I have a client who needs a "software product" that communicates via Modbus/TCP in-order to monitor/control some equipment that they sell. However this software will be deployed to *their* clients Windows based computers, and as such needs to be as turn-key, user-friendly as possible. Ideally my client's client simply copies a pre-configured version of this "software product" to their computer, and (assuming they have network connectivity) can talk directly to the equipment.

I could write a custom WPF/C# based application that did the comms, the display and the control. However it struck me that I would effectively be writing a custom, standalone HMI (albeit a very small one). While this is do-able, I doubt it is cost effective.

Instead I am looking for a small standalone HMI that can deploy a simple application to a Windows 7/8 machine, without *any* (or very very minimal) configuration or installation of additional drivers. The application just has to display between 10-15 graphical screens, monitor about 100 tags (mix of bools and analogs), and be able to write to a handful of them (mix of bools and analogs). No historian or trending functionality is required, and the only connectivity needed is Modbus/TCP. And finally it is something that is not necessarily always turned on and connected to the equipment. The ultimate client/user may just turn it on when they feel like looking at the system - so ease of start-up/shut-down is also needed - IE it needs to be treated like an App.

So what software packages would people recommend for this task?