Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

<[email protected]> · Fri, 8 Apr 2011 09:12:00 +0000

Hi,

At Diamond we're using the Epics alarm handler. Typically we run a separate alarm handler per subsystem (or beamline). If a PV goes into alarm state we use it to run a script that sends an e-mail to a list of people (the script reads a file that contains a list of e-mail addresses).

We normally run it on a headless server, but the alarm handler program wasn't designed for that (it requires X libraries etc.) So we run through Xvfb (X virtual frame buffer). I think someone on tech-talk suggested that.

I view this as an interim solution until we can upgrade our alarm handling system to something much more configurable and flexible. A few sites have developed systems with nice viewers and database back-ends.

We also have a prototype SMS notification system. This is being developed into something more powerful. But at the moment it's just a script run by the alarm handler, which writes a file into a NFS shared directory, which is picked up by our SMS server software (we use smstools). And connected to the server is a GSM modem (RS232 connection).

http://smstools3.kekekasvi.com/

At the moment, if a user needs a new PV monitored, it requires the controls engineers to reconfigure the alarm handler. So there is nothing in the way of user configuration.

Cheers,
Matthew

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:tech-talk-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
> Sent: 08 April 2011 01:54
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: alarm auto dialer
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I was wondering what people are using for automatic alarm notification
> by
> way of phone, email, etc. Is there anything available that would allow
> recipients to configure when and what alarms they want to receive?
> 
> Thank you,
> Patrick

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System