You can configure an alarm management system in an application to monitor critical conditions of your machine by triggering alarms.
Alarms are defined as part of alarm groups. For each alarm, configure the following parameters:
The monitoring criteria
An optional user-defined deactivation variable
An alarm class
A message
An optional pending time
Moreover, you can assign latch variables to lock (or mark) an alarm so that it can be filtered according to the latch values.
This function is not available for all controllers. Consult the Programming Guide specific to your controller.
You can use the Alarm Table and Alarm Banner visualization elements to program a user interface for the alarm management. Alarms are visualized by the user and can be acknowledged. As an alternative, you can use the AlarmManager library to manage alarms within your application code.
For details regarding the configuration of visualization alarm management, refer to the CODESYS Online Help: Visualizing Alarm Management.
The following alarm management objects are available in the Tools tree of the EcoStruxure Machine Expert Logic Builder:
The Alarm Configuration object is the root object of the alarm management that is inserted below an Application node. By default, subnodes for Error, Warning and Info alarm classes and Alarm Storage are also created. You can insert more alarm objects according to your individual requirements.
The Alarm Class object allows you to group general alarm criteria into a class. The number of Alarm Class objects is not restricted. The classes you define are available for selection in the Class column of the alarm groups editor and serve as a core configuration of an alarm.
Examples of alarm criteria:
A specific acknowledgment method for this alarm class.
An action that is executed automatically when a specific alarm condition occurs.
Display options for the Alarm Table and the Alarm Banner in the visualization.
The Alarm Group object allows you to create alarm definitions for individual alarms which are grouped according to a shared deactivation variable and archiving parameters. The number of Alarm Group objects per Alarm Configuration is not restricted. You can insert folder objects to create a hierarchical structure of alarm groups. For each Alarm Group object, a Text List object is created with the same name. It allows you to localize the alarm messages.
The Alarm Storage object is available once per application. It allows you to configure the archiving of alarms.
For further information, refer to Configuration of the Alarm Management.