Monitoring Room Alert 7E With PageR Enterprise
Room Alert 7E is designed to
easily work with PageR software
which will significantly enhance the alert notification capabilities to allow notification
to
individuals, groups, hierarchies, different people at different sensors/locations, and
different people for different
times of the day. With PageR, alert notification methods
can be expanded to include email, Simple Network Paging Protocol
(SNPP), dialout
paging, web page update, logfile update, pop-up broadcast message, MSN Messenger,
audio alert, spoken
English text and more.
PageR can monitor Room Alert 7E using the SNMP Trap and SNMP Query monitored
objects. A
SNMP Trap monitored object can be configured to monitor (i.e. listen) for
SNMP Trap messages sent from the Room Alert
7E ID Box. A SNMP Query monitored
object can be used to check the current status of the Room Alert 7E ID Box at regular
scan intervals.
Using SNMP Trap Monitoring
Configure Room Alert 7E To Send
SNMP Trap Messages
Open the web server interface for the Room Alert 7E ID Box by entering
‘http://<IP
address>’ into the web browser location bar. Be sure to substitute <IP
address> with the IP address assigned
to the specific Room Alert 7E ID Box you
are working with. Then, click ‘Settings’ and select the ‘SNMP’
tab.
In the ‘SNMP Read Community Name’ field, you can either leave the default value
(public)
or enter your own community name. This field is used to control access to
Room Alert 7E from SNMP Query monitored objects
and does not apply for SNMP
Trap monitored objects. The ‘SNMP Trap Recipient 1’ field must contain the IP
address of the PageR Host System that will be receiving the SNMP Trap messages.
If you have other systems or applications
that you would like to send SNMP Trap
messages to, enter the IP addresses in the ‘SNMP Trap Recipient 2’
and ‘SNMP
Trap Recipient 3’ fields. Once finished, click the ‘Save Settings’ button.
SNMP Trap Monitored Object
Open PageR and click the ‘Options’ button. Click the ‘Add
Object’ button
on the ‘Monitored Objects’ tab and double-click the ‘SNMP Trap’ icon to
create a new SNMP Trap monitored object.
Enter a description for this monitored object in the ‘Description’
field and the IP
address of the Room Alert 7E ID Box in the ‘Agent’ field. Select an Alarm Object
from
the ‘Alarm Object’ drop down menu to be called when an SNMP Trap
message is received. Click ‘Ok’
and save your configuration to the Registry.
Note:
Leave the ‘Agent’ field blank if you
have multiple Room Alert 7E units and wish to
have a single monitored object listen for all SNMP Trap messages being
sent to
the PageR host system. If you have multiple devices sending SNMP Trap
messages to the PageR host system,
you can limit the messages that this
monitored object will alarm on by specifying a search string file in the ‘Apply
Search String File to Traps and Alarms on matches’ field that searches for a
unique text string in the Room Alert
7E SNMP Trap messages.
Using SNMP Query Monitoring
A SNMP Query monitored object
can be used to connect directly to a Room Alert 7E ID
Box and check the status of any specified counters defined in the
SNMP Query
monitored object.
Room Alert 7E SNMP Query Monitored Object
Open
PageR and click the ‘Options’ button. Click the ‘Add Object’ button on
the ‘Monitored Objects’
tab and double-click the ‘Room Alert 7E’ icon to
create a new Room Alert 7E monitored object.
Enter
a name in the ‘Identifier’ field that will help you identify this Room Alert 7E
SNMP Query monitored object.
In the ‘System Name’ field, enter the IP address of
the specific Room Alert 7E ID Box you wish to monitor.
Also, confirm that the
value in the ‘Community’ field matches the value in the ‘SNMP Read Community
Name’ field on the ‘SNMP’ tab in the ‘Settings’ section of the Room Alert 7E web
server
interface. The Room Alert 7E SNMP Query monitored object comes pre-
configured with a number of the SNMP objects available
for monitoring from the
Room Alert 7E ID Box. ‘Temp<temperature sensor number>F’ represents the built-
in and external digital temperature sensors from the Room Alert 7E ID Box.
