Ganter Lab and Ignition

What Ganter Lab is

• It runs on your own machineA desktop application you install on the station. Devices, dashboards, history and users live there, and your process data never has to leave the building.
• Devices are set up in formsNative drivers for Modbus, OPC UA, S7, Rockwell, BACnet and more. Address a tag, scale it into engineering units, and an embedded OPC UA server publishes the result to whoever needs it.
• Dashboards, logic and records in one appScreens are assembled by dragging. Variables, actions, triggers and alarms are written in plain JavaScript. Every run records itself, and becomes an export or a report carrying your logo.
• One license per station, nothing lockedEvery feature works without a license: the runtime pauses on a timer until you restart it. A station license removes that limit. No tiers, no modules to add.

What Ignition is

Only what is public and slow to change is written here: what the product is for, how it is licensed and where it runs. Features and prices move on their own, so confirm the current ones with its vendor.

• It is a server platform from Inductive Automation: a gateway runs on a server, on the plant network or in the cloud, and operator clients are launched from it.
• It is licensed per server rather than by counting tags or clients, and capability beyond the core is bought as modules.
• It is aimed at plant wide and enterprise systems and is built to be extended: Python scripting, SQL databases underneath and a large network of integrators around it.

Where Ignition is the better choice

• One system for a whole site, or severalA central gateway serving many clients, with redundancy and enterprise features above it, is exactly the shape it was designed for.
• The screens are going to multiplyWhen dozens of operator clients and a tag count nobody wants to audit are in the plan, licensing that counts neither of them is hard to argue with.
• You are building a platform, not a screenModules, scripting and a database underneath make it something to develop on, up to manufacturing execution and enterprise reporting.
• You want a large integrator marketMany companies, courses and a community already build on it, and being able to hire that experience is an argument of its own.

Where Ganter Lab is the better choice

• There is no server to stand upInstall it on the station and it runs. Remote browser sessions are a switch you turn on when you want them, not the architecture you start from.
• A whole application without developmentDevices, screens, logic, alarms, users and reports are configured in the interface: no project to deploy, and no gateway to administer or keep alive.
• One station at a time, everything includedEvery feature is in the app rather than in a module, and it is free to use with a runtime timer while you find out whether it fits.