SCADA Alarm
SCADA alarm is one of the main tools to ensure safe and manageable system operation. User can configure freely using Ecava IGX based on requirements in how should the SCADA alarm activate, how should it be triggered, who should be notified, etc.
Decide the Tags
First of all, user should determine on which tag(s) to be monitored and activate an alarm once certain condition is met.
Let’s get started by creating a few tags and tie them to different alarms. Create or open an Ecava IGX project and create a few virtual tags. (Refer previous training if unsure how to create Virtual tags in IGX SCADA)
Create the Alarms / Set the Condition
Then go to ‘Alarm’ > ‘Group’ to add an alarm group by clicking on ‘Alarm’ > ‘Group’. After that open the alarm group and start adding alarms inside. Any alarm configuration will require a name and a message, further on with setting the related tag and a condition that triggers it. In Ecava IGX SCADA, user can easily select the desired tag name from the list.
There are 3 types of trigger methods, which are ‘Compare Tag’, ‘Compare Value’, and ‘On Change’.
- Compare Tag: trigger by comparing the alarm tag with another tag
- Compare Value: trigger by comparing the alarm tag with a defined value
- On Change: trigger whenever the alarm tag changes, condition setting is not required
If ‘Compare Tag’ or ‘Compare Value’ is chosen, user will require to select the condition as well as limits. There are several of conditions to choose from in Ecava IGX, as shown below.
Basically a SCADA alarm configuration will look similarly as screen below.
Test and Run
Let’s now run the project and understand how these alarms triggered from what have been configured. Watch Window in Ecava IGX Server is always a useful tool to modify the tag value and monitor the alarm events in front-end screens. Open the Alarm front-end screen and observed the active and inactive alarms as in following example.
For Ecava IGX, there are different color codes for real-time alarms which carry the following meaning:
– Red: Active and unacknowledged alarm
– Orange: Active and acknowledged alarm
– Green: Inactive and unacknowledged alarm
Note: User can switch between real-time and history mode by clicking the “History” or “Real Time” button at top left corner of the Alarm page.
Communication Alarm
Communication and connection with devices are essential in a SCADA system, thus it will be critical if there is any broken connection happens. For Ecava IGX, we can easily make use of Application tags to monitor the communications.
Let’s create an IO device as shown below, and add some IO tags into it.
Then go to Project Editor and click on ‘Tag’ > ‘Application’. Noticed that a set of application tags had been created for the IO device created, for example [ModbusGateway] as shown below.
Now go back to the Alarm Group to add a communication alarm based on the application tag, in this case ‘app.device[ModbusGateway].status.connected’ will be used.
Next, save the project and run. Just leave the IO device run with without any connection or Modbus Simulator running behind, so that the connection status will return false value and the communication alarm will be activated. Open the Alarm page and observe the following.
Now let’s make the connection valid between the SCADA and device by running Modbus Simulator. When they are connected successfully, open the Alarm page and noticed the communication alarm will be deactivated (turned to green color).
Understand SCADA alarm more by browsing Ecava IGX SCADA Demo, or download your copy today to get started.