Trend Historians (or Recorders) are widely used where data is required to be stored and secured for future analysis:
- Food & Drug Manufacture and Distribution (FDA: CFR21)
- Environmental Monitoring
- Storage Facilities
- Product Testing
- Research & Development
- Pressure Vessel Monitoring
Multiple trend recorders provide an effective replacement for multiple chart
recorders and are ideal for Batch Process Applications.
Customised operator displays and process trend charts are easily configured
to create eye-catching dynamic displays for local control, while at the same
time making the same displays available as Web pages. This means that
recent historical trends can be integrated into web-pages.
In common with other objects in the Hexatec software, auto-creation wizards
and advanced drag-drop operations make
the task of Recorder creation easy.
Individual Recorders
Recorders will routinely gather data to a data store file.
Recorded data is displayed in as a real-time trend graph on a display page.
The trend graph is persistent, that is, the historical data
on the display is retained even when you change displays or restart the system.
The Recorder defines the data store file and its management. There
may be many separate data recorders within a configuration, so it is possible to
create a series of independent data-logging tasks. This is especially useful
when there is a requirement to segregate data for separate analysis, e.g. Process Control Data,
Environmental Data, Quality Records, Batch Production, etc.
Each Recorder object contains one or more Recorder Groups, to make data
analysis and management easier.
Tools are supplied, which allow read-only access to the data stored within the
Recorder files. These include:
- Data conversion tool to allow import into Excel
- An ActiveX object which offers graphical displays of recorder data for inclusion in your own applications
- An OLE DB provider, which allows read-only access to recorder data from Visual Basic and other programming tools.
Recorders have an internal memory buffer, which can be used for temporary
storage of the data scans. This enables a recent history sequence to be
available for storage. A scrolled buffer gathers data, up to a predetermined limit.
The buffer can also be used as a temporary store should the main
recorder file become unavailable.