Viewing Historical Archive

Introduction

Hello and welcome to a new guide on how to best use Movicon.NExT™.

In this technote, we will show you how to view the alarm and event logs and give comments on some of the features offered by the Historian Log Viewer object.

Historical Data

The Historical Log’s job is to record all the events that occurred during project runtime chronologically.
The Movicon.NExT Toolbox library provides you with a Historian Log Viewer which allows you to view messages recorded by the platform’s event log at runtime.
In addition to viewing messages, this object also allows you to filter messages:

• By time, day, month, week and year.
• By Alarm, Driver, and System type.

You can also create custom filters directly while the project is running and export data in different formats such as CSV, HTML, XLS and PDF.

Esxample

We will now create an example to give you a better understanding of how this object works.

How to create the tag

First, start up the software's editor, load a project, or create a new one, then:

• Open the I/O Data Server in the project tree within the Project Explorer window.
• Go to the Tag List by selecting the appropriate I/O Data Server tab.
• Right-click on the workspace and select the Add New Tag from the menu that appears.
• Configure the tag using the properties window in the following way:
• 
  

  Name	boolTest
  Model Type	Variable
  Data Type	Boolean

  
  
• Confirm these changes by clicking on the Accept Changes icon located on the toolbar at the top of the Properties window.

How to create and associate the alarm

Create an alarm in the following way:

• Open the I/O Data Server in the project tree within the Project Explorer window.
• Go to the Alarms Tab by selecting the corresponding I/O Data Server tab.
• Expand the item in the Alarms tab until you reach the source item.
• Select the source and right-click to open the contextual menu.
• Select the Add New Alarm Definition from the menu. Configure the alarm as follows:
• 
  

  Name	boolTestAlarm
  Alarm Type	Trip Alarm
  Activation Condition	Equals
  Activation Value	1

  
  
• Confirm these changes by clicking on the Accept Changes icon located on the toolbar at the top of the Properties window.

Now that the alarm and tag have been created, we can now associate the two elements:

• Select the alarm we have just created within the I/O Data Server’s Alarms tab.
• Right-click it and select the Assign Tag option from the menu that appears.
• Select the previously created boolTest tag from the table that appears.
• Click Ok to confirm.

How to create the Screen

Now, we will need to create a screen:

• Look for the Screens resource in the project's tree structure in the Project Explorer window and select it.
• Right-click it and select the New option from the menu which opens.
• A New Screen popup will appear through which you can set the screen's main properties. Configure the screen as follows:
• • Width: 1920
  • Height: 1080
  • Name: Main
• Click the OK button to confirm the configuration.

Once the screen has been created, you can then change the project's properties by inserting the screen as the project's Main screen which will show when the project starts up. To do this:

• Select the name of the project from the application's tree structure.
• Open the Properties window.
• Change the following project properties in this way:
• • Startup Page Type: Main Screen
  • Startup Screen Name: Main

Once you have finished configuring the project startup page, click on the Save All icon located on the toolbar at the top to save the project.

Now, open the Main screen and click on the Toolbox tab, which is located on the far right of the editor window, next to the properties window, to open the Toolbox library provided by Movicon.NExT.
Drag the Vertical Switch from the Toggle Switches subfolder of the Switches group onto the screen. Drag the boolTest tag onto the object to assign it.
Open the Toolbox library again and drag the Historian Log Viewer control, which is found in the Alarms Viewer group, onto the Main screen.

Save the project by clicking on the Save All icon located on the Movicon.NExT Editor's toolbar at the top.

Runtime Test

We can now test to see if everything works by clicking on the Start Runtime icon.
Once you have started the application and opened the screen, click on the switch to change the value of the boolTest tag from 0 to 1. In this condition, the alarm associated to the tag should activate.
The alarm will appear in the Historian Viewer object's list of messages.
You will find a Best Fit Columns button at the top of the control that resizes the objects' columns automatically based on the length of the text contents. The time ranges are displayed next to this button and can be modified by changing the values in the Start Time and End Time fields.
The bar underneath shows the classical time ranges: Minute, Hour, Day, Week, Month, and Year. When you click on the All button, all the data in the UFUAAuditLogItem table will be loaded.
Immediately next to this button, you will find a combobox which is used to select the message type to be displayed: All, Alarms, Drivers, System.
At the bottom, underneath the list of messages, you will find the filter bar, the control's data Refresh and Export buttons, and a combobox with a selection of the different export formats available.