Tinkerman42

Logix Tag-Based Alarms

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I am planning to use the Logix Tag-Based Alarms in a project.

It seems to be quite new and I have not found much information about them except for Knowledgebase Article IN7565.

Has anyone out there used the Tag-Based alarms and if so what was your experience, good or bad?  Have you ran into any gotchas?

Thanks All!

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So, no responses after a month.  Apparently the Logix Tag Based alarms are just another Rockwell feature that has been rushed to release before it is truly ready.  No one is willing to use it yet because they recognize that it is an incomplete product in need of further improvements. 

Thanks Rockwell for letting your customers once again be the beta testers on new products.  This seems to have been getting worse during the last 3-4 years.  If Rockwell is losing market share, you only have yourselves to blame.

Edited by Tinkerman42
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I don't know that I would jump to that conclusion quite so quickly. They're only available on the newer family of CompactLogix and L8x ControlLogix PLCs, of which we have none. If I wanted to test them, I couldn't because I don't have hardware available.

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Still not experienced tag based alarms but found below benefits,

• No need to add an instruction; simplified design workflows
inside Studio 5000 Logix Designer®️
• No addition programming required – alarms automatically
sent to FactoryTalk®️ Alarms and Events
• New alarm manager provides a single place to configure
• Small memory footprint – great for applications that have
high alarm counts
• Alarm definitions allow for increased modularity
• Supports bulk generation of alarms via XML import/export

 

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I haven't used them but if the alarms are I/O related, I usually spend the extra bucks to purchase diagnostic I/O cards and use the alarm features they come with.

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Joe E. Perhaps my comments on Rockwell using customers as beta testers was a bit strong. However, the Logix Tag Based alarms still seem like a feature that is not fully ready for widespread use.

Unfortunately no ACTUAL user of this feature has yet responded to this topic.  Mr. Arslan quotes the literature descriptions of this feature, but as we all know, what the literature says and what the software actually does is sometimes different.  Thankfully these differences are usually minor and only cause irritation. Usually …

Here's an example of why I think the Logix Tag Based Alarms feature is not quite ready.  The manual says is that Logix Tag Based alarms are evaluated every 500 ms.  It also states that any delay times in the Tag Based Alarm configuration need to be entered in steps of 500 ms and can range from 0 to some maximum.  This IMPLIES that any alarm condition that lasts less that 500 ms may not be reliably detected by this feature, but the manual says NOTHING about this.

Did they create a special function to handle 0 delay alarms?  Nope!

After a call to Tech Support and two days of waiting for a response from "up the ladder" I was informed that "Logix Tag Based alarms may not capture alarm conditions lasting less that 500 ms and one should use an ALMD or ALMA instruction instead".  This type of information should be in the manual, not hidden under multiple layers of tech support.

It's not that I dislike this feature, quite the contrary.  I set up about 100 alarms with it in PLC code and it made it easy to create alarms and manage settings.  All of the alarm logic variables can be accessed and used in the PLC program and are accessible by the HMI. (Never ran it in the field however.)  It really does have some great features.

Just doesn't appear quite ready for prime time.

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One other possibility is that a lot of us like what we've come up with. We don't use AB HMI software. We use Cygnet or ClearSCADA (although Schneider has done what they always do when they buy something and let ClearSCADA founder). I took a look at Plant Pax recently... that thing is a pig... 

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I also tend to "roll-my-own" alarm handling as well. At my current location, the OEMs have tended to use the built-in alarm functionality for the HMIs, which I generally dislike. Especially with the PV+ and Siemens MP/Comfort HMIs. I'm in the process of migrating an old PV+ to a C-More HMI now. It's been a LONG time since I used one of these (over a decade) so I'm having to re-learn it, but so far it's been far more straightforward and intuitive than the PV+ was.

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Well it looks like we've wandered off topic and since I started the wandering I'll try to bring it back. 

So here goes.

Logix Tag-Based Alarms seem to be quite new and I have not found much information about them except for Knowledgebase Article IN7565.

Has anyone out there used the Tag-Based alarms and if so what was your experience, good or bad?  Have you ran into any gotchas?

Thanks All!

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Hello,

There doesn't seem to be any new discussions on this topic. How did it go for you Tinkerman? 

I didn't know this tag based alarm was a thing until I found it being used in a retrofit project I'm working on. It does not seem to be very flexible, at least in the versions my client uses Logix 31 and Designer 7. It appears the only format to export the alarm table is XML, no option to export as Excel or csv file. Also the HMI seems to force the use of the alarm manager in the PAC as I'm not seeing anyway to manually configure tags like normal. I have 2 issues this is causing on this retrofit. 
1) The machine is going from a USA plant to a Mexico plant so they want Spanish. Logix has a language feature but it only exports to a text file which I don't see how it could be translated as it's unformatted.
2) They want the PAC tags and alarms to be accessible for Ignition. I don't think Ignition will be able to read these Rockwell Alarms.

So unless I find a solution I may have to have 2 sets of identical alarms. The build in for the HMI and a separate one for Ignition. And some workaround to show Spanish alarm messages I'm not sure. I'm with Joe, I always found it easier to do my own alarms, alarm table in Excel so it can easily be imported into the HMI, added to documentation or whatever.

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Ignition cannot read tag-based alarms.  Rockwell hasn't published the protocol details needed to get at them, and Inductive Automation doesn't do reverse engineering.  I may (someday) get to reverse engineering them for my alternate Ignition driver, but don't hold your breath.

You should spend the time adding logic to drive conventional alarm bits if you want Ignition to play well with this project.

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Thanks pturmel. That is what I assumed and I'm not surprised Rockwell has not shared how to access the alarms. At least this is a small project with maybe 100 alarms but most of the messages are tied to tag Descriptions. So it will take extra work to get the real messages both for Ignition and translation. Rockwell doesn't even let you copy and paste the alarms.

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They should be exposed in an L5X (XML) project export.  You may have to write a parser for it. I normally use python's SAX parser for such tasks.

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22 minutes ago, pturmel said:

They should be exposed in an L5X (XML) project export.  You may have to write a parser for it. I normally use python's SAX parser for such tasks.

Good idea. Yes, exporting the alarms to an xml file is the only export option. It's been awhile since I played around with python, I'll look into that on my free time.

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