Actions on Alarms

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the new quick start guide on how to best use Movicon.NExT™.

In this technote we will show you how to associate a command to state of an alarm associated to a tag.

Alarms and actions

It is possible to associate an action in Movicon.NExT to be performed by the system according to the value obtained by the alarm associated to a tag.
This can be achieved by means of using the Commands section located in the properties’ panel once the tag has been selected from the I/O Data Server's Alarms tab.
The Command section offers five options:

• ON: the command, or the configured commands, are executed when the alarm is activated.
• OFF: the command or the configured commands, are executed when the alarm reaches the OFF state.
• ACK: the command or the configured commands, are executed when the alarm is acknowledged with the ACK button in the Alarm Window object or another graphical object configured for this purpose.  
• RESET: the command, or configured commands, are executed when the alarm is restored to its original condition using the Reset button in the Alarm Window object or another graphical object configured for this purpose.
• Double Click: the command, or configured commands, are executed when the row of the alarm in the Alarm Window object is double clicked.

Example

We will now create an example to show you how this works.

Creating tags

Once you have started the software's editor and loaded, do as follows:

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

  Name	boolTest
  Model Type	Variable
  Data Type	Boolean

• Confirm by clicking the 'Accept Changes' button on the tag properties window toolbar.

Creating and associating alarms

We shall now create an alarm:

• Open the I/O Data Server located in the project's tree structure in the Project Explorer window.
• Go to the Alarms tab by selecting the corresponding I/O Data Server's tab.
• Expand the Alarms until you reach the Source item.
• Select the source item and right click to open the contextual menu.
• Once opened, select the New Alarm Definition. Configure the alarm in the following way:
• 
  

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

• Confirm by clicking on the Accept Changes button on the toolbar at the top of the Alarm Definition properties window.

Now that the tag and alarm have been created and configured, we shall associate the two elements:

• Select the Alarm we have just created from the I/O Data Server's Alarms tab.
• Right click it to open a menu and select the Assign Tag option.
• In the table that appears, select the boolTest tag that we previously created and press the OK button to confirm.

Creating the screen

At this point we will need to create a screen:

• Go to the project's tree structure in the Project Explorer panel and select the Screens module.
• Right click and select the New option.
• A popup will appear allowing you to configure the screen's main properties. Configure the screen in this way:
• • Width: 1920
  • Height: 1080
  • Name: Main
• Click the OK button to confirm the configuration.

Now that the screen has been created, we can modify the project properties by entering the screen as the project's startup window. Therefore:

• Select the name of the project from the application's tree structure.
• Open the Properties window.
• Change the following property settings in the project's Properties window as follows:
• • Startup Page Type: Main Screen
  • Startup Screen Name: Main

Once you have configured the project startup, click the 'Save All' button on the top toolbar to save the project.

Make sure that the Main screen is open, and click on the Toolbox tab on the right of the editor, next to the Properties window, to open the Toolbox library provided by Movicon.NExT.
Drag the Vertical Switch, which is found in the Toggle Switches folder in the Switches folder, on screen.  Associate the boolTest tag to the object by dragging the tap onto the object.  
Open the Toolbox library once again and drag and drop the Alarm Window control, which is found in the Alarm Viewers folder, onto the Alarms screen.

Expand the Scripts section in the project's structure presented in the Project Explorer window. In this part of the application, we will create VB.NET scripts and associate them to the alarm's states so that they can be executed.
After having expanded and selected the Script option, right click and select New to create a script.
Rename the script with Alarm On and double click it to start writing code.
Once run, the script will display a popup showing a message that reflects the action associated to the alarm state. When Alarm On, the script will be:

Sub Main Handles .Main
   MsgBox("boolTestAlarm ON")
End Sub

Once finished the script editing, return to the I/O Data Server and select the boolTest tag associated to the boolTestAlarm alarm in the Alarms section.
Click the three dots between the brackets corresponding to the ‘Commands when On’ option in the properties window to configure the action to be executed.
In the Commands pane, which shows at the bottom of the editor, select Run Script from those available in the list and associate the Alarm On script to the Script Name field by clicking on the dots and selecting it from the folder that shows.

      Save the project by clicking on the Save All icon found in the toolbar at the top of the Movicon.NExT editor.

Runtime Test

      We will now test what we created above in runtime by clicking on the Start Runtime icon.
Once the application has started up showing the screen, it is possible to click on the switch to change the boolTest tag value from 0 to 1. In this condition, the alarm associated to the tag will activate and consequently the Message Box associated to the On command configured in the Alarm On script should appear.