9. Alarms
Three different types of alarms are available for use:
- Threshold Violation
- Excessive Downtime
- Offline Detection
You can choose to be alerted either by email or by text. If choosing text notification, you must enter your mobile phone number under personal settings as outlined in the Managing Personal Settings section. Information on creating and configuring alarms is available in the Managing Alarms section, and a description of each alarm type is listed below.
9.1 Threshold Violation
Threshold alarms can be set for the temperature being monitored from any Caddis device through the thermocouple port. Both low and high threshold alarms are available. To set a window for acceptable temperatures, low threshold and high threshold alarms can be set separately. See the Creating a Temperature Alarm section for an example.
9.2 Excessive Downtime
When setting up equipment (see the Building the Company Tree section), an Excessive downtime threshold can be set in seconds. Once this is set, downtimes that are longer than the threshold amount are reported in the Excessive Downtime Report, but can also trigger alarms. Using these alarms can help address equipment capacity issues by allowing organizations to be proactive in investigating excessive downtime occurrences as they happen, rather than after the fact. See the Creating an Excessive Downtime Alarm section for details on setting excessive downtime alarms.
9.3 Offline Detection
LCM2M devices usually go offline for one of two reasons: power failure and network issues. Power failure can result from things like tripped circuit breakers, but can also be the result of power being disconnected from a piece of equipment during planned maintenance. Network issues take many forms including, but not limited to, the following.
- Poor wireless network signal
- Cut or damaged Ethernet cable
- Firewall blocking access to the Internet
- Switches or routers that are offline
For a list of the firewall ports that must be open for LCM2M devices to function properly, see our guide on getting a device online.
If LCM2M devices are not online, they cannot report the data they are collecting to the LCM2M servers, which prevents you from viewing the data. Offline detection alarms can be set for equipment so that a user can be alerted whenever there is a connection issue. This ensures that any issues in your monitoring infrastructure can be dealt with quickly. See the Creating an Offline Detection Alarm section for details on setting offline detection alarms.