Hardware Alarms

Hardware alarms notify an operator of circumstances such as:

• Interrupted communication to a device

• An inoperative server

• Cicode not executing.

Hardware alarms are fully integrated in Plant SCADA, which means there is no need to manually configure them in a project. However, you need to carefully consider how they are reported to an operator.

If your project is based on one of the Plant SCADA starter projects, a hardware alarm count can be viewed on the alarm banner, and a list is displayed on the dedicated hardware alarms page.

Note: Do not allow your system to have any recurring hardware alarms.

There are two hardware alarm fields that are not always shown on the hardware alarms pages. ERRPAGE will display the name of the page that was displayed when the error was detected. This is useful for finding errors caused by improperly programmed animations. ERRDESC provides information that is specific to the type of the alarm. For example, if the alarm is an I/O Device error, ERRDESC shows the name of the device.

Note: A timeout applies on hardware alarms, so that old hardware alarms will be inactive as per [Alarm]HardHoldTime parameter. Unlike configured alarms, all inactive hardware alarms will be removed immediately.

Hardware Alarms for Certificates

The Hardware Alarms page displays hardware alarms when a secure connection cannot be established due to certificates. Some scenarios where a hardware alarm may be generated include the following.

• The binding certificate is inaccessible because of incorrect permissions.

• The chain of trust to the binding certificate is not valid.

• A client cannot trust the certificate with which a server's connections is signed.

• A certificate’s common name check is unsuccessful or other policy errors are encountered.

To rectify these alarms, check the error logs and if required contact your network administrator. See Troubleshooting - Certificate Error Messages.