Alarm Management at
Jefferson Lab
A New Configuration and Extended
Capabilities
B. Bevins, M. Joyce, J. Sage
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Outline
 New
Requirements
 ALH Usage
 ALH Modifications
 CDEV Modifications
 Other Development
 Status
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
New Requirements
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Motivated by a new control room design
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Global acknowledgement
Global disabling
Smarter automatic disabling
Centralized logging
Geographical view of accelerator
Make alarms “more meaningful”
Motivated by maintainability
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Automatic generation of configuration files
Separate configs for operators and experts
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Old Control Room
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
New Control Room
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Changes to ALH Usage
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Thorough review of alarm parameters
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Use ALH in global mode
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Removed extraneous alarms
Determined where to ignore transients and of what
duration
Readable alias names used throughout
Master copy manages alarm logic
Operators open copies to acknowledge
Logs to CMLOG
FORCEPV’s to disable (automatic and manual)
SEVRPV’s to summarize alarm state in MEDM
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
ALH Modifications
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Uses CDEV transparently
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Unacknowledged Severity PV’s
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Wasn’t quite working before
Uses CHANNEL keyword rather than CDEV
keyword
Also works for FORCEPV, SEVRPV, etc.
New keyword UASEVRPV works like SEVRPV
Disabling a group/channel updates parent
group severity PV’s (both types)
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Why CDEV?
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Legacy: high level RF system diagnostics
calculated in CDEV-based RF Alarm Server
 Allows alarms on other CDEV-based high
level beam applications servers
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Slow locks, real-time optics model, etc.
Alarm states can now be monitored and
acknowledged directly from Tcl-CDEV
applications.
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
CDEV Modifications
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CA Service Enhancements
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Supports ack and ackt messages
Allows unAckSevr and ackTrans tags (along
with severity, status, etc.)
Allows correct canceling of monitor requests
• Now matches the documentation
• Prevents buffered callbacks from being delivered
after a monitor has been canceled
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Other Development
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makeALHConfig - Perl scripts to generate config
files and sponsor FORCEPV and SEVRPV soft
channels on a Proxy IOC (PIOC)
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15,372 alarms
11,463 PV’s on PIOC
alhDisable - Tcl program to manage FORCEPV’s
and manually disable alarms
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Generates reports of all currently disabled alarms for
shift changes, etc.
Makes an entry in the Logbook.
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Alarm Summary Screen
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Alarm Disable Tool
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Status

New automatically-generated configuration has
been in use for several months.
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Vast improvement: alarms are no longer silenced and
ignored.
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Global alarm management is being tested and
should be fully deployed in May.
 Modified CDEV will be released soon after through
the CDEV website http://www.jlab.org/cdev/.
 ALH changes will be submitted for inclusion in new
releases.
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group
Alarm Management at
Jefferson Lab
A New Configuration and Extended
Capabilities
B. Bevins, M. Joyce, J. Sage
April, 2005
EPICS Collaboration
Controls Group