Pharos | Solutions | Pilot Exception Alarms

Powerful broadcast alarms and device monitoring

Pharos Exception is a powerful broadcast alarm and monitoring system providing channel and hardware grouping of alarms and alarm visibility for operators and administrators. Exception can subject any collected 3rd party alarm to the same grouping, time masking and filtering that comes as standard with native Pharos alarms.

Proven technology

Pharos Exception uses the same messaging mechanism as the proven Pharos Information
centre. By using XML, tags can be easily customised for additional metadata on alarms as the system requires. Standard XML processing tools allow off-the-shelf XML transforming to other file formats.

Key features

Manage native Pharos, GPI and SNMP alarms using the same technologies
Flexible alarm grouping and masking to manage suitable visibility to operators, supervisor and managers.
Time masking on all alarms, groups and combinations of both
Add custom metadata to alarm equipment and fault details
Real-time java enables instant delivery of new and updated alarm states.
Send alarm groups to other systems via SNMP for further processing and analysis.

User notification

Both raw and grouped alarms can be filtered by user, meaning people can only see alarms applicable to their role. Users can subscribe to any number and combination of alarms and groups for immediate notification of faults when they occur.

Extensive grouping capabilities

Free text is used to determine members of groups, giving almost limitless ways in which the alarms can be grouped together. An alarm can be a member of as many groups as required, but typically groups include hardware, TX channel and operation areas.

Time masking

Any alarm can have forwarding restrictions placed on it, resulting in groups and alarms being silenced during configurable time periods. Any number of time slots can be setup during which alarms are ignored. This allows the suppression of alarms when channels are off air.

XML Alarm Logging

All alarms are recorded in XML format by the Alarm Manager. Any state changes are saved to text files which can be viewed from the Pharos Information Centre for simple fault diagnosis.
The XML can be accessed from a network share enabling other systems to process this information to extract trends and other performance data.

GPI and SNMP integration

GPI and SNMP alarms (MIB and version dependent) can be collected and grouped by Pharos Exception. Because they are converted into the Exception XML format they can be subjected to the same grouping, time masking and visibility options as native Pharos alarms. Channel or hardware group alarms can also be sent to SNMP agents for further processes.

Custom alarms

Many message types including XML, GPI, Pilot message or SNMP alarms can be converted to the Exception format. This means alarms from multiple sources can be collected into custom groups which can then be subjected to further filtering.

Backwards compatible

Any Pilot message can be converted to an Exception alarm and have any amount of metadata attached to it. This allows legacy Pharos error messages, or any pilot message to be managed as an Exception alarm in the same way as native XML alarms.

Real time technology

Exception uses real time Java technology, pushing alarms and updated states to operators as soon as they occur.

Information Centre integration

The Pharos Information Centre is a centralised web based administration tool for that allows maintenance and Pharos Support Services to remotely administer Pharos systems. It is from here that the Alarm Viewer can be accessed to display all raw and group alarm information. Unless a filter is applied to the logged on user, the Alarm Viewer will display all alarms and groups.

Pilot MCR integration

Using the Selector Intranet panel, the Alarm Viewer can be accessed via a Selector button, enabling operators to view alarm details from a Pilot MCR or Playtime workstation. Because alarms can be converted to and from pilot messages, users can opt to have Selector buttons flash, giving clear yet unobtrusive notification of a fault.