WINCC PRO v15.1 Reset faults in fault screen.

I am doing something no one else has ever done....

I want a screen that lists all the faults that have occurred in the resent past on one screen.

And ,

I want those same faults to show up on another screen as a header, but only the "active alarms".

And
I want one button that I make on the screen to reset / acknowledge these alarms. (not the tiny button on the toolbar which is always greyed out even though it is activated in the parameters)

If the alarm is no longer true, I want it to go away from the "active alarm list".

I have installed the alarm screen object from the pallet menu.
I have made an alarm list in the HMI.
I can turn on an alarm bit and it shows up in both lists.
But it never goes away.
And there is no where to define a single bit to "group acknowledge" all alarms.
There is a place to define an acknowledge bit for every single alarm, but I don't want a separate acknowledge bit for every alarm.

After hours of pouring over the help files, I think either this is not possible or I can't see it.


I think WIN CC Pro wants to have an alarm bit and also an acknowledge bit for each alarm. Even though single acknowledge is selectable and
de-selectable which supports a single bit "group acknowledge".


I only tried to use the built in function to save time. I think I could have written a custom alarm screen in less time.

I use WinCC Advanced, not WinCC Pro. But maybe they are not so different.

As for the active versus the historic alarms:

On the screen with the active alarms the Alarm view is set to source = "Alarms, current alarm states". Alarm Classes = errors, warnings.

On the screen with the historic alarms the Alarm view is set to source = "Alarmlog". Alarm Classes = Errors, System, Diagnosis events, Acknowledgement, No Acknowledgement.

The alarm reset button is a regular button with the event "press" set to activate the system function "AlarmViewAcknowledgeAlarm", with the "screen object" set to the name of the alarm view.

As for the acknowledgement of groups of alarms, I do not know how it is done via the groups defined in WinCC.
I simply have an "acknowledge all alarms" button. This button sets a PLC tag that in the PLC code that in turn sets all the acknowledgement bits on. Both the ack bits that resets the alarm, as well as the PLC acknowledgement bits. The latter is so that the alarms are reset in the HMI as well as in the PLC.
In WinCC Advanced the PLC acknowledgement bits are not created automatically. I guess because it is not so normal that the PLC can reset alarms in the HMI.

JesperMP said:

I use WinCC Advanced, not WinCC Pro. But maybe they are not so different.

As for the active versus the historic alarms:

On the screen with the active alarms the Alarm view is set to source = "Alarms, current alarm states". Alarm Classes = errors, warnings.

On the screen with the historic alarms the Alarm view is set to source = "Alarmlog". Alarm Classes = Errors, System, Diagnosis events, Acknowledgement, No Acknowledgement.

The alarm reset button is a regular button with the event "press" set to activate the system function "AlarmViewAcknowledgeAlarm", with the "screen object" set to the name of the alarm view.

As for the acknowledgement of groups of alarms, I do not know how it is done via the groups defined in WinCC.
I simply have an "acknowledge all alarms" button. This button sets a PLC tag that in the PLC code that in turn sets all the acknowledgement bits on. Both the ack bits that resets the alarm, as well as the PLC acknowledgement bits. The latter is so that the alarms are reset in the HMI as well as in the PLC.
In WinCC Advanced the PLC acknowledgement bits are not created automatically. I guess because it is not so normal that the PLC can reset alarms in the HMI.

Click to expand...

Your description is exactly what I was thinking when I said I would have the alarm screens done in a day.

Short answer is WIN CC PRO is completely different from any of the other WIN CC products. Should have a different name altogether.
There is no such system function in the list.
And there are about a thousand variables in the alarm object.
I have gone through every menu and every variable looking for anything that might work.

Searched youtube and Siemens , all the examples and tutorials are for advanced or compact.

Or it says something like "you can use the tool bar button to acknowledge the alarms as a group or you can use a custom button.."
And that's it...

I suspect Siemens will want me to write a script to fill the gap in their code they never seem to finish.

dahnuguy said:

Short answer is WIN CC PRO is completely different from any of the other WIN CC products. Should have a different name altogether.

Click to expand...

WinCC Pro IS different than the other WinCC products built into Portal. WinCC Pro is pretty much WinCC V7 (the SCADA system they've had forever), with the engineering tool crammed into Portal, so it is a little familiar to someone who has done the Panels before.


WinCC is just the brand name that Siemens has for HMI products, from small panels up through huge SCADA systems, same as Simatic covers the PLC/IO HW and Step 7 is used for PLC programming software in both Simatic Manager and TIA Portal. There are other WinCC products, too, like WinCC Open Architecture, a SCADA system intended for crazy huge installations.

dahnuguy said:

Short answer is WIN CC PRO is completely different from any of the other WIN CC products.

Click to expand...

