An Interactive Alarm System for the CERN PS Accelerator Complex
The new CPS control system started operation in 1980 and is gradually being extended to control several accelerators and beam lines of the CPS complex. Part of the system and growing with it is a data-base driven alarm system. In each front-end computer, a program monitors the equipment, another the CAMAC interface and a third the beam currents. These programs send data to a central computer. In general-purpose consoles, a screen and touch-panel are dedicated to the alarm system. The alarms are displayed in various formats and levels of detail according to the wishes of the operator, who can also attempt automatic reset of individual faults or groups of related faults. Except for beam current monitoring, no details about the equipment are coded in the programs. The list of the equipment to be checked and information about it are stored in an off-line data base from which the necessary real-time files can be derived automatically. The result is a powerful and unified alarm system which can be easily maintained and updated.