need it. B&R’s HMI software (we use Panel View or the newer Automation Runtime) lets you pull historical data right on the HMI itself. You can filter by date, time, tag, or event—like “show all high temperature alarms from last week on Line 3”. You can export it to a CSV file in 2 clicks, no special software needed, so you can open it in Excel for troubleshooting or compliance. I had a food and beverage customer recently who needed to show FDA that their pasteurizer was running at the right temperature every shift—she pulled the historical data from the HMI, exported it to CSV, and had it ready for the inspector in 10 minutes. The old system they had before took 3 days to pull the same data. That’s the real value here, not just storing data, but using it.
Now, let’s talk about common myths, because we hear these all the time from people who are shopping around. First myth: “B&R HMI can only store data on their own servers.” No, that’s not true. You can use external USB drives, SD cards, any networked storage, even third-party cloud platforms. We’ve set up systems where B&R HMIs send data to Google Cloud for a customer in the logistics space, and it works just as well as their own systems. Second myth: “It’s too complicated to set up historical data logging.” Yeah, if you use a random HMI brand you found on Amazon, it’s a pain. But B&R’s Automation Studio has pre-built data logging templates. You just select the tags you want to log, set the interval or triggers, and hit apply. We usually train our customers in an hour, max, on how to set it up. Third myth: “Local storage is insecure.” No, B&R’s flash storage is encrypted, so if someone steals the HMI panel, they can’t just pull the data off. That’s a big deal for customers handling sensitive data—like pharmaceutical or automotive parts.
Wait, but what about when you need more storage? Let’s say you’re a big manufacturing plant with 100 machines, and you need to store data for 2 years for compliance. B&R lets you scale as much as you need. You can add external storage to the PLC, hook up a dedicated server, or use cloud storage that costs pennies a day for that much space. We had an automotive supplier last year who needed to store 100,000 tags per machine, and they ended up using a central server with 4TB of storage, which cost way less than we quoted them for a competitor’s proprietary system.
Now, let’s get real about the small stuff that trips people up. For example, if the HMI loses power, does it lose historical data? No, because it’s stored on non-volatile flash memory, not RAM. That’s another big win over older HMIs that stored data in RAM, so a power outage meant losing weeks of logs. B&R’s HMIs even have a power fail backup—they’ll write the last bit of data before power cuts out, so you don’t miss a log when the lights go out. Another thing: if you swap out an HMI panel, you can just pull the storage module out of the old one and put it in the new one, or load the historical data from the PLC. No more losing data when you replace a broken HMI, which is a huge pain point for a lot of our customers.
I know this all sounds like sales talk, but let’s be honest—we’ve all been there. You’re in the middle of a machine breakdown, the tech is panicking, and you’re trying to find the data that will tell you what went wrong, and your old HMI can’t pull it up because it overwrote it 2 days ago, or you have to go find a USB stick that got lost in a toolbox. B&R’s HMIs eliminate that. We’ve had customers cut downtime by 30% just by switching to B&R and setting up proper historical data logging. That’s not a number we pulled out of thin air—we track that for all our customers, and that’s the average.
But here’s the thing: every operation is different. A small bakery with one mixing machine doesn’t need the same storage as a big automotive plant with 50 welding lines. That’s why we don’t sell a one-size-fits-all system. If you’re not sure what you need, we can help you size it. For a small operation, the base Power Panel 300 with 8GB of local storage is more than enough, and we can set it up so you can pull logs via USB or email them to you automatically. For bigger operations, we can set up a central PLC hub with cloud access so you can monitor all machines from anywhere.
If you’re reading this because you’re tired of your current HMI losing historical data, or you’re planning a new line and want to get data logging right from the start, don’t waste time with brands that charge you extra for this basic feature, or make it way more complicated than it needs to be. B&R’s HMI systems are built for real factories, not just lab tests. The historical data storage is reliable, flexible, and actually useful, not just a box to check for compliance.
BECKHOFF If you want to talk through what you need—whether it’s a small system for your single machine, or a big network for your whole plant—reach out to us. We don’t do pushy sales pitches, we just help you get the right setup so you never have to panic about losing data when you need it most.
References
- B&R Industrial Automation. (2023). Automation Studio HMI: Data Logging Capabilities. B&R Technical Documentation.
- International Society of Automation (ISA). (2022). Guide to Historical Data Storage for Industrial Automation. ISA Press.
- B&R Industrial Automation. (2024). Power Panel Series: Local Storage Specifications. B&R Product Datasheets.
- MQTT Protocol Specification. (2021). OASIS Standard for Industrial IoT Data Transfer.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (2023). 21 CFR Part 11: Electronic Records and Signatures Compliance Guidelines.
Yuntengbao Automation (Xiamen) Co., Ltd.
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