Configuring the Alarm & Event Printer Service

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The AEPrinter service runs as a Windows service independent of ClearSCADA. The service prints to a serial line printer connected to a specified serial port.

You can install the event printer by selecting the feature when you install ClearSCADA. AEPrinter is configured using the following registry settings:

The keys and values are contained under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Serck Controls\SCX6\AEPrinter

Add one key in here, the name of the key should be the COM port that you want the AEPrinter to connect to. The port defaults to 9600, 8N1. You can also specify baud rate etc from this string.

Within this key, there are several options that you can specify to control the connection and format of the data.

Value Name (type)	Details
System (REG_SZ)	System Name to connect to. There is no default.
TerminalWidth (REG_DWORD)	Width of the terminal, in characters. The default is 0 (no terminal width used).
Enabled (REG_DWORD)	Specify 1 to enable this connection, 0 to disable. The default is 1.
InitialRefresh (REG_DWORD)	Setting to 1 will output the current active Unacknowledged alarms on the system when AEPrinter first connects to a system. Before the alarms are printed, the line "*** Start of current system alarms" will be output, and after the last alarm is output, the message "*** End of current system alarms" will be printed. If this is not specified, the default is 0.
FormatString (REG_SZ)	This format string determines the output format of the message. The format characters are listed in the table at the bottom of this page. The default for this key is "%**%**%A %E1 %D %T- %>%S, %M (%C0)".
WrapOnChars (REG_SZ)	A string containing all the characters on which the formatting code should perform a word-wrap break. Default is " ".
EOLString (REG_SZ)	This value specifies what combination of CR/LF should be used on the end-of-line sent to the printer. C is used to designate CR and L is used for LF. The default is "CL".
UserName (REG_SZ)	Username to use to log into ClearSCADA.
Password (REG_SZ)	Password to use to log into ClearSCADA.

The service must be restarted for any changes to take effect.

Available Format String Characters

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Format Character	Description
%*	If the current alarm/event is an alarm, print to the output, otherwise print a space. Example: %*# would print "#" if alarm, " " otherwise.
%A	Print the word "Alarm" if the alarm/event is an alarm, otherwise print the word "Event".
%a	Print the letter "A" if alarm, "E" otherwise.
%E0 %E1	Print the alarm severity description for the alarm/event. If %E1 is specified, pad out after the severity with spaces to the width of the longest severity, to maintain correct formatting.
%e0 %e1	Print the alarm severity of the alarm/event as a number. If %e1 is specified, pad out after the number with spaces to the width of the longest possible number (4 characters).
%D	Print the date of the alarm/event in the form DD-MMM-YYYY, the month is in the form "JAN", "FEB" etc.
%T	Print the time of the alarm/event in the form HH:MM:SS.
%S	Print the object name that generated the alarm/event.
%M	Print the alarm/event message.
%I	Print the unique cookie associated with the alarm.
%C0 %C1	Print the category description of the alarm. If %C1 is specified, pad out after the severity with spaces to the width of the longest category, to maintain correct formatting.
%>	Set this point in the message as a left-justification margin. If a terminal width is specified in the registry, the message is word-wrapped and a new line is started at this margin.
%%	Print the "%" character.