Re: [foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages

Same as on my AW51.  How cool is that, huh?


If you are going to try and read it directly, be aware that almhist is 
_mostly_ a flat text file.  It has no line feeds, so you have to process 
it as fixed-length records, and there is some garbage data at the front of 
it (well, I presume the system uses it somehow, but it's not relevant if 
you just want to read alarm events out of it).


I believe the alarm managers access this file for the alarm history 
display.  Unfortunately, it does so over an rmount, which makes it slower 
than a slug climbing out of a Prozac bottle.  It would be cool if I could 
somehow make the system read this over my 100Mbps 2nd Ethernet; I may have 
to look into that.


Sample output from my logging scripts (very long lines; the list software 
will probably mangle them).  As Tom pointed out, the priority is right 
before the alarm type.


R1260A:VT1260AR1                        BEARING VIBRATION    NORTH SIDE 
0HIABS  2007-01-18 00:05:42      0.12 IN/SEC (     0.20) HIGH VIBRATION    
         RTN

H2:LC152D1.->XSOV152D1                  D152 ON-OFF LVL   CTRL 5LOABS 
2007-01-18 00:06:32      9.46 %      (    10.00) CLOSE VLV        ALM

H2:LC152D1.->XSOV152D1                  D152 ON-OFF LVL   CTRL 0LOABS 
2007-01-18 00:06:44     13.61 %      (    10.00) CLOSE VLV     RTN

D271:FI271D                             PRODUCTION FLOW 1DISABL 2007-01-18 
00:15:08 ALARM DETECTION DISABLED 
D271:FI271D                             PRODUCTION FLOW 1ENABLE 2007-01-18 
00:26:52 ALARM DETECTION ENABLED 
HSE06_DIGTAL:AT250RAD_FF                AT250RAD FLOW FAULT 3STATE 
2007-01-18 00:36:18                          FLOW FAULT Pnt 00 

HSE06_DIGTAL:AT250RAE_FF                AT250RAE FLOW FAULT 3STATE 
2007-01-18 00:36:18                          FLOW FAULT    Pnt 00 



Corey Clingo
BASF Corporation






<tom.vandewater@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
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01/19/2007 01:44 PM
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Re: [foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages






First off, the following disclaimer.  The following can only be
counted on if you are using a UNIX based Legacy Foxboro alarm historian
but may be true in other configurations.  The alarm priority is
obviously passed to the alarm historian but is filtered out of the
printer output.  You can follow the results of my telnet session below
which dumps the contents of the file
/usr/hstorian/almhist
which is a flat text(data)file that stores alarm messages.  Notice the
(4LOABS) in the first alarm.  The 4 just before LOABS is the alarm
priority.  In my research of 3rd party alarm packages some of them
access the almhist file directly as a database for their own
manipulations which you can also do;<)

04AW01# /usr/bin/strings /usr/hstorian/almhist |more
C0904:FI24008.C10                       5566 COMPRESSOR   OIL FLOW
4LOABS
01-15 23:32:33     69.97 GPM    (    70.00) OIL TO 5566 LO FLOW
ALM
C0904:FI24008.C10                       5566 COMPRESSOR   OIL FLOW
0LOABS

Cheers,
Tom VandeWater
Control Systems Developer/Analyst
Dow Corning Corp.
Carrollton, KY  USA

-----Original Message-----
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Corey R Clingo
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 1:19 PM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages

Hmm...I didn't know that the priority did not come out on the printer.
Not=20
really sure why this would be the case, as the Alarm Manager and  legacy

historian know about it.  Is this true of any non-AM alarm device?


To do long-term alarm logging, I have some scripts to read and parse the

almhist file that the legacy historian uses for a circular alarm history

buffer.  These were based on some code I found on the Cassandra site and

in some Foxboro HH documents, but I've had to modify them several times
as=20
I've come across weird data the historian puts in this file for certain=20
alarm types, and to add additional features (like putting the year in
the=20
timestamp).  It's not real-time (it runs out of cron every hour), but=20
suits my needs.  I hope to get this into some kind of database (either
my=20
own or some alarm-management product's) for better analysis
capabilities.


As for how the alarm management vendors determine priority, most of the=20
packages I've seen also import part or all of the system configuration=20
(either periodically from iccprt dumps or live via OPC) and get the=20
priorities from that.


Corey Clingo
BASF Corporation






"Ghodhbani, Hafedh" <Hafedh.Ghodhbani@xxxxxxxxxxxx>=20
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01/19/2007 04:32 AM
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[foxboro] Priority in Alarm messages







Hello,
We are sending plant alarms continuously to a PC for analysis.
We would like to add the alarm priority to the alarm message text.
Can you please advise how to proceed.

For your information, this is the alarm message we want to modify the
structure:

PK2103:PC21103.PK2103                   HP N2 PURGE GAS
LOABS
01-19-07 09:35:45:2     0.05BAR        ( 0.05) LOW ALARMS
ALM

Regards
Lead C&I Eng
BG Group
Tel:+21674259250  ex 574



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