LabVIEW DSC: How to get alarm status from the area?

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

Colleagues,

I have, lets say, 50 Shared Variables where alarming enabled. Some of these variables assigned to area, so I can get status of the entire area or acknowledge an entire area of alarms (prior to version 8.x there was groups of the tags).

Now I would like to get alarm status from the entire area. How can I do it?

In version 6 I was able to wire tag group to Get Alarm Summary Status. Now, in version 8, Alarm Status.vi can be wired to the array of the variables, but not to area. Is it possible to get all variables from the area?

regards,

Andrey.

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

The easiest way which I have found looks like this:

Is that right way for getting alarms from an area?! I don't believe that...

Andrey

Message Edited by Andrey Dmitriev on 01-13-2009 09:39 AM

[AndreasStark]

Hi Andrey,

I guess the only more elegant way is to use a shared variable library for every alarm group.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Best regards,

Andreas Stark

Applications Engineering

NI Germany

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

Andreas,

Its a good trick for my case - different libraries for different areas, thank you.

But in general I'm frustrated with DSC 8.6. Still many bugs, and some functionality was lost in comparizon with 6.1. And conversion from 6.1 to 8.6 is not easy as just conversion *.scf file to *.lvlib. I spend nearby whole week for pretty simple application (less than 100 SubVIs and 150 Tags).

Andrey.

[AndreasStark]

Andrey,

I'm sorry to hear that there were so many problems.

Let me know if you have any specific problems then I can help you.

Have a nice weekend,

Andreas Stark

Applications Engineering

NI Germany 

[rnp]

I am not sure if I should be posting my problem under this particular topic. I am having trouble understanding acknowledge alarm vi and what this vi is supposed to do is not clear to me yet.

I have around 300 shared variables in my project and I have created a particular vi just to view the alarms that may pop up during runs. I created a main menu and this alarm vi can be accessed upon a button click in the main menu. Users get alarm alert based on sound configuration. Then he can navigate to the alarm vi and acknowledge the alarm. The alarm vi only contains alarm and event display found under DSC module.

The problem is everytime I click the alarm button in the main menu, it takes around 2 minutes for the alarm vi to update which is very annoying and unsatisfactory in the middle of run. I am not sure why it happens and I haven't got any response from support yet. These shared variables are managed under 10 different library files that are set up based on different loops of the process (flow, pressure and so on).

Then I looked into three alarm examples that ship with DSC module. None of these examples use acknowledge alarm vi. I implemented another vi similar to alarm demo vi in that example - containing multicolumn listbox. I created acknowledge event containing acknowledge button and used the acknowledge alarm vi under this event. Read vi alarm is under timeout event.

When I click the acknowledge button  as soon as I see the alarm in multicolumn listbox, nothing happens - the color of font does not get changed to purple neither any alarms get acknowledged. I tried to aknowledge alarm by variable name or  alarms or alarm area, it does not give me anything. What is this acknowledge alarm supposed to do? I tried to find examples everywhere in the web that uses this particular vi and haven't found one yet.