Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Keeping with TIMTOWTDI, I was wondering what solutions others would use to solve a database request.

Problem:

We have a spark detector that will increment a counter every time a spark is detected.  The user requests an alarm when the counter increments +5 times within an hour. How can this be implemented on an IOC?

A Solution:

I used came up with a solution using compress records. First, I created a 3600 element compress record using a circular buffer that records the value of the PV counter every second for an hour.  Next, I created two more compress records, one that saved the lowest value, and one that saved the highest value of the first record (N to 1 Low Value, N to 1 High Value). I then created a CALC record that calculated the difference of the low and high values. When CALC is greater than 5 ... then alarm.

Is there a better implementation to do this? Is there anything wrong with this solution?

Thanks,

Tim