Factorytalk ME alarms audio output

I have a PV+1250 and multiple Micrologix 1400 monitoring leak/spill detection around some Ink tanks. I want to sound a 24Vdc sonalert on alarms and silence it with the on screen Ack button.
I have tried the USB speaker recommended in Knowledge base # 490966 and bad things started happening to the PV+ so we abandoned that idea. Only one of the MLX 1400 is nearby the PV+ and I would like to use an output off of that but there is no connection available in the alarm setup to follow the alarm status. Any ideas?

FTME 8.2
2711P-T12C4D8 SER A
MLX 1400
ME STATION FW 8.20.0.10

One possibility is that you could create your own alarm acknowledge BTTN in the PLC that would unlatch the sonalert. So a leak is detected, your alarm bit goes high, and your sonalert latches on. Create a new rung with an XIC, call it "Alarm_Ack" or whatever, and make that bit unlatch the sonalert when it goes high. Then create a momentary BTTN in your PV program that toggles that address, and go into your Alarm Setup under the Advanced tab and assign that BTTNs address to the acknowledge alarm value.

When the button is pushed, it will both unlatch the sonalert and acknowledge all current alarms.

Not perfect, but it might do what you need it to do.

In Alarm Setup under the Advanced Tab is where you find the silence connections.

Optional connections

Silence - a write connection. If alarms use the audio signal, assign a tag to this connection to notify the data source that alarms have been silenced.
Remote Silence - a read connection. Assign a tag or expression to this connection to allow the data source to silence alarms.

Click to expand...

I have 3 PLC's alarms coming into the PV+. I would need to ack/silence the alarm bit in the PLC's or else as soon as I release the HMI Momentary PB the sonalert will start ringing again.
It also has to let secondary alarms(the spill getting larger) make the sonalert bit go high again which is in only one PLC. I was hoping that someone knew of a tag or connection somewhere in PV+ that followed the alarm state.

bdoutney said:

I was hoping that someone knew of a tag or connection somewhere in PV+ that followed the alarm state.

Click to expand...

Any HMI Alarm originates (is triggered) in a PLC application; since you have several ML1400s in your HMI application you will need to identify the Alarm triggers and bit/value identifiers in each application and either 'process' them locally or 'aggregate' all the Alarm data within a single controller and make the 'decisions' there.

You don't need to alter the Alarm trigger/acknowledge/reset mechanisms but MSG Read all the relevant Alarm addresses into the HMI nearby PLC, monitor their states/values and then implement the 'Audio feature' there.

If you need to have 1 Reset Button write to 3 PLC's then I would try the Macro Button. You will find it under Objects>Advanced>Macro.
Create 3 Macro's
1. Alarm1_Reset write 1 to 3 PLC's.
2. Alarm2_Reset write 1 to 1 PLC.
3. No_Alarm write 0 to 3 PLC's.

In the Connection tab use an Expression to call the Macro needed for each situation.

IF {Alarm1_Condition} Then "Alarm1_Reset" Else
IF {Alarm2_Condition} Then "Alarm2_Reset" Else "No_Alarm"

Make sure you use the quotation marks to identify your Macro name. This tells the expression that it is a STRING.

I would also create logic to reset the bits back to zero in each PLC. The Macros are only writing 1's to the PLC tags. So maybe a short timer to reset bits after they go true. (1 or 2 seconds) The No_Alarm Macro would do it if no alarm condition is true but you would have to press the button a second time to return bits to zero.

One thing I did not mention, Under the General Tab of the Macro Button property page. You need to check the Variable Macro option. This will tell the button to use the Connection Tab / Expression.

cwal61 said:

One thing I did not mention, Under the General Tab of the Macro Button property page. You need to check the Variable Macro option. This will tell the button to use the Connection Tab / Expression.

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Interesting. I had already made a test macro to see how it works and it wrote to the tags without that box being checked. In the connections tag/expressions box I put "ALARM1_RESET"

I see now. Its works because I had picked only one macro under the general tab which will probably not let me later use an If Then Else expression like the connections tab will.

If you only use one macro, then it can be placed on the General tab. The Connection tab would not be needed.


From Help file:

Macro
Click the Browse button (...) to open the Component Browser and select the macro to run when the button object is pressed. The list contains all of the macros in the project. A macro assigns a value to tags.

Use variable Macro
Select this check box to use the tag/expression content that is set on the Connections tab. If this check box is not selected, the Macro button uses the macro name you specified.

Click to expand...

That worked well but I was not able do it that way because RA told me I could not put the silence PB under the ACK PB and have them both trigger off of one push and I didn't want to have 2 buttons. They said to use the ACK tag in the triggers screen of the alarm setup. So I MSG all the alarms to the one PLC that had the sounder output and used the ACK tag to write a one to unlatch that sounder output.