OPC Alarm Notification

Features include:

• Support for redundant OPC-UA pair 
• Automatically switches between from primary to standby or vice versa when a failover is detected

Advantages:

UCME-OPC can concurrently connect to different OPC sources: OPC-DA and OPC-UA. OPC-DA is mostly used by legacy systems while OPC-UA is an up-to-date technology. OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) offers several benefits over OPC DA (OPC Data Access), particularly in terms of flexibility, security, and scalability. Here are some key advantages of OPC UA compared to OPC DA:

1. Platform Independence: OPC UA is designed to be platform-independent, allowing it to run on various operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. In contrast, OPC DA is primarily tied to the Windows operating system.
2. Security: OPC UA provides robust security features, including encryption, authentication, and authorization mechanisms, which are lacking or limited in OPC DA. OPC UA supports certificate-based authentication and encryption of data exchanged between clients and servers, ensuring secure communication over networks.
3. Scalability: OPC UA offers enhanced scalability, allowing for more extensive and complex data models compared to OPC DA. OPC UA supports hierarchical data structures and complex data types, making it suitable for large-scale industrial applications with diverse data requirements.
4. Information Modeling: OPC UA enables the creation of standardized information models, facilitating interoperability between different systems and vendors. OPC UA allows users to define custom data types, object models, and hierarchies, providing greater flexibility in representing industrial data.
5. Built-in Redundancy: OPC UA includes built-in redundancy features, such as server failover and redundancy support, which enhance system reliability and availability. OPC UA servers can be configured to automatically switch to backup servers in case of primary server failure, minimizing downtime.
6. Support for Modern Communication Protocols: OPC UA supports modern communication protocols, such as TCP/IP, HTTPS, and MQTT, enabling integration with a wide range of devices and systems, including cloud platforms and IoT devices. OPC UA's support for web services facilitates seamless communication across different network infrastructures.
7. Interoperability: OPC UA promotes interoperability between different industrial automation systems, allowing seamless integration and communication between devices, software applications, and platforms from different vendors. OPC UA's standardized communication protocol ensures compatibility and consistency across diverse environments.
8. Comprehensive Functionality: OPC UA offers a broader range of functionality compared to OPC DA, including support for alarms and events, historical data access, and complex data modeling capabilities. OPC UA's extensible architecture allows for the addition of new features and functionality to meet evolving industry requirements.

Overall, OPC UA provides a more robust, secure, and flexible communication framework compared to OPC DA, making it well-suited for modern industrial automation and control systems.

Advantages:

1. Receive alarms within 1 second!
2. Distinguish between different alarm priorities.
3. Distinguish between alarm messages and SMS.
4. Acknowledge alarms and stop escalations.
5. Receive production reports.
6. 7,500 messages per month – free of charge!
7. Message length: 500 characters vs. 70 or 160 in SMS.
8. Send an alarm to a group – all recipients receive it at the same time!
9. Receive alarms in: iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android and desktops.
10. Alarm snapshots – show tag value in colors (Blue or Red)
11. Dynamic alarm prioritization
12. Easy alarm Acknowledge and Reminder
13. Red alarms (Emergency) are more important to handle!

Push messaging using your web browser:

UCME-OPC Version 2014 supports the current languages:

English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Hebrew.

UCME-OPC™ can concurrently dial up to four telephone numbers, play voice messages, send emails, SMS and messages to pagers, and play alarms to local multimedia loudspeakers.

UCME-OPC™ allows two-way SMS and phone communication between users (such as technicians, field engineers or managers) and the control system. Users receive alarm notifications yet can also change set-points, acknowledge alarms, listen to real-time values, execute programs, and a range of other actions – directly from their cell phone or landline.

UCME-OPC™ allows sending alarm messages to your WhatsApp app. Once the WhatsApp message is read by the recipient, UCME-OPC is notified and records this information. If UCME-OPC™ fails to send a message to WhatsApp, it may optionally send it as a text message (SMS) using a fallback protocol. For example: using a GSM cellular modem.

UCME-OPC™ allows sending alarm messages as voice messages using Text-to-Speech and VoIP (Voice over IP). If UCME-OPC™ fails to send a voice message using VoIP, it may optionally send it as a text message via SMS or WhatsApp.

Sample Voice over IP (VoIP) production report. Receive a detailed alarm report with all relevant parameters – temperatures, water levels, on-off status and more…

Sample Voice over IP (VoIP) recipients' report. Know who are the On Call recipients.

