Centrix R42 Release Notes

User interface changes

The track circuit wizard now uses the material design guidelines so the user interface has undergone a complete transformation from the previous prototype.

Before	After

Exclude maintenance windows

Existing maintenance windows can now be excluded from the training data set, this means you can now select a date range that includes any known maintenance works without affecting the quality of your data set. Excluding maintenance windows is enabled by default, but you can disable this feature by unchecking the box in the training data configuration.

Maintenance windows are highlighted in yellow on the Training data visualisation panel.

Training data visualisation and outlier exclusion

The training data is now shown in a graph like the validation was in the previous version. This allows you to check that the training data looks good before you calculate the thresholds.

If there are any periods of bad data that is not covered by a configured maintenance window, you can now manually exclude this by using the exclusion feature. Simply click the  icon and select the range you want to exclude on the graph. The data will be immediately removed from the training data set.

Threshold visualisation

The previous version of the track circuit alarm showed the threshold values and had a static diagram that explained what the thresholds represented. This version now has a dynamic graph representation of a track circuit occupation with all the threshold bands shown and annotated. The diagram will change as you configure the alarm sensitivity.

Validation visualisation

As before, the validation data set is shown with the alarm projections overlaid. However, this has now been enhanced to not only show the number of "alarm conditions" but also a more realistic value that represents the number of alerts that would have been raised based on a 1-hour suppression period.

Alert configuration

The alert configuration pane has been enhanced to allow labels and priority to be configured from within the wizard. Previously you had to do this from within the Alerts panel in Centrix.

Conflict warning

The track circuit alarm wizard now maintains a connection to the Centrix messaging system, so will receive messages for various updates. We have added a specific warning message if another user edits an alarm for the channel you currently have selected, this is designed to protect against conflicting or overwriting alarm conditions for the same channel.

This also means that any updates to sites, channels, alert labels, alerts (etc) will be automatically populated into your current wizard session so you don't need to refresh the page to see any changes made by other users or from within the Centrix application.

Exclusion by trace

Previously, values were excluded on a per-feature basis so excluding a trace on one feature didn't remove the associated value on the other features. The outlier removal has now changed to exclude the selected trace(s) across all the features. Consequently, excluding values on any of the features will update the histogram for all the other features for the same swing direction.

Outlier selection

Rather than selecting the inclusion range, the removal of outliers is now performed on an exclusion basis. This is to fit in with the approach explained above. To remove outliers, you should now select the range of values you want to remove from the data set and then click the cut button. Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the remaining data set.

You can revert all selected outliers for a swing direction by clicking the revert button on any of the features for the direction. This will only revert the outliers for the direction of the feature you have selected, to revert all outliers you will need to repeat this on a feature for the other direction.

Data inspection

Previously, the inspection/zooming process was tied to the removal of outliers. Now, you can zoom into any region of each histogram to see a distribution based on the selected range. This will not affect the training data set. You can inspect a range by selecting it on the histogram and clicking the zoom in button. To zoom out to see the whole data range, click the zoom out button.

Threshold activation/de-activation

We have now added the ability to de-activate each specific threshold for the alarm, previously you could exclude specific features but could not exclude the upper/lower boundaries. The (de)activation of the threshold boundaries is now done using the checkboxes underneath the histogram for each feature. By default, only the upper boundaries are activated.

Both the upper and lower boundaries will be shown on the histogram (if in range), activated thresholds will show in red and de-activated thresholds will show in yellow.

Total value feature

In addition to the existing 3 features (duration, average, max) we have now added the total feature to the alarm wizard.

Combined "points alarm"

The previous points alarm wizard generated up to 6 individual analogue alarms that were linked to the feature channels for the selected capture channel. This was problematic when alerts fired as features are generally tightly related (e.g. A long swing duration will generally cause a higher average value), and as such multiple alerts would be sent for a single swing.

We have now introduced a new Points Alarm that contains all the possible thresholds for a single capture channel. If any of the conditions of the alarm are met then a single alert will fire with detail on which features caused the alarm to fire.

Improved alert configuration

You can now elect to replace an existing points alarm (if available) or create a new one. This allows you to set-up multiple alarms for the same channel if desired. Additionally, we have added the selection of labels and suppression period to the alert configuration dialog so you can configure everything from one place.

Live updates

The points alarm wizard now maintains a permanent connection to the Centrix messaging system and listens for specific updates. This means that any new site, labels or alarms that have been created since opening the page will now be added to the corresponding selectors without the need for a page refresh.

If another user edits an alarm for the channel you have selected, you will receive an immediate notification in the top right of the screen.