Interlock Protocol¶

What is Interlock Protocol?¶

Interlocks Protocol developed at ESRF is a way to use Wago PLC to continuously monitor for some input conditions and trigger a relay output when those conditions meet a thresholds.

What is the purpose?¶

Let’s imagine that some hardware of a beamline has to maintain a temperature between 20 and 80 degrees. Going under 20 degrees or over 80 may cause a hardware damage and imagine that in that case we would like to shutdown the power supply.

This is the typical case of use of interlocks protocol.

More details¶

On the same PLC we can have one or more interlock instances running where one interlock instance is made by:

One PLC’s digital output normally associated with a relay
One or more control conditions (input/output channels of the PLC)

Each control signal of an interlock instance has a defined “alarm condition”. This condition is a defined logic value (ON or OFF) for digital signals and a value range (defined by MIN/MAX thresholds) for analog signals. Whenever one of the control signal reaches an alarm condition, the interlock instance goes into “tripped” state and the alarm relay switches to the alarm position. By default the alarm position is OFF (relay open) but this can be inverted in the configuration of the interlock instance.

One can configure more than one interlock instance in a Wago controller. The controller stores the configuration in its internal non-volatile memory and is completely autonomous: as long it is switched on, the configured interlock functions are active.

The configuration is at first created in Beacon and then through Bliss we can display, upload and check the configuration of the interlock instances in the controller itself.

Steps to to make it works¶

To have this kind of interlocks system working we need these steps:

An interlock program isgmain should be loaded on the PLC normally by ESRF Electronic group, this program is generic (always the same for all PLCs)
Conditions have to be defined in the Beacon YAML configuration for that PLC
Conditions have to be uploaded to the PLC using the Bliss shell command interlocks_upload
From here on the PLC will operate by himself checking inputs and eventually activating relays; no need for Bliss to be active.

YAML configuration for interlocks¶

Insert the interlocks keyword in the same Wago configuration file seen above. Than specify a list of interlocks.

interlocks:
    - relay: intlckf
      flags: STICKY
      description: Interlock 1
      channels:
          - logical_name: esTf1
            type: TC
            min: 10
            max: 50
          - logical_name: esTf2
            logical_channel: 1
            type: TC
            min: -10
            max: 50.5
    - relay: intlckf
      relay_channel: 2
      flags: STICKY
      description: Interlock 2
      channels:
          - logical_name: esTr1
            type: TC
            min: -10
            max: 50.5
          - logical_name: o2
            type: OB

Configuration of the relay¶

relay: (Mandatory) is the logical name that will be activated in case of triggering
relay_channel: (default is 0) is the logical channel that will be triggered, this is because we can assign the same name to more than one input/output and consequently the will have different channel: the first will be 0, the second 1 and so on.
flags: (Optional)
- STICKY: once conditions are meet and the relay is activated, we should manually send the command interlock_reset through Bliss to reset it.
- INVERTED: the behaviour of the relay is Inverted: normally the relay is closed (letting current to pass) during operations and if triggered it will open (avoiding current to pass). If we put this flag the behaviour will be inverted.
- NOFORCE: by default when there is no alarm condition, the alarm relay is forced to the normal position and cannot be switched externally. The NOFORCE flag relaxes this constraint. In any case when the instance trips, the relay is always forced into the alarm state.
description: (Optional) is simply an user description of the purpose of the interlock condition.

Configuration of the channel¶

We can have digital or analog channels, the following are common config:

logical_name: (Mandatory) is the logical_name of the input/output that will be check, this has to be defined in the mapping.
logical_channel: (Optional, default is 0) is the channel that will be read in case of defined logical channel with same name.
type: (Mandatory)
- IB: Input Binary type (digital input)
- OB: Output Binary type (digital output)
- IW: Input Word value
- OW: Output Word value
- IV: Input Voltage
- OV: Output Voltage
- TC: Termocouple
flags: (Optional)
- INVERTED: The logic of alarm condition can be inverted with the INVERTED flag. By default digital control channels are normally ON and switch into alarm condition when they become OFF, and analog channels trip when their value is out of the min/max thresholds as explained above.
- STICKY: The STICKY flag has the same function than when it is used as an instance flag, but in this case it is associated to a particular channel and only takes effect when this channel is the one that trips.

In the case of an analog input/output signal we will have also

min: lower limit, going under will trigger the relay
max: higher limit, going over will trigger the relay

For termocouple the precision can be given in decimal, E.G. 50.7 Celsius.

Interlocks on Bliss shell¶

interlock_show() will display interlocks info concerning all Wagos already imported from yaml file or with config.get.

During the execution of this command the configuration loaded into Wagos will be downloaded and compared with the existing one in Beacon. If differences are found they will be printed in the shell.

interlock_show([*wagos]): display interlocks info only for given Wagos.
interlock_state() return a tuple containing the actual state of the interlocks, useful also in scripts or status bar for monitoring.
interlock_state(*wagos) return states only for given Wagos.

To use it inside a script it must be imported with:

from bliss.common.standard import interlock_state

Methods attached to Wago objects¶

wago_instance.interlock_reset(instance_num) it will reset a specific relay instance.

wago_instance.interlock_upload() will upload the configuration for the given wago_instance from beacon to the plc.

wago_instance.interlock_to_yml() will download the actual configuration from the wago and give back as an YML string. Very useful on an existing plc that you wish to convert from spec to Bliss.

wago_instance.interlock_state() will print the state of interlock relays for the given wago_instance.

interlock_show¶

BLISS [16]: wcid42hpps = config.get("wcid42hpps")
BLISS [17]: interlock_show()
Currently configured Wagos: wcid42hpps


Interlocks on wcid42hpps
Interlock configuration is not present in Beacon
On PLC:
1 interlock instance
  Instance #1   Description:
    Alarm relay = intlckhpps[0]  STICKY                             [ON]
    State = NOT TRIPPED
    10 channels configured:
      # 1  .... - hppstc1  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.5]
      # 2  .... - hppstc2  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.1]
      # 3  .... - hppstc3  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.2]
      # 4  .... - hppstc4  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.0]
      # 5  .... - hppstc5  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.1]
      # 6  .... - hppstc6  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.3]
      # 7  .... - hppstc7  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.3]
      # 8  .... - hppstc8  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY      [23.6]
      # 9  .... - pptc1  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY        [14.1]
      #10  .... - pptc2  TC  Low:0.0000 High:50.0000  STICKY        [14.4]

The same command can be used as a method of a the Wago.

BLISS [14]: wago_simulator = config.get("wago_simulator")
BLISS [15]: wago_simulator.interlock_show()
Interlocks on wago_simulator
Interlock Firmware is not present in the PLC

On Beacon:
2 interlock instance
  Instance #1   Description: Interlock
    Alarm relay = intlckf1[0]  STICKY                               [None]
    State = NOT TRIPPED
    4 channels configured:
      # 1  .... - esTf1  TC  Low:10.0000 High:50.0000               [None]
      # 2  .... - esTf2  TC  Low:-10.0000 High:50.5000              [None]
      # 3  .... - esTr1  TC  Low:10.0000 High:50.0000               [None]
      # 4  .... - esTr2  TC  Low:10.0000 High:50.0000               [None]

  Instance #2   Description: _Interlock 2
    Alarm relay = intlckf2[0]  STICKY                               [None]
    State = NOT TRIPPED
    2 channels configured:
      # 1  .... - esTr1  TC  Low:-10.0000 High:50.5000              [None]
      # 2  .... - esTr2  TC  Low:-10.0000 High:50.0000              [None]

The interlock show will check both Beacon configuration and Hardware configuration and will make evidence of any difference.