FactoryTalk View Studio Site Edition- About HMI Tag Alarms

FactoryTalk View Studio Site Edition has jumped from version to version rapidly in the past five years & rightly so because every version has been built to be a better platform than the one before it. I have been fortunate enough to convert over twelve HMI applications in the recent past with some being primary/secondary HMI servers while others just having a primary HMI server so I thought what better time to share some knowledge.

HMI tags are a common theme on the machine edition platform & have been used a lot on the site edition HMI applications, however, in FactoryTalk View Studio Site Editon, it is more common that direct tagging is used along with FactoryTalk Alarms & Events. In the cases where HMI tags have been used as alarms in the site edition platform, they are more commonly known as legacy HMI alarms as you will see in the first video in this article.

Things that will discuss in this article:

• HMI Tag Alarms (Legacy Alarms)
• FactoryTalk Alarms and Events
• Converting HMI Tag Alarms
• Testing FactoryTalk View Studio Alarms

This is a lot of information to cover over text or being read through an article so I have made two videos to show two different HMI alarm structures in use to give a clear understanding.

Starting out, we will cover HMI Tag Alams (Legacy Alarms).

FactoryTalk View Studio HMI Tag Alarms

The video below shows the use of FactoryTalk View Site Edition HMI Tag Alarms being used along with describing the details to give a clear understanding of the intended method of how they work.

Throughout the video, I will give you a detailed reason why I showed the system the way I did.

As you can see in the video above, I compare the HMI Tag Alarm with FactoryTalk Alarms and Events to give a base understanding that the two are different, in fact, much different. With the HMI Tag Alarms need a certain screen to be used with them which is slightly not so user-friendly in my opinion.

HMI Tag Alarms use a separate screen to read the alarms when they are triggered along with the setup of what the alarm will say being in the actual HMI tag when you make it which is a bit distracting when it comes to making a large number on a new system. Luckily for us, Rockwell Automation has already phased out these alarms in FactoryTalk View Studio 12.

Let’s take a look at how to convert the HMI Tag Alarms to FactoryTalk Alarms and Events.

HMI Tag Alarms No Longer Supported – Quick Fix

The video below shows how to convert HMI Tag Alarms to a FactoryTalk Alarms and Events server.

Seeing the pop-up referring to the HMI Tag Alarms no longer being supported moving forward, this pop-up message was first seen in FactoryTalk View Studio 10 which did allow the use of HMI Tag Alarms but warned they would not in future versions & in FactoryTalk View Studio 12they made the swap to no longer allow them.

In the full video above, I show how to export the HMI Tag Alams then convert them into the FactoryTalk Alarm and Events structure then make an Alarm Server & importing the alarms. Late in the video, I show exactly how to disable the HMI Tag Alams & test the new FactoryTalk Alarms and Events.

Hope you found this helpful.

I will be putting together more programming videos and articles upon request, I already have several ideas and will be starting to add more videos to my YouTube channel which is Shane Welcher RSlogix 5000 Programming

I would love to hear what you guys think so far as I am trying to get this website whipped into shape.

Drop me a comment here or on my YouTube channel.

Thanks,

Shane