Hi I am creating tags in ignition. I am relatively new to setting up the tags. I have a line that has 100s of alarms in its PLC. Out of those 100s of alarms I may have only 4-5 alarms in a day. The next day it could be some other difference group of alarms. Should I be setting 1 tag for each alarm? Or is there another easier way to set up all these 100s of alarms? I am only interested when some alarm becomes true.
Thank you
What generates the alarm? Is it a value of a tag, ie a value above a setpoint, or a boolean going high?
Typically each alarm will need a separate tag in Ignition. However, if you have a float/integer tag and you want multiple alarms based on values of that tag you can setup multiple alarms on a single tag.
If you haven't yet, go through Ignition University and become familiar with the backend. Getting tags, alarms etc... correct is vital to a good foundation for a project.
Each alarm is set as a boolean True or False in the PLC. At least that is what I see when I pull an alarm into an Ignition tag. In the PLC it is set as ALARM BIT. There is an Alarm Word. Each word has 32 bits. Each of these 32 bits is an alarm or empty. Roughly half of those 32 bits are set as alarms and the other half are empty.
What type of PLC is this? Some drivers can address a bit in a word directly, others cannot. That will change how to accomplish this.
It is Rockwell Control Logix
OK, I would setup an individual tag for each of the bits that you want to alarm from, and then create an alarm on each bit as needed.
Create one as a test, export it and then see how it is generated in the json. Use excel to generate the rest.
Or, if they are repeating (IE each word is the same just different machines), then create a UDT and leverage that,
Thank you. I will try that
as @bschroeder said, exporting tags is my go-to when creating alarms.
I find it easier to export as .XML and use Notepad++ to copy/paste and change the tag path and labels and then import the tags... I've never tried excel, that's a great tip!
Sounds like you're wanting an "any alarm active" notification and you already have your alarm bits combined into words.
You can use an integer tag to connect to your alarm words. The alarm setup on those words can then be bit-by-bit or on the integer value. Any non-zero value would indicate that some alarm is active. Or, you can get more granular and define the bit of the int in the alarm setup.