Recorder User Help
Alarm Operation - Delay Time

The delay time should be set to a value long enough to ignore nuisance or defrost events, but short enough to produce an alarm when an actual condition occurs. i.e if a defrost takes 20 minutes, and the temperature takes 30 minutes to return to normal, then a delay of at least 30 * 60 seconds should be entered (1800). 

This table shows time delays in hours, minutes and the values to be used in seconds.

1 Minute 60
5 Minutes 300
15 Minutes 900
30 Minutes 1800
1 Hour 3600
2 Hours 7200
3 Hours 10800
4 Hours 14400
8 Hours 28800
Max Delay 9.1 Hours 32767

When the delay time is adjusted down in time using the Alarm Setup dialog box, the new delay will take affect immediately. i.e if the alarm is counting with a delay of  1 Hour (3600), and alarm is counting with 2000 seconds left to count, and the delay is changed to 300. The delay will start counting down from 300.
This behaviour is new to Version 5. Micro Scan Version 4 alarm time delay was not loaded with the new value until the alarm was disabled and enabled again, or the line come within limits and went out of limits again.

When the delay time is adjusted up in time using the Alarm Setup dialog box, no change is made to the current count value if the alarm is currently counting. The new value comes into effect when the line comes out of alarm counting and starts counting again. 
This is because it will extend the delay time to an already counting alarm as follows. i.e the alarm has 1 hour delay and currently is counting at 1800 (30 minutes left), then the user changes the time to 7200, this would mean instead of another 30 minutes to count on the alarm, it would have another 2 hours to count, and thus would be out of limits for 2 hours 30 before the alarm occurs. Thus it is for this reason that no current time delay adjustment is made when the delay time is adjusted up.

When the MicroScan software is restarted either by a program close and restart or a computer reboot, all alarm times start again from 0. Thus if an alarm has been counting for 30 minutes, and has a delay of 1 hour, after a reboot or MicroScan program restart, the alarm will take another hour of software operation before it will be flagged as an alarm.