Universal Device Driver Reference Manual

1.161 De-Icing-Buttons

The De-Icing-Buttons logical device controls the de-icing circuits of one or more antennas using a group of buttons. The idea behind this device is not to bind the antenna heating directly to the recognition of the "snow" condition, but to give the operator the opportunity to react to this condition in a meaningful and convenient way. Controlling the antenna heater works in the following way:

The meteorological station detects precipitation and / or low temperature. It may be a good idea to introduce some minutes delay there to verify it is really snowing (this must happen outside the De-Icing-Buttons device, e.g. by means of a Delayed-Gate-3 device.
After this delay, the device is showing Advance warning, Deicing Auto ON for 'preDelay' minutes (configurable, 2 minutes default). During this time the operator can decide to use one of the following modes:
- AUTO-mode: The deicing will be turned ON after the delay of 'preDelay' minutes
- MANUAL-ON: The deicing will be turned ON for 'manualTime' minutes (configurable, uses s one hour default). After this time the device will return to automatic mode
- MANUAL-OFF: The deicing will be turned OFF for 'manualTime' minutes. After this time the device will return to automatic mode
By pressing the button "RESTART" the timer for MANUAL-ON or -OFF will be restarted. The same happens, if the MANUAL-ON or MANUAL-OFF button is clicked again.

Device window pages

The following table shows which device window pages are available with this individual device type. Tool-bar functions not mentioned here are described at the general description of device windows .

--- This page shows the actual state and the buttons of the device
--- The device info page.
--- The maintenance page. The configuration parameters described below are set at this page.

Configuration parameters

At the maintenance page of the device window there are a couple of configuration parameters which must be set to interconnect the redundancy switch with the devices it shall monitor and control.

parameter	description
detectorId	Defines the ID of the parameter which signals that the "snow" condition is active. The parameter must be of type BOOL and must signal the snow condition as 'true'.
heaterId	Defines the ID of the parameter which switches the heating of this controller actually ON/OFF. The parameter is expected to be a CHOICE type with the selection "OFF" and "ON".
preDelay	The delay time (minutes) the device waits after snow detection until AUTO mode is started.
manualTime	The duration (minutes) of the MANUAL-ON or MANUAL-OFF states.

Configuring the De-Icing-Buttons togeter with a De-Icing-Multiplex Device

To use De-Icing-Buttons device as the input of a De-Icing-Multiplex device, you have to set the 'heatingRequestedId.#' configuration parameters of all used channels in the De-Icing-Multiplex device to the 'heating' status parameter of the De-Icing-Buttons device. The 'heaterId' configuration parameter of the De-Icing-Buttons device remains empty in this case.

Variables defined by this device driver

name	type	flags	range
info.driver	TEXT	R/O	StringRange R/O
info.type	TEXT	R/O	StringRange R/O
info.frame	TEXT	R/O	StringRange R/O
config.detectorId	TEXT	SAVE SETUP	StringRange
config.heaterId	TEXT	SAVE SETUP	StringRange
config.preDelay	INTEGER	SAVE SETUP	IntegerRange (1 .. 10)
config.manualTime	INTEGER	SAVE SETUP	IntegerRange (5 .. 180)
state	TEXT	R/O	StringRange R/O
remaining	TEXT	R/O	StringRange R/O
heating	BOOLEAN	R/O	BooleanRange R/O (true false)
snowDetected	BOOLEAN	R/O	BooleanRange R/O (true false)
advanceWarning	BOOLEAN	R/O	BooleanRange R/O (true false)
auto	TEXT	NOPRESET	StringRange
manualOn	TEXT	NOPRESET	StringRange
manualOff	TEXT	NOPRESET	StringRange
restart	TEXT	NOPRESET	StringRange