RTU Notifications

When an event happens that you need to know about, the RTU will send a notification.  Notifications take the form of SNMP traps, SMTP (email) messages, or SMS (mobile text) messages.

Notification Paths

What Notifications are Sent

Notifications are sent when:

a port goes into alarm state

a port goes into ARA (Alarm Receiving Attention) state

a port goes into historic state

a port returns to the normal state

an output port is activated

an output port is deactivated

a power failure is detected (Ethernet-connected RTUs only)

a log becomes 70% full

a configuration change is made to the RTU settings

a configuration change is made to an RTU port

the rules script goes into error

the rules script becomes valid again

a hardware failure is detected in the RTU

SNMP Notifications

The RTU is compatible with version 2c of SNMP.  The community strings and port numbers are configurable.  You can configure up to five IP addresses to which SNMP traps will be sent.  Each trap will be sent to each of the configured SNMP managers.

There are three different sets of bound variables sent with traps, depending on the nature of the event that caused the trap.

Port traps include the following bound variables: port name; port positions (another text label to further identify the port); port group (another text label to further identify the port); port number; port type; port number for port type; alarm count for port; alarm priority; user numeric information (always zero); user string information (always an empty string); trap notification number

RTU traps include the following bound variables: RTU name; trap notification number

Log traps include the following bound variables: RTU name; timed log percentage full; events log percentage full; audit log percentage full; trap notification number

SMTP (email) Notifications

You can configure one or two email addresses to which email messages will be sent.  Each message will be sent to each of the configured email address destinations.

Each message contains information to identify the RTU and port that caused the message to be sent.  The subject line of the email message can be analyzed by a mail daemon that can subsequently forward the message to another destination.

SMS (mobile text) Notifications

You can configure one or two phone numbers to which SMS text messages will be sent.  If you have an appropriate mobile modem attached to the RTU, each message will be sent to each of the configured SMS destinations.

Each message contains a summary showing the name of the RTU, the number of ports in alarm and historic states, and as many of the port names as can be fitted into an SMS message.

Notification Resends and Notification Numbers

Each message is assigned a notification number.  Notification numbers start at 1 and go to 999,999 before wrapping around back to 1.

The message number can be ignored, or it can be used in conjunction with the message acknowledgement scheme.  If this feature is enabled in the RTU, then the RTU will expect to receive a message (via SNMP command or HTTP command) containing the notification number.  If this is not received within a specified time interval, the RTU will re-send the notification.