You want to display an alarm, warning or info messages and inform the user about special events in the machine within your web visualization? Then take a close look at this WEBIQ BEST PRACTICE DEMO: The Alarm Demo shows you how to configure alarm messages with WebIQ, create alarm texts in different languages and use the default alarm widgets provided by WebIQ.
The demo contains different alarm, warning or info messages and displays them in different variants of the WebIQ widget “Alarm List”. You can choose the variants “Live Alarms Only”, “Historical Alarms Only” or “All Alarms” in the navigation on the left. Fourth, there is also a variant that displays alarm list and alarm details at the same time. Acknowledge alarms or display the alarm details. Especially Alarm 1506 has extensive alarm details with PDF display and video link. Furthermore, the WebIQ Alarm Demo presents different versions of the WebIQ widget “Alarm Info”. This widget shows in a very compact form the currently pending alarm, warning and/or information messages, either as icon, text or combined. Click on “Trigger Alarms” and turn the alarms, warnings and info on or off. See what happens!
The alarm management of WebIQ consists of three parts:
All three parts of the alarm management can you find in the WebIQ Designer, the engineering tool of WebIQ. Best of all, you don’t need to be a programmer to use them. Just click and configure them.
Ready-to-Use Alarm Widgets of WebIQ
In the Alarm Manager you give the alarm a unique alarm index number (this is important, e.g. for displaying the correct alarm texts). You want to assign the alarm to a specific machine module or function? No problem, just assign the alarm to an alarm group.
You can also define if the alarm has to be acknowledged and if the alarm should be stored in the alarm history. Then you define the alarm condition when the alarm should be triggered. There are many possibilities, you can find more information in the WebIQ Designer Manual.
Maybe you want to store and display additional information about the alarm, e.g. further process values, which are important for a later analysis, or links to additional media (help system, PDFs, videos, graphics), which help the user to process the alarm. Use the alarm context for this purpose. Watch the alarm with index number 1506 in the Alarm Manager, go to the WebIQ Localization Manager and take a closer look at the alarm texts with index number 1506 and you will immediately understand how this works. And if you want to know more, just have a look at the WebIQ Designer Manual.
Another TIP: with the “Output Item” and the “Output Value” you can define a reaction to the alarm, e.g. activate an external alarm light or buzzer.
Alarm texts are created in the Localization Manager of the WebIQ Designer. The index number of the alarm serves as a reference to the alarm. This is smart: WebIQ Designer automatically creates the appropriate localization variables for you in the Localization Manager as soon as you create an alarm in the Alarm Manager. Just enter the alarm texts and you’re done. So you don’t have to worry about forgetting a text. You can design alarm texts in many ways and display additional process or system values for analysis purposes. The WebIQ Designer Manual explains the possibilities to you.
WebIQ offers you the following comfortable widgets for displaying alarm information by default in the WebIQ Designer:
The WebIQ alarm widgets are “ready to use”, i.e. drag them into your Web HMI and go. You see your alarms immediately. With numerous configuration options you can customize the alarm widgets to your needs, figure it out. It’s that easy with WebIQ.
And finally a trick for a typical task in visualization: Your machine or plant is divided into different modules and you want to display whether there is an alarm or a warning in one of these modules. This is very easy: define an alarm group for each machine module and assign the alarms to the different alarm groups. Now use the WebIQ widget “Alarm Info” for a specific alarm group (parameter “Alarm Group Filter”). Select the layout variant “Icon only” at the top, that’s it.
Which layout variant of the Alarm Info do you prefer? Different variants of the Alarm Info with or without alarm group filter are available by default (see in the configuration of the Alarm Info)
Just try it yourself. Take a look at the Live Demo of the WebIQ Alarm Demo and load it into WebIQ Designer ( > Download). Here you can see how we configure alarms and alarm lists and get your own experience with the alarm management of WebIQ.
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