Access to Discrete Alarm Text

Hi all,

I am trying to provide a visualisation page on a TP1200 comfort panel that will list the top 12 most frequent alarms. I know that this has been requested before on several forums, however I have a specific question about this function.

I have utilised the bubble sort algorithm to create a DB that now lists the alarm number and alarm count in order of most frequent. All good, but now I want to display this data in tabular form on the screen.

Not being able to find a suitable table command or similar I have created a table basically with a bunch of I/O fields and text fields. Now I am able via a script to get the alarm numbers and alarm counts to display in the I/O fields, but what I want to do is get the alarm text to appear as well.

The alarm text is only entered in the discrete alarm itself, not stored in a DB anywhere, so is it possible to get access to this discrete alarm text in a script and how does one go about this with indirect addressing?

i.e I want to achieve something like this:-

Text1 := DiscreteAlarm[AlarmNo]

Any help much appreciated. Also if you know of a way to create a table that I could use to display this data without resorting to multiple fields, that would also be helpful, bearing in mind this data is direct from a DB on the PLC, not from a sql or csv file.

Thanks.

Hi,

Is it bit alarming or msg numbering you use?

Just an idea... Dynamic textlist. Have a look at it here:

How do you create dynamic text lists in WinCC (TIA Portal)?

It means you have to create the textlist but...

Cheers

Hi

  I guess  u cannot access the text in the alarm through any io field even using script...

I very much agree with MicroMan. I guess its the only solution for your specific problem.

regards

Thanks for the replies,

I agree with the dynamic text list being the best way forward, I was hoping however that there may have been a way to avoid writing the alarms out again; just me being lazy I guess!

It is bit triggering I use for the alarms, however as I am storing the alarm number in the sorted DB, then I can use this to index the text list, so that is straight forward.

Now if only Siemens had given us a table function, it'd have saved me having to create all those text & I/O fields.

Thanks again for the comments.

Regards.

Matt.

globaltech

.. I was hoping however that there may have been a way to avoid writing the alarms out again; ..

Matt,

Yes, there is work to be done - but extracting the alarm messages that you have created does not need to be difficult. Export the ALARMS to a XLSX spreadsheet file. Copy the column you need into a new spreadsheet with an index number. Next copy-paste that into the Text List.

w