Tech Tip: C-more EA9 vs C-more EA7 - What's the difference? - from AutomationDirect

the original c-more touch screens have been an industry staple for the better part of the last decade and for good reason they're a tremendous value they're reliable durable full-featured and have some of the best pricing in the industry so why change it well because they're using 10 year old technology and we saw an opportunity to give you more powerful features for less money that makes the new ea 9 series c-more is an even greater value for you and while for all practical purposes the two panels are essentially the same animal that do the same job in the same physical space the devil is in the details so in this video we're going to walk through those details so you understand exactly what the difference is and then you too will be able to see more here we go this chart is a side-by-side comparison of all six c-more sizes the reduced-cost six-inch screen and the regular six-inch eight-inch ten inch twelve inch and fifteen inch panels each size has the original ea7 series panels in the left column and the new ea9 panels in the right column green boxes highlight the things that the new c-more has that the original c-more doesn't blue boxes highlight the things that the original seymours have but the new one doesn't if you see both blue and green then the old panel had it but the new panel didn't need it so it's actually a good thing it went away no color on a line means no change they're the same let's zoom in and take this one feature at a time the 800 by 600 resolution of the 12 and 15 inch panels is now available on the 8 and 10 inch panels both panels fit the exact same hole in your enclosure so you can easily drop the new one in place with no changes to the mounting surface the new c-more does have a slightly smaller footprint you can see the difference between the old and the new seymours if i hold this bezel from an 8-inch ea7 seymour up against a new 8-inch ea-9 seymour it's different for each panel but on average it's about an inch smaller in each direction the one exception is the 6-inch panels their bezels are not exactly the same but they're pretty close of course the drawings with the exact dimensions for all these are available for free at the automationdirect.com website you can also see the subtle design changes between the two here the new c-more has a little more updated and sharper look to it the new c-morse housings are made from a single piece of plastic now and because the plastics have evolved so much over the last 10 years there's no need to have replaceable bezels anymore so the new c-more has a more rigid and solid feel to it the new ea-9 series c-more has a removable label on the front panel now so you can customize the display with your logo or even give it a name or serial number just pull the automationdirect label out and insert your own each unit comes with one additional label that's reversible black on one side white on the other and you can even get a 10 pack of blank labels to use as you please the new panels have a power led and a user programmable led the user led can change colors between red green and amber and if you enable blank you can even change the off color so now you can blink between any combination of colors the new c-mores come with permanent led backlighting no more taking the unit apart to replace the cold cathode fluorescent lamps and since the ccfl power supply is gone you no longer have to worry about heat dissipation when mounting the seymour the original units had to be mounted vertically to ensure proper ventilation the new ea-9 panels can be mounted at just about any angle the processor speed is doubled across the board and is no longer a speed penalty for the reduced cost c-more it's just as fast as all the others now all the new panels have a lot more flash memory the larger panels are double the flash memory and the smaller panels are quadrupled to flash memory the beauty of that is now you don't have to worry about the flash memory size as you change panel sizes they're all the same now which makes changing panel sizes that much easier all of the sd ram has been quadrupled across the board and the retentive memory has been doubled on all panels and the retentive memory is now magneto resistive so you don't need a battery to keep retentive data and that's one less thing you don't have to worry about replacing in the future the new ea9 c-mores do have a super cap that will keep the clock running for about 30 days that way you can set up the pin on one shop and then ship it to another for the install and not have to full with resetting the clock and of course since the new panel doesn't have a battery there's no system tag associated with the battery in the ea 9 software project memory has more than doubled and the calendar function is the same let's scroll this chart up a bit so we can see the rest of it the usb ports have been updated to version 2.0 for fast usb transfers and the ethernet port is still 10 100 but now it's auto detected you no longer need to worry about whether you need a crossover cable or not the reduced cost 6 inch panel still doesn't have ethernet of course all of the new panels support a mouse plugged into the usb port and all of the regular panels now have three serial ports standard the comcon3 serial port adapter that brings the 15 pin dsub signals out to a six pin terminal block so you can wire up the 422 and 45 signals doesn't work with all the ea9 panels because of the orientation of the d-sub connector on that adapter the good news is there's a new version of that adapter the ea com con 3a it does work with all the new ea9 c-mores and it's half the price the original c-mores relied on compact flash memory for external storage the new panels use sd cards and the two larger panels have two sd card slots and while the original reduced cost c-more didn't have any external memory the new reduced cost version does if you try to downsize from a larger panel to a smaller one that only has one sd slot the software will automatically remind you to change your project from sd2 to sd1 if you are using that second card slot on the larger panels of course since the new panels don't use compact flash there's no need for the module that added an extra compact flash slot the two largest c-mores now have an hdmi output so now you can connect the c-more to a big-screen tv for really large displays that everyone can see the new ea-9c more runs on either 24 volts or 12 volt dc and the same ac adapter works with the new c-more 2 and even though these new panels have a lot more features the total power consumption is about the same again check the data sheets for the exact numbers but they're very close both the original and the new seymours are ul and cul and now that cul is recognized and accepted by canada there's no need for the c-more to do the redundant csa testing the new c-mores come with a library of a thousand additional graphics so you can go crazy with your displays it's important to understand that while the software for the ea7 and the ea 9 have the same functionality and look exactly the same they run on completely different processors which means the ea7 software doesn't talk to the ea9 panels and the ea 9 software doesn't talk to the ea7 panels the good news is if you already own a license key for the original ea7 software that key code will work with the new ea 9 software just download the software from the automationdirect website and use your ea7 license code when you install it to get a free copy of the new ea 9 software so to get this project over here you need to read the project into the ea7 software then open that in the ea 9 software which you would then use to transfer the project to the new panel the ea 9 software opens the ea7 project just like any other it automatically makes any necessary conversions and issues any warnings or reminders that you need to be aware of easy both user manuals are available for download at the automationdirect.com website you can go download those right now the original ea7 series has the ability to import easy touch panel projects for panels that were purchased from automationdirect using the easy touch edit software version 3.1 a the ea 9 doesn't need to support that because it can read ea 7 projects just bring the easy touch project into the ea7 software and save it as an ea7 project then open the ea7 project in the ea 9 software and you're good to go both the original ea7 and new ea9 panels have microphone in and audio output jacks the new c-more panels don't have a monochrome option that was originally done to save money but since the price point of the new color panels is the same as the old monochrome panels well there's no point right which brings us to the price you get all of these new features shown in green in this chart with the new c-mores but at a lower price than the original panels that's right a lower price so at the end of the day the new seymour ea9 series panels do the same job they fit the same cutout and they support the old ea7 projects but offer a lot more powerful features at a lower price it's a complete no-brainer and given all of these new hardware features shown in green you can expect to see some exciting new software updates to take advantage of those upgrades so stay tuned for that of course the old ea7 panels won't be able to take advantage of the new software updates so if you want to be forward thinking the new ea 9 series c-more is your best bet oh and don't forget automationdirect's award-winning and user-friendly tech support is free please don't hesitate to contact them during regular business hours they'll be happy to help you out and check out the forums too that's another great place to get support from users like yourself just don't post any questions for support there there's no guarantee you'll get a response you can find out more about the new seymour hmis at the automationdirect.com web store under operator interfaces see more touch panels just look for the ea 9 and the part number and take a look at the accessories things like these protective covers are really inexpensive insurance that can prolong the life of your touch screen well now you should have a pretty good feel for the differences between the old ea7 series c-more and the new ea-9 series c-more and now you too can see more with automation direct