The effectiveness of alarm systems is often undermined by poorly configured alarms, static alarm settings that can’t adapt to dynamic plant conditions – and a host of other reasons. UCME-OPC™’s sophisticated escalation procedure is a customizable alarm delivery feature that sends alarms to alternative recipients. When a recipient acknowledges the alarm, further unnecessary repeat alarm notifications are prevented – reducing nuisance alarms and reducing costs.

Using UCME-OPC™’ you may define alarms which are based on a compound condition. For example: If ((Tag1 > 100) Or (Tag2 <=250)) And (Min(Tag1,Tag2,Tag3) < 10). This functionality can be used to reduce the time for the alarm definition/maintenance and also helps to avoid false and nuisance alarms.

The easiest way to automatically change OPC tag values based on date, day-of-week and time.

Create predefined notification scenarios based on date, day-of-week and time.

UCME-OPC distinguishes between low severity alarms and high severity alarms. Alarms that are defined as High Severity will be handled with higher priority than the other alarms. For example, if you have 50 alarms in the alarms queue waiting to be sent to the recipients, the high severity alarm will bypass all other alarms and will be sent immediately. This feature ensures that high severity alarms will be sent to recipients in the shortest time, prevent damage, improve uptime and service.

If UCME-OPC™ fails to send a text message (SMS) via one channel (for example: a faulty GSM cellular modem), it will automatically switch to a fallback channel (for example: a CDMA cellular modem). This functionality reduces the chances that a text message will not be sent and as a result, increases the system reliability.

By providing additional plant floor parameters sent to your cell phone, UCME-OPC™ provides you with more, detailed information so you can have the complete picture at the moment of an alarm for a more accurate response. Alarms and alarm-snapshot information are stored in an MS-Access™ or MS-SQL™ database. The data may be viewed from any computer on the network using a standard browser, such as Internet Explorer, for offline analysis and reporting at a later time.

UCME-OPC™ connects with any SCADA or DCS, including RSView™, Cimplicity™, iFix™, InTouch™, Citect™, Lookout™, ClearSCADA™, Infilink™, Wizcon™, PI™, DeltaV™, PULSE™, Control Maestro™, WinCC™ and more.

UCME-OPC™ can be programmed to receive text messages (SMS) from remote devices. Taking this information, UCME-OPC™ can create and send more detailed alarm messages for greater efficiency and to enable faster responses.

UCME-OPC™ can be programmed to send alarm reminders as long as the alarm is still active. The word “Reminder” will be added to the alarm text or voice.The time interval between each reminder (5 seconds to 49 days) can be set by the system administrator.

Unlike other software packages that require continuous Internet connection to send email-to-cellular messages, UCME-OPC™ uses native text messaging via cellular modems, which means your control system is completely protected from Internet security threats.

UCME-OPC™ allows for alarm import from your SCADA with one click of a button. This makes your job easier, reducing the chance of errors in alarm definition.

UCME-OPC™ can notify recipients according to predefined prioritized shift schedules. Users may also specify special days, such as holidays, in which the shift priorities are different from the regular week.

UCME-OPC™ enables you to translate various texts to your local language. For example, the text “Alarm started” or “Alarm ended”, attached to the SMS message, may be translated to any language.

UCME-OPC™ runs a watchdog mechanism with the OPC or DDE server software. When the server (SCADA) is not operating, UCME-OPC™ will notify the appropriate users.

With UCME-OPC™, administrators can define recipients. Each recipient has its own authorization and time intervals that the system can use to send alarm notifications.

With UCME-OPC™, administrators can define recipient groups for easier alarm maintenance.

Using UCME-OPC™, you may acknowledge alarms using your cell phone. Upon acknowledgment, a dedicated tag in your OPC server or SCADA application will change its value according to your settings. Possible tag value types are: Numeric and String. String tags may contain the recipient name who has acknowledged the alarm.

If many alarms behave similarly, users may define alarm families to facilitate alarm definition.

The service operates before a user has logged in and continues to operate after the user has logged off. If the service fails, recovery actions can be set up, such as restarting the service automatically or restarting the computer (for computers running Windows® Server 2008/2012, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 only).

UCME-OPC™ communicates with multiple OPC servers and with industrial automation software (SCADA) via OPC or DDE.