That is pretty awful. I know that WinCC Professional is a different install than WinCC Basic/comfort/advanced, but not that there were so little in common.
IMO is is another indication that TIA is a software project that has gone off its rails. Oh well...

edit:
mk42, it is called TIA WinCC Professional, so one should think that it was a common platform.
They told us when they introduced TIA that it would clean everything up and that it would be a "Portal" to all and everything. Not different portals.

JesperMP said:

They told us when they introduced TIA that it would clean everything up and that it would be a "Portal" to all and everything. Not different portals.

Click to expand...

It's one tool to program them all, but it doesn't mean that everything it programs is the same, alas.... It's kinda like how they included the 300s and 400s in Portal, but they still only did the things they could already do. You just got to use the shiny new programming editor.

Not sure about the custom button, but everything else is the default behavior of wincc pro alarms. With no acknowledge bits and other things.
Just set it to short list, remove all buttons but scroll and acknowledge all and that is it..
Or am I missing something?

m_turk said:

Not sure about the custom button, but everything else is the default behavior of wincc pro alarms. With no acknowledge bits and other things.
Just set it to short list, remove all buttons but scroll and acknowledge all and that is it..
Or am I missing something?

Click to expand...

Yes you are missing a few things.

Group acknowledge has to be declared in the HMI alarms screen, not in the properties of the alarms object.
And the acknowledge has to be a byte or word and then you have to select bit zero. A bool will not work.
There is no function list item to acknowledge alarms.
So we declare the byte in the HMI alarms page in the left pane under HMI.
Then use the function list to "set bit in word" with the push button of choice.

Which is actually one bit to aknowledge all alarms, but you have to do it the Siemens way. All nice and complex with extra steps and lets add a data type requirement.

If I made the alarm object....
I would have the interface buttons on the toolbar, and on each row in the toolbar properties a selection to choose a tag to replace the tool bar button.
Just like any other object.
All the functions would be easily transferred to any button you choose.

I would also have functions in the function list

I would also make all the HMI software packages follow the same patterns.

dahnuguy said:

Yes you are missing a few things.

Group acknowledge has to be declared in the HMI alarms screen, not in the properties of the alarms object.
And the acknowledge has to be a byte or word and then you have to select bit zero. A bool will not work.
There is no function list item to acknowledge alarms.
So we declare the byte in the HMI alarms page in the left pane under HMI.
Then use the function list to "set bit in word" with the push button of choice.

Which is actually one bit to aknowledge all alarms, but you have to do it the Siemens way. All nice and complex with extra steps and lets add a data type requirement.

If I made the alarm object....
I would have the interface buttons on the toolbar, and on each row in the toolbar properties a selection to choose a tag to replace the tool bar button.
Just like any other object.
All the functions would be easily transferred to any button you choose.

I would also have functions in the function list

I would also make all the HMI software packages follow the same patterns.

Click to expand...

Man, you are really complicating things.. Even more than Siemens likes it..

I haven't made a complicated Wincc for a long time so I can't say anything about group alarms, acknowledge bits and other.... (unless you want a wincc7.0 tutorial)
But if you want to acknowledge all alarms on the screen, just declare an alarm and add alarmview.. with group acknowgedge, you reset all alarms and not active ones become invisible.
if you want a custom button for that, you use

Dim objControl
Set objControl = ScreenItems("Alarm View_1")
objControl.QuitVisible()

On click or whatever...

I don't think wincc behavior is great on complicated things. sounding an alarm is a pain in the ***, but for what you want (if I understand), It is ok. It does exactly that if you don't add options and features... Just declare an alarm and confirm all of them when they come..

(edit: I'm sorry if I'm teaching you a stupid thing you know, but from the first post I understood that is the thing you want to do.. Maybe I don't unedstand..)

m_turk said:

Man, you are really complicating things.. Even more than Siemens likes it..

I haven't made a complicated Wincc for a long time so I can't say anything about group alarms, acknowledge bits and other.... (unless you want a wincc7.0 tutorial)
But if you want to acknowledge all alarms on the screen, just declare an alarm and add alarmview.. with group acknowgedge, you reset all alarms and not active ones become invisible.
if you want a custom button for that, you use

Dim objControl
Set objControl = ScreenItems("Alarm View_1")
objControl.QuitVisible()

On click or whatever...

I don't think wincc behavior is great on complicated things. sounding an alarm is a pain in the ***, but for what you want (if I understand), It is ok. It does exactly that if you don't add options and features... Just declare an alarm and confirm all of them when they come..

(edit: I'm sorry if I'm teaching you a stupid thing you know, but from the first post I understood that is the thing you want to do.. Maybe I don't unedstand..)

Click to expand...

Simple huh? What I described is not too bad once you know the unwritten conditions. See attached images for how I solved this. Not too bad once you know where to look. And after I discovered how to phrase the question, I found some more information online but none of it pointed me to the solution I used.


