The Human Machine Interface – HMI subsystem serves for visualization of:
- the technological processes
- archive and logging
- supplying the operator‘s dialogue
It consists of one or more Operator Working Stations – OWS, scattered along the whole system hierarchy.
Its structure and functionality are universal for the whole Computer Automation System – CAS. On the other hand, the generated views, graphics and tables, and the operator dialogue functionalities are specific with different implementation for each type of automation object.
The main functions of the HMI subsystem are:
Creating and carring out various views, graphics, tables or text messages to the OWS, to display the state and behavior of the controlled objects.
Carring out the dialogue with the operator and accept various types of commands, command sequences, data- and manipulation requests etc.
Managing the rights and priorities of OWS’s, where each of them could obtain various combination of rights, priorities and action span.
Each OWS, according to his current settings, can be supplied with a specific set of data. If the OWS definition changes, the appropriate data flows are changes too.
Supporting graphical user interface based on contemporary graphic technologies, enabling:
- carry out arbitrary windows count, on one and more monitor
- scale, pan and organizing graphical windows
- manage windows and create user configured monitor displays
- use dialogue menus
- using libraries of element templates to build and edit process views on different levels
- creation of individual profiles by composing of various sets of views in different windows and arrange them on the OWS monitors
Creating, edit and visualize process view on “system”, “regional” and “object“ levels as:
- general system information, including status of the main system structures
- general system diagrams, including statuses of all system’s objects
- general communication diagrams, including communication statuses of system and object level
- detailed object views, including schematic diagrams of power distribution substations, railway station’s track diagrams etc.
- detailed views on “bay” level, including schematic diagrams and additional information of one or more selected bays, sections, parts
- status field etc.
Creating, edit and visualize tables with different contents and format of:
- process- and “calculated” measures
- logs and archives of process data, alarms, operator’s actions, command execution results containing:
– event type
– alarm type – permanent or temporary
– occurrence time
– reception status – quitted etc.
Establish different kind of filters to select and extract loged and archived data according to various criteria.
Creating, edit and visualize graphics of:
- current process- and “calculated” measures
- archived process- and “calculated” measures
- various combinations of selected measures etc.
Presentation of the state and behavior of technological objects, i.e. schematic diagrams of power distribution substations, rail station’s track diagrams, industrial installations etc., by various graphical and tabular views.
Display arbitrary message information over the GUI.
Display process and other logical or mathematically calculated data on graphs or diagrams.
Sporadic, cyclic and periodic upgrade of the displayed information.
Process state substitution.
Support the following operator functions:
- carry out views
- supervise the data transfer
- receive, carry out and visualize process- and other logical or mathematically calculated information
- display the status- and quality of the process information
- manually substitute and recover data
- activate and deactivate commands and command sequences
- input and output text messages
- create and edit various user defined graphs, diagrams
- register operator logins and logouts
- input and edit action span, administration rights and priorities
- input command and sequences of commands
- input data requests
- input controlling points/markers and restrictions
- input and change configuration data and parameters – coefficients, measure limits
- to provide diagnose- and test procedures
- confirmation of evets and alarms etc.
Register occurred alarms and event with a precision of 10 msec.
The alarms are specially colored with background, blinking and other attributes to express their weight and priority.
The count and type of alarms as also their weight and priority displayed on the various OWS should be different with respect to their settings.
Arrange the incoming alarms and events in chronological ordered lists.
Sort lists by various filters.
Suppress alarm or event when it occurs in case of defect system units known by the operator. The processing of false alarms is suppressed for the period of the device failure and after repair the processing is recovered.
Each blocking or unblocking operator manipulation is recorded in the system archives.
Support functions for confirmation of events and alarms occurring.
Be able to confirm alarms and events using:
- object scheme
- logs of alarms and events
- archives
The operator’s confirmation of alarms could be done on:
- single alarm in a list
- all alarms on one page being part of a list
- single alarm from object view
- all alarms on one page from object view
By alarm confirmation, its status changes from “confirmed” to “unconfirmed“. After confirmation, the transitional alarms are deleted form the list, but still stay inside the Historical Information Server – HIS. Permanent alarms remain in the lists, but their status is being changed.
Alarm confirmation is separate for each OWS.
Alarm confirmation is valid only inside operation span of the current OWS.