Alarm monitoring

Dewesoft uses alarms to set different digital states according to acquired data and displays the state of the alarms on the online screen. The alarm monitoring function can also be activated for a digital output to an A/D board.

When you select the Alarm tab on the Dewesoft Setup screen, you will be able to enter:

AlarmMonitoring_Setup

Basic settings  

Add (New) / Delete alarm monitoring channel

When you select the Alarms tab to define a new Alarm, an empty alarm list appears on the lower part of the screen:

AlarmMonitoring_AddCh

It has two icons: * Plus - to add a new alarm condition * Minus - to remove the selected alarm condition.

When you press the Add alarm button, a new alarm condition is displayed:

AlarmMonitoring_Reset-Never

To set up the alarm we use:

  1. STEP

Common settings - set eventual physically digital Alarm output selection; define Use alarms when and Alarm reset settings (set condition for reset alarm)

  1. STEP

Conditions settings - to Add (New) / Change / Delete and define Alarm start condition or “Don’t start” condition and eventual Alarm stop conditions with Condition setup

Alarm output selection

The Enable alarm monitoring and Use digital output box are checked.

If no alarm is checked, the alarm will be virtual - only available for display.

After checking one output in the Alarm output selection the alarms will be output on selected channel.

After checking two outputs in the Alarm output selection the alarm will be output on two output channels

Use alarms when

You can select the following options from the Use alarms when drop-down list:

  • alarm while acquiring data
  • alarm during storing

Alarm reset settings

Select the appropriate choice from the displayed list:

  • Never - when the Start condition is carried out, the Alarm remains turned on until the end of the acquisition or storage of data.
  • Manual - when the Start condition is carried out, the Alarm turns on and in the first row of the display screen a red Alarm ON button appears:

To manually reset the alarm, click on this button and the display will change to:

  • On condition - next to the Alarm start and “Don’t start” condition on the right lower part of the screen, the Alarm stop conditions also appear:

  • After - when the Start condition carries out, the Alarm turns on and will be reset after the amount of time in seconds that is entered in the field beside this control:

Set Alarm conditions

After you have configured and added the basics alarm settings, alarm conditions on the lower part of the screen can be added/changed:

  • Alarm start condition or “Don’t start” condition
  • Alarm stop conditions (this part is displayed only for the On condition Alarm reset settings option)

Add (New) Alarm conditions

When you press the Add alarm button beside Alarm start/stop condition or “Don’t start” condition, a new alarm condition line is displayed:

AlarmMonitoring__add

AlarmMonitoring_Alarm start conditions_Add

The alarm monitoring settings are similar to trigger conditions, for help with Trigger conditions see  -> Setup -> Storing  -> Trigger Condition setup.

NOTE: The alarm monitoring function has no influence on recording functions. It is only used to define the state of the digital output channels.

Condition setup

To change the default settings, press the Setup button in the condition line. The following window will appear:

AlarmMonitoring_Use alarms when_Setup

Now you can define the alarm condition. In the left-lower area of the window, you can see the current signals, which should help you to set the conditions faster. After you have configured the settings, press the OK button to accept the changes. The new condition is now available.

If you have more than one alarm condition defined, they are combined by the OR condition. There is no relation between the output channels; therefore you can use the same or different conditions for different output channels.

The alarm monitoring conditions are similar to the trigger conditions.

For detailed information about Condition setup see -> Setup -> Storing -> Trigger Condition setup.

Change Alarm conditions

To change alarm conditions, select the condition (click once on it) and press the Setup button again to invoke the Condition setup window where condition settings can be changed.

Remove Alarm conditions

To remove an alarm condition, select the output channel and the condition to delete by clicking on it. After you have selected the condition in that way, press the Remove button.

Add event on alarm

The option Add event on alarm will create an event when an alarm occurs.

The events are stored and shown in a table as channel Alarm events.

The alarm events can be displayed in the Tabular values display widget with the time of an event and the event description.

During the storing the alarm events are also seen in the Event display in the top right corner.