Inhibit Alarms/Events (WITS Outstation)

Associated with: WITS Outstations

Security permission required to access this pick action: Disable Alarms

You can use Inhibit Alarms/Events to restrict the Field Device so that it does not report DNP3 events and/or logged events. However, an inhibit does not prevent the periodic logging of values or the reporting of current statuses or current values. Inhibits are useful when you know that a Field Device is going to generate unnecessary events, for example, during maintenance.

When you select Inhibit Alarms/Events, you can choose from:

• Inhibit Alarms, Events and Logged Events—Stops the Field Device from reporting any point changes.
• Inhibit Alarms and Events—The Field Device logs events instead of generating DNP3 point events, and so does not initiate a connection. As the events are logged, Geo SCADA Expert will only present these alarms and events after a logged data retrieval (see WITS Data Logging - Logged Data Retrieval).

• Inhibit Alarms—The Field Device logs events and generates DNP3 point events, but will not initiate a connection to report DNP3 events. Any DNP3 events are added to the Field Device's event queue and retrieved by Geo SCADA Expert when the next connection occurs.

  If your Field Device has a permanent connection to Geo SCADA Expert, selecting Inhibit Alarms will have no effect.

• Uninhibit—Removes the current alarm and event inhibit. As a result, the Field Device returns to logging events and generating DNP3 events as configured (see Severity Types and Actions for WITS Database Points).

If supported by your Field Device, you can also define a Timeout for the inhibit. The Timeout is an OPC time interval, in seconds (see OPC Time Format). If you enter 0, no Timeout is used. If you specify a Timeout, the inhibit will remain in place until:

• the Timeout expires
• a new inhibit is applied
• the inhibit is removed (by using the Uninhibit action).
  

If a Timeout is not used (or not supported) the inhibit applies until:

• a new inhibit is applied
• the inhibit is removed (by using the Uninhibit action).