Introduction To NA Alarms

Overview

Like any Machine Interface, the NA Series has an alarm management function that can alert the operator to problems, or matters that require their attention.
This article shows how to set up and configure Alarms in Sysmac Studio.
For more information about alarms behaviour in NA runtime please read ‘Using Alarms at NA Runtime’ article.

Creating Alarms

Alarms are created in groups, this enables the designer to group alarms by type, severity or based on the area of the machine. This gives structure to the alarm definitions and makes the project easier to understand . The alarm groups are shown to the user at runtime in the Alarm Viewer.

To add the Alarm group, go to “Programming – User Alarms – (right click)-Add”. Groups can be nested.

The user can specify a Group Display Name (which can be translated in resources). The Group Display Name will be shown in the Alarm Viewer at runtime.

When an Alarm Group is selected, the alarms page is shown, To add a new alarm to that group, right click – add, or use “+” or use “insert” key to add alarms to the group.

Each Alarm has the following properties:

1. Name (string, 128 characters max): The name of the User Alarm. The name is unique within a group.

2. Id This cannot be changed by the user, but is used to identify the alarm in the system

3. Alarm Code. An optional number, 0 to 60000. The ‘Event Code’ field is an optional numeric field. This field can be empty or specify any number. In future versions, when the Controller User Event functionality is integrated with the HMI alarm functionality, the Event Code will be obtained automatically from the Controller User Event information (when integrating User Events into the HMI alarm system). It will also be possible to define HMI alarms that have the same Event Code. For example, where two different Controllers use the same Event Code and are both being displayed (integrated) in an HMI device.

4. Expression (string): A logical condition (or Boolean variable) that when true the Alarm will be raised. Standard Intellisense functionality is supported.

5. Priority (string): This can have the following values:

a. Level 1 Highest Alarm Priority
b. Level 2
c. Level 3
d. Level 4
e. Level 5
f. Level 6
g. Level 7
h. Level 8 Lowest Alarm Priority (apart from “Information Level”)
i. Information Level

6. Message (string, 128 characters max): The event message, which appears in the runtime status and log viewer objects. (Max 128 characters).

7. Display popup message: If set, this causes a popup alarm status to appear in the runtime when an alarm occurs and requires acknowledgement.

8. Requires acknowledgement: Used to generate an audit of when a user saw and acknowledged the alarm condition. This is automatically set for alarms that display the popup message. If popup is not set, then the alarm will automatically be treated as if it is acknowledged as soon as it occurs.

9. Page: Name of an HMI page that can be set to popup when the alarm occurs. See ShowAlarmPage for more details.

10. Details (string, 2048 characters max): The full event description, which can optionally be displayed in the runtime status and log viewer objects.

Alarm Events

Each alarm can be configured to have actions on the following three events:

• UserAlarmRaised
• UserAlarmCleared
• UserAlarmAcknowledged

If you want to learn more about how to add an action to an alarm event read ‘Adding Actions to an a Alarm Event’ article.

Alarm Viewer

The NA Series has a special Alarm Object that can be placed on the page to display the status information about alarms – both live and historical information. To use the Alarm Viewer, expand the ‘HMI Controls’ section of the toolbox and drag&drop the ‘User Alarms Viewer’ onto the page.

There are two object display modes:

• Active Display mode – ‘Active’ User Alarms only are displayed
• Historical Display mode – The User Alarm Log is displayed showing the history of all User Alarm events

The columns that are shown in the Alarm Viewer are configurable using the properties window of the object. The following are the possible columns:

• Time
• Name
• Message
• Priority
• Message
• Status
• AlarmCode
• LoggedInUser
 

There is also a property for the title of these columns, which appears in the resources; therefore it is possible to translate the columns titles.

The colours for each of the states of an alarm can be customised to match a specification.

See Also:

Introduction to the NA series HMI

Link:
http://www.myomron.com/index.php?action=kb&print=1627