Almost every screen in RMCS Display has a MASTER MENU attached, either at the bottom (as shown here) or at the left (as shown in later images). The master menu provides quick, direct access to many of the most commonly accessed screens and functions. Some of the buttons on the menu are only visible when a minimum security level is met, for example, Guests cannot see the Acknowledge All or Logout buttons (among others).

In addition to buttons, the master menu also shows a small loop summary block and the name of the RMCS subsystem, whose color shows the subsystem's role: green for primary, orange for backup and blue for standalone (aka peer). The grid buttons may be colored by the worst alarm on the grid, which makes finding an alarm quick and easy.

"GRID" screen, showing stylized layout of radiation detectors using the detector channel names formatted into a 3x2 text block that uses color to indicate current condition (e.g. green is normal, yellow is ALERT alarm, etc.) A supervisor-level user account is currently logged in to the system, enabling all RMCS functions.

Channel items on a grid will display a tool tip showing the current channel status, value and an attempt to explain why an off-normal condition exists.

RMCS allows customers to define groups of points for use on CHANNEL LIST report screens. These screens show the current status and value of many points at the same time. The bar graphs provide a visual clue about how close a channel's value may be to an alarm limit.

The Hardware button on the MASTER MENU activates a screen that shows all of the CURRENT HARDWARE ALARMS. Both acknowledged and unacknowledged hardware alarms are listed on this page. The alarms are sorted by date/time with the NEWEST at the TOP of the screen. This is a dynamic display, if an acknowldged alarm clears, it will be immediately removed from the screen.

To help locate specific RM-80s by channel ID number or RM-80 name, RMCS Display includes a pair of cross reference screens. These screens color the RM-80 names by condition (normal, out of communication, configuring, offline or alarms disabled) and may provide a quick overview of the current status of all RM-80s at once. Clicking on an entry activates the MASTER screen for the selected item.

LOOP RECONFIGURE allows a supervisor to force RMCS to send a loop through a configuration cycle. This will cause data collection to be stopped on the loop side being configured for 20 to 40 seconds. The other side will still collect data if it is active.

The Database Utility can compare the CURRENT and MASTER database for a single RM-80, an entire LOOP or the entire RMCS. The Upload & Download buttons will force an upload or download on an RM-80 or Loop.

While it seems to be rare, sites occasionally may add, remove or replace an RM-80. The RM-80 Editor makes the process of adding the necessary records to the RMCS database (or removing them) as easy as possible. A new RM-80 may be defined from scratch or "cloned" from a similar, existing RM-80.

Currently, the RMCS Display program is the agent for RMCS user access control. All RMCS programs that are capable of making changes to the system get the currently user's access level from RMCS Display (and use GUEST unless RMCS Display tells them otherwise).

Any time that a channel reading is clicked or entered into the user input area, the RM-80 MASTER screen is displayed. The top portion of this screen contains the RM-80 tag, description and address along with a row for each channel on the RM-80. The next part of the screen may contain several different types of information, all relating to the selected RM-80.

Another possibility for the MASTER screen is to show a historical trend graph of one of the channels. The trend time period may be selected from a period of 10 minutes up to a period of 24 hours. The historical data is retrieved when requested from the Plant Data Recorder (PDR) component of PICS (the software underlying RMCS).

The RM-80 Database screen displays all of the "normal" monitor and channel items for an RM-80. Items outside the normal ranges are used by the RM-80 for special purposes such as history, status and internal calculations.

This screen is only accessible to supervisors and allows editing of any non-dynamic items. Writing to dynamic items (e.g. current channel reading) is prohibited by the RM-80. Note that only the CURRENT RM-80 item values are changed here!

The SYSTEM OVERVIEW shows the current status of the major parts of RMCS:

• Subsystems are the Windows workstations on the private RMCS network.
• 8800s are the EVI RM8800 Loop Interface computers that provide the primary SCADA node with access to both sides of all loops.
• Loops 1-4 are the four current loops that connect sets of RM-80s into a group. The DCS "Loop" is the data connection to the plant computer system.

LOOP STATUS displays all of the RM-80s defined in the RMCS database for a loop and their current overall status (OK, Out of Communication, Off line, or abandoned). The points where each RM-80 connects to a loop also show the status of the RM-80's connection to that loop and, because the status may be read from both the Alpha and Bravo sides of the loop, the connect points show the status read from the Alpha side on the top half of the block and the Bravo side on the bottom half. Typically, these are the same, but when one side of loop has communications isses (for example) the conditions may appear different from the different sides of the loop.

Pressing Page Up/Page Down here will cycle through the loops.

This screen composites useful information about every RM-80 on a loop. The top section shows the state of database uploads and downloads from/to the RM-80. The middle section shows the monitor status bits for every RM-80 on the loop. The bottom section shows the state of the RM-80's connection to the loop and the status of all of the RM-80's channels.

The RM-80 SWITCH STATUS screen actually reads the current switch status from ALL active RM-80s and displays the information on a single screen. The Safetly, DbLoad, Control and DbAlter switch positions are read and provided.

The LOOP COUNTERS screen shows an overview of the counters that the developers considered most critical/interesting. Counters are incremented each time a particular activity is performed or condition is detected.

This screen shows all of the counters maintained for a loop along with a list of the RM-80s on the loop, colored by their current status.

RMCS Display includes an RM-23P (like) interface that allows a supervisor-level user to read or write ANY monitor or channel item in the RM-80. Note that the RM-80s do not allow access to all addresses when reading through their Alpha or Bravo ports, however, when RMCS is operating in diagnostic mode and connected to a Charlie port, then all addresses become accessible.

Any RM-80's MASTER database may be directly edited using this tool. This is easier (and possibly safer) than booting an RM-80 with whatever is in the MASTER database, updating the RM-80's CURRENT database as needed and then committing the changes to the MASTER database.

The Monitor and Channel status bits may be controlled, along with a few other toggles such as power, bypass and the RM-80 switch settings. The bits may be set in two ways:

Immediate

Bit settings applied BEFORE the next run through the RM-80 value generator. These may or may not end up propagating to RMCS.

Persistent

Bit settings applied AFTER the RM-80 value generator so that they are ALWAYS sent to RMCS.

Since EVI's loop simulator was developed to test the RMCS software, the capability to mimic serial error conditions we have seen or imagined. This has allowed for more robust serial error handling by RMCS.

Error generation may occur randomly and/or periodically, limited to a specific number of firings, be specified for data received or sent and which loop side it applies to. Error generation events may be logged, making it easier to ensure that the error was detected and handled by RMCS when testing.