Software takes control of alarm and event data

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jul 7, 2006

AMS software is designed to provide the user with the ability to view, store, print and export alarm and event data dynamically and for later analysis.

RTK Instruments has launched its new AMS software to work in conjunction with its range of alarm annunciators and alarm systems.

The AMS software is designed to provide the user with the ability to view, store, print and export alarm and event data dynamically and for later analysis.

The AMS software enables the operator to see the occurrence of new alarms clearly showing the channel, priority/group, time/date and when the alarm has returned to normal.

The software can then later be used to analyse the details of the alarm events.

In the normal mode the display will be showing the current alarm screen, this gives immediate indication of which alarm channels are still in alarm, if these alarms have been acknowledged and if the fault has cleared.

The system will automatically sort the alarm information into chronological order down to the nearest millisecond.

Each channel will show the date/time, description, event type, priority and status.

When an alarm occurs, the full alarm details will be displayed on the screen and a coloured flashing background colour is used to inform the operator that a new alarm has occurred.

As an option, the software can generate an audible alarm from within the PC.

One of the key decisions an operator has to make when an alarm occurs is how urgent an alarm is compared with other alarms occurring in close succession.

Priority levels (0-30) can be used to help the operator determine either the type of alarm (for example, pressure, level, temperature, trip, status) or to determine the level of importance.

It is often important to establish the root cause of problems, and so a history screen is available to help the user analyse the true sequence of events.

Using the history screen, alarm details can be filtered to only see certain events.

The filtering can be priority/group, channel number or text, date and time range or any combination of these.

It is then a simple task to investigate certain targeted alarms to find exactly what has happened and when on the plant.

It is not only external events that are monitored.

The software will also monitor and record significant system events and faults such as when a card is removed or goes faulty, when a card is configured and when system faults occur such as "buffer full" and "paper low" etc This allows the engineer analysing the data to see the full picture of what happened and when.

One of the main benefits of linking alarm annunciators and event recorders to the AMS software is the ability to archive all the alarm information and have this remotely backed-up or linked to a company-wide computer network.

This archiving process can be set to automatically proceed on defined time scales or triggers.

The standard package is a cost effective solution to most alarm monitoring and analysis applications.

There are, however, many applications in the world-wide market that have specific requirements that are not part of the standard product.

As the software application is designed on a flexible and powerful Scada core, many other options and features can be configured into the software.

These include lamp-box type displays, analogue input levels, mimic diagrams showing the overall plant, help screens to guide operators to the source of the problem and how this should be resolved.