‘DIO<switch sensor number>’
(not viewable in sample screen above, in table and
viewable when scrolling down) represents the available switch sensors
on the
Room Alert 7E ID Box. For more information regarding the setup of this monitored
object, please refer to
the ‘Room_Alert_7E_MO_ReadMe.txt’ file located in the
‘Room_Alert_7E_MO’ folder of the ‘Room_Alert_7E_MO_SNMP_MIBs’
folder.
Additional SNMP objects can be added to this monitored object by using the
SNMP Mib Explorer to ‘walk’
the Room Alert 7E ID Box. The default values can
be easily modified here to better reflect the actual environment conditions
that are
to be monitored.
To log the values received from the SNMP objects added to this monitored object,
check the ‘Log Samples’ checkbox. When monitoring is started, a log file will be
created in the ‘PageR
Enterprise’ directory with the name ‘SnmpQuery-<Object
ID>-(<System Name>).log’. ‘<Object
ID>’ will be replaced with the Monitored
Object ID and ‘<System Name>’ will be replaced with
the IP address entered in
the ‘System Name’ field of the SNMP Query monitored object.
Click the
‘Add’ button to open the SNMP MIB Explorer.
To monitor the sensors from the Room Alert 7E ID Box, expand
‘Private(4)’,
‘Enterprise(1)’, ‘AVTECH(20916)’, ‘Products(1)’, ‘Room
Alert 7E(2)’ and
‘Sensors(1)’. The ‘Temperature(1)’ MIB item contains the SNMP objects
for the
built-in and attached digital temperature sensors from the Room Alert 7E ID Box.
Eight (8) sensors will
be listed even though there are only four (4) actual sensors
that can be read from the Room Alert 7E ID Box. The first
four (4) of these
sensors will have a ‘C’ for ‘Celsius’. If you wish to set the SNMP Query to
check
temperature in Celsius, select the corresponding sensor number followed by a ‘C’.
The second set
of four (4) will have an ‘F’ for ‘Fahrenheit’. If you wish to set the
SNMP Query to check temperature
in Fahrenheit, choose the corresponding
sensor number followed by an ‘F’. The ‘Switch(2)’ MIB
item contains the three
(3) switch sensors from the Room Alert 7E ID Box. The first switch sensor listed
(‘DIO1(1)’)
corresponds with the leftmost pair of contacts from the green sensor
port on the back of the Room Alert 7E ID Box. Click
once on the sensor listed in
the right pane and a blue ‘+’ will appear indicating that this item will be
added to
the SNMP Query. If you wish to select multiple sensors, navigate to the
appropriate sensor number in the
left pane and click the item in the right pane
once. Once you are finished, click the blue ‘+’ under the
title bar.
Select a ‘Relop’ or relational operator for each item selected from the SNMP MIB
Explorer
and enter the desired threshold value in the ‘Value’ field. The ‘Relop’ is
used to compare the
value received from the sensor with the threshold value in the
‘Value’ field. For example, to check if the
value from the Room Alert 7E Temp
Sensor 1 is greater than 75F, choose the ‘Temp1F(5)’ sensor from the SNMP
MIB
Explorer, enter a ‘Relop’ of ‘>’ and enter a ‘Value’ (threshold) of ‘7500’.
After configuring the desired sensor thresholds, select an Alarm Object from the
‘Alarm Object’
drop-down list that will be called if any of the defined thresholds
are exceeded. Click the ‘Ok’ button,
then the ‘Accept’ button and save your
configuration to the Registry.
Configuring PageR using the methods
above will allow you to easily monitor Room Alert
7E devices and use PageR’s advanced notification methods to notify
staff when
environment issues occur. The Alarm Text in both the SNMP Trap and SNMP Query
monitored objects can be
modified and substitution keywords can be used to further
customize alert messages. Room Alert 7E’s temperature
and switch sensor monitoring,
combined with PageR’s advanced alerting and automatic corrective action capabilities
is a
powerful combination.
