RSView Me Alarm Unack

I was going to the post in the other running thread about Panelview plus alarms, but i thought maybe i should start a new thread.

Anyways. I know in wonderware, there is an unack bit from the HMI that tells me there are unack alarms. Is there something similar in RSView ME? All i am trying to do is silence the horn when silenced by the operator, and keep it quite until a new alarm pops up.

Would appreciate the help.

I had asked this question before, but no replies. Maybe something different this time around.

What type of PLC are you running? How are your alarms set up in the PLC?

Have a controllogix PLC, but not using ALMA's or ALMD's.

What are you using for the alarm trigger in the RSView alarm setup?

When I set it up I will use a DINT for the alarms. For example, I will create an alarm tag called "Alarm_Bit". So when I create the alarms in the logic, I will set the alarm to latch an alarm bit like Alarm_Bit.0 or Alarm_Bit.1.

In the Alarm setup of RSView you can set a digital tag to be set in the PLC when the Ack is pressed.

At this point I will look for that Alarm_bit value to change and move that value into an "active_alarm" tag. Once an alarm is triggered then the value in the active alarm will change. Once the active alarm is acknowledged, move the value from the "active _alarm" to another tag that will store the "acknowledged_active_alarm" value. Then you can compare if the "active_alarm" tag and the "acknowledged_active_alarm" are the same. If they are different then turn on your horn. Once the acknowedge button on the HMI is pressed it will make the active alarm = the acknowledged_active_alarm DINT's match and your horn will turn off.


To answer your question, I don't know of a system tag that just states that there is an unacknowledged alarm.

I usually handle this type of logic in the PLC rather than in the Panelview, but I've worked more with PLC5's and SLC500's, although I'm sure you could use this method in ControlLogix just as easily.

I make a Binary File for "Alarms" (B10) and another for "Alarm_Horn_Enablers" (B11). So say an alarm condition occurs, we'll call it "Alarm_Condition_001". In the logic I will have a rung with an XIC "Alarm_Condition_001" that will OTL B10:0/0 "Alarm_001" with a branch around the output with a ONS and an OTL B11:0/0 "Alarm_Horn_Enable_001". Then I will use the tag associated with the Alarm Ack button on the panelview, or the input associated with the physical PB, or both, to FLL with 0 the B10 and B11 files. That way, if the condition still exists, the "Alarm_001" will still be latched in but the "Alarm_Horn_Enable_001" will be unlatched and will stay that way until another False-to-True transition due to the ONS instruction.

This approach will work no matter how many conditions are turning on your alarm horn at one time. Once the ack command is received by the PLC, the horn will stay off until a new alarm occurs. It can be kind of bulky (and repetitive) to program, but the logic is easy for the maintenance guy to understand, and using Copy and Paste and sequential addressing, I find it's really not too bad.

Anyway, that's one approach.

Cheers,
Dustin

I forgot to add that I usually monitor only the B10 alarm file in the panelview. The "Horn Enablers" I only use in the PLC. Depending on how many Alarm words you will need to cover all your alarm conditions, I will use either a set of NEQ instructions, i.e. B11:0 >< 0, B11:1 >< 0, etc. in parallel to OTE the Alarm Horn, or if there are so many alarms that this approach would be too cumbersome, then I would use a FSC of the B11 file for a non-zero condition, then use the .FD bit to turn on your horn.

Using this approach will save on the number of words the PV has to poll for alarm triggers. In the case of a PLC5 or SLC, you can get 16 triggers out of one Binary word, or with CLGX, 32 triggers per DINT. Just use "Bit" type triggering, rather than "Value" triggering. If you use a specific trigger for every bit in your DINT, then the panelview will have to poll the entire DINT 32 times rather than just once.

Hope this helps.

Dustin thanks for the solution. This should work just fine for my current application .