The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 high severity alarm queues, available from Conlab , can distinguish between standard alarms and high severity alarms.
Alarms that are defined as high severity will be considered as a higher priority than standard alarms. For example, if there are 50 alarms in the alarms queue waiting to be sent to recipients, the high severity alarm will bypass all standard alarms and will be sent immediately. This feature ensures that high severity alarms will be sent to recipients in the shortest time, preventing damage and improving uptime and service.
The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 helps in improving redundancy. In case of modem failure, telephony board failure, broken phone line or disconnection with a mail server, the master U.C.ME-OPC will stop its operation and let the standby U.C.ME-OPC take control and notify recipients. Users may set the failure count which will be used by the U.C.ME-OPC to determine when the control should be passed to the standby U.C.ME-OPC.
The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 allows users to select the fields to be included in the email such as alarm text, alarm status, alarm ID, alarm time, alarm date and alarm categories. Users can simply select the required fields and set the order of the fields.
The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 allows users to define up to 1,000 SMS commands. In case of an invalid SMS command, the U.C.ME-OPC replies with an appropriate message such as “Invalid SMS command”.
The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 can easily duplicate a time interval and apply it to all time intervals along the week days. It also has a better integration with DDE servers, providing support for string tag assignment. The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 allows users to assign alphanumeric strings to DDE string tags. For example, a user can send a "Current Status=Normal" text message to the U.C.ME-OPC 2009 and the value "Normal" will be assigned to the tag.
The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 displays alarm queue counters at the bottom of the Runtime window. These counters can also be assigned to tag values in SCADA or OPC/DDE servers. Monitoring these tags can help to detect situations of an alarm flood. The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 can assign the alarm queue counters to tag values in SCADA or OPC/DDE servers.
The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 can also ignore alarms with bad quality value. In some cases, the OPC servers may send bad quality tag values to their clients. The U.C.ME-OPC 2009 will ignore these values to prevent false alarms.
The Matrikon OPC Explorer is pre installed with the U.C.ME-OPC 2009. This tool from Matrikon lets users monitor real-time tag values from their OPC servers, simulate alarms and test OPC connectivity.