EBITrack 400 Asset User Guide - August 2022
- Nick Wright (Deactivated)
- James Spencer
Technical Overview
EBITrack 400 receivers are monitored by collecting data from their diagnostic link, which reports the status of the device once per second. Several items are reported back, each of which are recorded in a Centrix channel. The following channels are of particular interest for RCM:
IAVE: The average in-frequencey-band current. This should be high while the track section is clear and effectively zero when the track section is occupied. Many classes will affect the IAVE measurement, appearing as unexpected peaks or generally elevated current while a track section is occupied.
ITOT: The total current seen by the receiver (including in-frequency-band current). Excessive ITOT current can indicate fault conditions relating to traction current, failing tuning circuits and so on.
ITHR: The threshold current for this device. When IAVE drops below ITHR, the device reports the track section as occupied and vice versa.
ERR: This channel reports any fault code emitted by the device
Centrix analyses each track occupation to find anomalous track current (IAVE) measurements. When an anomalous occupation is detected, it is assigned a tag depending on the type of anomaly, and the health score for the device is dropped accordingly. A series of anomalous occupations will result in a 0% health score, indicating the track section requires immediate maintenance. The types of tags which can be applied to occupations are described below
Tag Types
TC_HIGH_CURRENT: Applied to occupations with generalised high occupation current.
TC_UNSTABLE_OCCUPATION_CURRENT: Applied to occupations with unstable occupation current (i.e. with unusual peaks or spikes mid occupation).
TC_SHORT_OCCUPATION: Applied to (apparent) occupations which are very short i.e. track flicks.
TC_LONG_OCCUPATION: Applied to (apparent) occupations which are very long.
TC_POOR_DATA: Applied to occupations where the quality of data is poor - can be due to datalogger misconfiguration.
The rules which are used to decide how these tags are applied can be adjusted from their defaults in the edit asset page (see below).
Health Score
A health score (between 0% and 100%) is assigned to the asset each time an occupation is observed. The health score is based on the proportion and type of tag applied to recent occupations. As a rule of thumb, if more than 20% of occupations are anomalous the health score will drop below 50%, indicating a maintenance intervention should be scheduled.
Creating or editing an asset
To create or edit an EBITtrack 400 asset begin by navigating to the asset list, using the menu on the top left of the Centrix front-end.
Use the create asset control on the top left to define a new asset, or search for a pre-existing asset by name, and edit using the pencil control on the right of the list entry.
If you’re creating a new asset, you’ll be asked to select the asset type, in this case an EBITrack 400 receiver.
You will then be presented with the asset create/edit display.
At the top, you will need to enter an asset name, and confirm the default asset parameters are acceptable. The asset parameters are as follows:
Asset Parameters
Parameter Name | Description |
Asset Name | The name of the asset |
Site | The site on which the asset is located |
Max % sample above occupied | The maximum percentage of the occupation data samples where the track occupation current is high before the occupation is treated as anomalous and a “high current” label is applied. |
Max state transitions | The maximum number of times the occupation current can cross above the occupation current threshold before it is treated as anomalous and an “unstable occupation current” label is applied. |
Clear current threshold | Defines the clear current threshold (the current threshold above which the track section is considered clear), as a percentage of the typical observed clear current. |
Occupied current threshold | Defines the occupied current threshold (the current threshold below which the track section is considered occupied), as a percentage of the typical clear current. |
Maximum score | An internal Centrix counter. Defines the proportion of recent occupations which, if identified as anomalous, cause the health score to drop to zero. A lower number will cause the health score to drop faster and vice versa. |
Ellipse ID | The asset’s Ellipse ID number |
Good occupation weight | The relative weight of a good (i.e. non-anomalous) occupation when the health score is calculated. A higher weight will cause the health score to recover faster after anomalous occupations are observed and vice versa. |
Track circuit length | The length of the track circuit section, in meters. |
Anomalous occupation weight | The relative weight of a bad (i.e. anomalous) occupation when the health score is calculated. A higher weight will cause the health score to drop faster after anomalous occupations are observed and vice versa. |
Saturation score | The maximum number of recent anomalous occupations which will be counted when calculating the health score. A higher number will result in the health score taking longer to start rising from zero percent after a many anomalous occupations have been observed. |
Minimum samples | The minimum number of data points recorded during an occupation for it to be analysed. If fewer samples are recorded, the occupation will receive a “bad data quality” label. |
Min occupation duration in milliseconds | Occupations shorter in duration than this will be labelled as “short occupation” and be considered anomalous |
Max occupation duration in milliseconds | Occupations longer in duration than this will be labelled as “long occupation” and be considered anomalous. |
These asset parameters can be used to adjust the behaviour of the occupation labelling system and the health score calculation.
