Specifications

ELAN AUDIO - SENTINEL / RCU-01 RCU01R02 PAGE 19/49
7.6 Alarms
All of the alarm information received from the RCU's is stored in a database. This alarm information is a snapshot of
the RCU at the time that the alarm was recognised by the RCU. Any analog or status input that is in the alarm state
will be highlighted in red. The state of the control outputs is also displayed.
The alarm information is date and time stamped by both the RCU and SENTINEL. The displayed alarm information is
sorted on the SENTINEL date / time stamp. The RCU date / time stamp is the time that the RCU actually accepted
the alarm as having occurred, it uses the RCU clock which cannot be guaranteed to be synchronised with other RCU's
or even SENTINEL itself. SENTINEL will date / time stamp the alarm when it is received by SENTINEL. This time will
typically be later than the RCU time ( assuming the RCU clock has been set ) and will be delayed depending upon the
communication delays etc.
In summary the SENTINEL date / time stamp will be indicative of the sequence of alarms from multiple RCU's and the
RCU date / time stamp will be indicative of the alarm sequence for a particular RCU.
The Alarm display can be filtered by selecting an RCU site name, selecting the '*ALL*' entry will select all alarms for all
sites.
Use the scroll bar to scroll through the alarm database. The latest entry is at the end of the alarm display.
Note: If the RCU firmware is version 2.2 or greater the RCU will not initiate any alarms while it is in ‘Local’ mode. This allows
normal maintenance to be performed on site without sending spurious alarms.
Report Alarm Database
Use this feature to generate a report of alarms received from a particular RCU.
Alarm Reports
The SENTINEL database may hold many alarms received from different RCU's over a long period of time. The Report
Selection Criteria window enables the user to select which alarms will appear in a report.
Any given report will only contain alarms from a single RCU. Select the RCU to report on from the first drop-down list.
Next decide if the alarms chosen to appear in the report will be defined by their date/time stamp or by the number of
alarms.
If selected alarms are to be chosen by date, use the appropriate drop-down lists to define the date/time range.
If alarms are to be chosen by number, use the final drop-down list to specify the number of alarms to appear in the
report. Alarms will be selected by date/time, most recent alarms first.
Alarm Configuration
There is a finite limit on the number of alarms that SENTINEL will keep in its database before old alarms are thrown
out.
From within the Configure Alarm window it is possible to configure the size of the alarm database.
The current number of alarms is also displayed in this window.
If the number of alarms in the database exceeds the specified limit the SENTINEL user will be warned to increase the
database limit. Otherwise, the oldest 30% of alarm records will be expunged from the database at shutdown.
• Warn that database is oversize only once
When this option is set SENTINEL warns the user the first time the alarm database size limit is exceeded, but
avoids multiple warnings.
• Enable local alarms
When this option is set SENTINEL will generate an ‘external local alarm’ to the configured alarm port.