(First let me say I really appreciate your answer, my frustration and lack of satisfaction is with Siemens not you)

Tell me, how am I supposed to imagine that this script is the solution?
It is not in the help file, it is not mentioned in the object anywhere. And I don't see a list of script commands in the help file either.

Why am I constantly required to search for solutions and program in functionality that Siemens just left out?


Besides, it makes no sense that the command is "quitvisible"

(and I think the toolbar button for "acknowledge all" is objcontrol11... and quitvisible sounds like it just makes the control loose visibility , which is possible with a check box in the configuration...)

""Group acknowledgment" object 11
Acknowledges all active, visible messages which require acknowledgment in the message window, unless these require single acknowledgment. If you use the multiple selection, all marked messages are acknowledged, even if the messages are hidden. 11" (https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/mdm/109736220?c=81309470347&lc=en-WW)




But why do I need to know all that when Siemens could just add an address option to each toolbar button? You know like a software developer?

Or

Allow the user to drag the toolbar button to a place on the screen and then change the appearance! Even better.

Here is one from Siemens:

"Acknowledge all visible messages using the following functions:
SetPropDouble(lpctstr Screen name,lpctstr Object,"ToolbarButtonClick",11); or
SetPropWord(lpctstr Screen name,lpctstr Object,"ToolbarButtonClick",11); "

https://support.industry.siemens.co...rofessional-v11-onwards-?dti=0&dl=en&lc=pt-BR



I think I have used over 10 plcs and at least 5 or 6 HMI software packages and none of them require me to write scripts to get a button to acknowledge alarms.

Here is another one:
(I had no idea Tia Portal WinccPro is actually WinccPro v7)
WinCC V7.x
SetPropDouble(lpszPictureName,"Control1","ToolbarButtonClick",11) or
SetPropWord(lpszPictureName,"Control1","ToolbarButtonClick",11);

https://support.industry.siemens.co...ledge-alarm-messages-in-wincc-?dti=0&lc=en-WW


references:

https://support.industry.siemens.co...larms-in-alarm-view/152090?page=0&pageSize=10

This is also possible in the object properties, but I love the complexity of his solution: https://support.industry.siemens.co...roup-acknowledgment/135074?page=0&pageSize=10

https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/mdm/109736220?c=56276656011&lc=en-WW

https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/mdm/109736220?c=81309470347&lc=en-WW

https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/mdm/109736220?c=56276656011&lc=en-WW

Welcome to Siemens world. It can be done several ways and simplest solution is sometimes hard to find


WinCC is done so, that if you do something which is supported allready, then it usually have to do with scripts.
Evrything can be done, but it don't mean that it would be easy.


Alarms can be acknowledge several ways.
Acknowledge with bits, with button, calling buttons with script or directly with script.


Acknowledge bits are useful if you have several screen and want acknowlege alarms from all at same time. Then you only need to do alarms acknowlegement to PLC.
Or then you can instead code with scripts

Lare said:

Welcome to Siemens world. It can be done several ways and simplest solution is sometimes hard to find


WinCC is done so, that if you do something which is supported allready, then it usually have to do with scripts.
Evrything can be done, but it don't mean that it would be easy.


Alarms can be acknowledge several ways.
Acknowledge with bits, with button, calling buttons with script or directly with script.


Acknowledge bits are useful if you have several screen and want acknowlege alarms from all at same time. Then you only need to do alarms acknowlegement to PLC.
Or then you can instead code with scripts

Click to expand...

The "simple solution" is to just forget the built in object and write one yourself from scratch.
Which is what I am doing now.
Once done , it will always work, in any PLC/HMI version and will only need a few parameters.

I got most of it done while waiting for support desk to call me back and I think I can finish it in less time than all this research took.

Plus I will have it for next time.

dahnuguy said:

Simple huh?

Click to expand...

Yeah.. "Simple", lol.. The help in Siemens is only helpful when you already know what you need
Anyway, I'm glad you managed to find a way.

But also, I'm working with SoMachine right now and it is just like if everybody wants you to just take a class, even for the most used things..

(btw, best way I found to learn Wincc and how to do something is to find functions, not knowing what they do, and then google them..)

m_turk said:

Yeah.. "Simple", lol.. The help in Siemens is only helpful when you already know what you need

Click to expand...

That's the truth. It's a reference manual written by an expert for an expert who has merely forgotten some minor detail. If you go in the help to learn from scratch it's an uphill battle.

mk42 said:

That's the truth. It's a reference manual written by an expert for an expert who has merely forgotten some minor detail. If you go in the help to learn from scratch it's an uphill battle.

Click to expand...

And finding from siemens support is easier with google than finder on Siemens's webpage.