LBTO Alarm Notification/Management and Error Diagnostic Tools

The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO) Telescope Control System (TCS) is comprised of fifteen subsystems and accepts commands from the operator, as well as from six pairs of instruments. To the operator the TCS presents as a high-level set of GUIs with each GUI corresponding to one specific subsystem and providing full state information and varying degrees of control. The TCS GUIs not only provide the operators with broad control over all aspects of the telescope, but each individual GUI also reports problems within its domain through the use of color-coded messages and widgets indicating the seriousness of the issue. While there is significant problem reporting available to the operator, until recently there was no centralized and persistent visual indication or "annunciator" display for issues. In order to provide a way to present problems in a centralized and persistent fashion with "on-the-spot guidance" to ease the job of the operator and to have an acknowledge capability, the LBTO project decided to leverage an existing Alarm Handler which is a GUI client application associated with the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS)(1). This paper briefly describes the TCS sources of problem reporting information and how the EPICS Alarm Handler supplements the current system.