Implementing Alarms on Fix Dynamics 

-Mike Kirk

The following is a 'first pass' at implementing alarms. Your thoughts on how this should be designed are welcome and needed.

Database

  1. Analog Alarm Blocks

    2. Analog Alarm blocks allow alarms to be generated based on the value written to the block.


  2. A target, low and high value can be specified in the block. In this case I chose a low value = 6.0 and a high value of 14.0 to correspond to a 'warning' and 'alarm' level alarm. Thus a value written to this block = 7.0 will generate a low alarm and a value of 15.0 will generate a high alarm. These values are arbitrary; use what ever values you like. Since the AA block is for the Plug Temperature monitoring system, the 'Plug Temp' alarm area is the only one selected. Choose the alarm are that corresponds to your subsystem.



  3. The alarm extension fields allow you to specify pictures that should be opened when an alarm is generated and acknowledged on the alarm summary list (an example is shown below).


    4.

Pictures

  1. Global Alarm Page: Six datalinks are required for each subsystem. The template for the tag name can be seen by opening the datalinks on the Global Alarm picture. These datalinks correspond to the current number of warnings (alarms), the total number of warnings (alarms) being monitored, and the total number of warnings (alarms) being ignored.


  2. Sub-System Alarm page:

    3. The top button for each subsystem on the Global Alarm page (ie Plug Temp) should take the user to an Alarm Summary page for that subsystem. The picture should contain the Alarm Summary Object that will contain all incoming alarms in a spreadsheet form.


  3. The object allows alarms to be color coded based on their level (ie the 'low' and 'high' level alarm distinction mentioned above). Currently, it is agreed that warnings are yellow, and alarms are red.




  4. The type of columns to be displayed has not been decided. Your input is welcome.



Modified on October 11, 1999. (Mike Kirk)