Alarms

The NCCS must support the detection, triggering, broadcasting and logging of alarms.

The present system supports alarms in the following way :

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alarms can be triggered directly by an observing program (by switching a bit),

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standard alarms patterns i.e. slow (STEER alarm), fast (OBS alarm), continuous (CPU alarm),

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alarms can be triggered via a watchdog timer (different time constants supported are 5s, 19m, 38m, 1h16m and infinity).

The NCCS must provide the above alarms.

In addition to the above requirements the NCCS must provide :

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a log of all alarms which keeps track of the time and origin of when they occurred,

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support for the present buzzer alarm,

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a synthesised voice alarm (in addition to the present buzzer alarm) which is linked up to the public address (PA) system and which also phones the appropriate staff member on duty,