Can Plain English interact with the Continuum Alarm Engine?

[Product_Support]

Issue

How to setup and use the Plain English Alarm function?

Product Line

Andover Continuum

Environment

• PEAlmFunction, PERtnFunction
• CyberStation Alarm
• Workstation PE function

Cause

Manual configuration is required to create the Plain English alarm function and set certain registry keys.

Resolution

As a function of Continuum CyberStation Alarm Engine, user written Plain English functions are automatically invoked at a workstation

• when an alarm occurs
• when an alarm is acknowledged
• when a return-to-normal condition occurs.

The user optionally specifies the names of those functions in the Windows registry, and they will be called appropriately.

Registry keys used for calling Plain English Alarm function

• PEAlmFunction : The name of the user-defined PE Alarm Function. (Ex. “AlmProcess”)
• PERtnfunction : The name of the user-defined PE Return-to-Normal Function. (Ex. ”AlmProcess”)

Example of the Plain English Alarm function is as follows:

Arg 1 A ' Network AliasName(16)
Arg 2 B ' Controller AliasName(16)
Arg 3 C ' Infinet Controller AliasName(16)
Arg 4 D ' Object name(32)
Arg 5 E ' Object AliasName(16)
Arg 6 F ' Object Description(32)
Arg 7 G ' Object Value(Numeric)
Arg 8 H ' Alarm State(3) ALM,RTN,ACK 
Arg 9 I ' Graphic Object AliasName(16) 
Arg 10 J ' Alarm Enrollment Alarm Message(String) 
Arg 11 K ' Alarm Enrollment AliasName(16)
Arg 12 L ' EventNotification AliasName(16)  
Arg 13 M ' EventNotification Priority (Numeric 1~255)
Arg 14 N ' TimeStamp(16)
Arg 15 O 'Logging Flag (1~255) 
'
String 1 Q
String 80 AlmDir, Fnam
File AlmF
'
If M < 100 then
  AlmDir = "C:\"
  Q = chr(96)
  Fnam = NumToStr(random(Second))
  OpenFile(AlmDir ; Fnam ; ".alm", WriteOnly, AlmF)
   Print L ;", " ; K ; ", " ; A , B , C , D , ", " ; G  to AlmF
  CloseFile(AlmF)
Endif
Return Success

1. Create the following registry keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Andover Controls \Continuum\Settings:
   • PEAckFunction (REG_SZ)
   • PEAlmFunction (REG_SZ)
   • PERtnFunction (REG_SZ)
   • PEMaxBufferedAlarms (REG_DWORD)
   • PEPopAlarm (REG_DWORD)
2. Set PEAlmFunction to “AlmProcess”
3. Set PERtnFunction to “RtnProcess”
4. Restart Continuum.
5. Create PE programs in the workstation called AlmProcess, and RtnProcess with source code similar to the example function.
6. Files will be created in the specified directory containing the alarm and return to normal information.