As shown above, asset-to-asset relations can be defined, for example linking adjacent track sections, points and crossings. The latitude and longitude of the asset can also be defined. At a future date, these parameters will be used to evaluate the impact of weather/environment on the asset and associate the performance of adjacent/joined assets.
Once all the fields are filled in or changed, the save changes control at the bottom of the page must be clicked to save changes.
Creating or editing alarms
Alarms for EBITrack 400s are based on an asset health score. The asset health score is a percentage, with 100% assigned to assets with no apparent faults, 0% assigned to assets with many anomalous occupations indicating a fault, and percentages in between reflecting to proportion of good to anomalous occupations. The health score can be viewed on the asset status page (shown in the section below) and is treated as a synthetic data channel on the asset in Centrix. Alarms can be raised when the asset health score is low.
Alarms for EBITrack 400 assets can be created and updated either in bulk using the alarm wizard, or individually. In both cases, begin by navigating to the alarm management page using the menu on the top left of the Centrix front-end.
To use the alarm wizard to create/update multiple alarms, use the create multiple alarms control in the top left. To create an individual alarm use the create new alarm control on the top left. To edit an existing alarm individually, find the alarm in the main list on the right, highlight it, and use the edit control.
Using the alarm wizard
After clicking the create multiple alarms control you will be presented with the following menu, which allows you to pick the alarm type to create. For EBITrack 400s, select the Track Circuit alarm option.
After selecting Track Circuit alarms you will be presented with the following page.
First highlight the box labelled Automatic.
Next, select the Alarm Sensitivity level on the bottom left. A high sensitivity alarm will provide earlier warnings about developing faults but at the cost of false alarms, whereas a low sensitivity will provide less timely notice of faults but with minimal false alarms.
Next, select the assets you want to create alarms for using the Select Assets control. The list can be filtered by site or group if needed.
The training data date range selectors do not need to be adjusted for EBITrack 400 alarms, as the relevant “learned” alarm parameters are updated automatically.
Once all the above items have been completed, use the Next control to generate/update the alarms.
You will then be presented with the alarm generation status page.
After a few moments, each asset will have an alarm generated for it. A green checkmark will appear next to each alarm in the list once the alarm calibration process is complete.
At the top of the page, you can edit the following items:
Item | Description |
Labels | Alarms can be assigned a label, which can be considered as a mailing list. Alarm labels can be created and edited on the alarm label page. These are useful when you have a regular group of users which need to be notified of multiple types of alarm (see the section on alarm labels below). |
Emails | As an alternative or addition to alarm labels, individual email addresses can be associated with the alarm here, if needed. |
Severity | Defines the severity level of the alarms, which will be included in the alarm email and alarm status page. |
Suppression period | After an alarm has been triggered, no further alarm will be triggered for the duration specified here. This can be used to prevent multiple alarms being raised for the same fault event. |
If you click on the alarms in the list, you can assign additional alarm labels to individual alarms if needed and edit the Advanced Configuration options shown below.
These advanced options should normally be left at the default shown here, however if you wish to edit them, refer to the description of these parameters in the Creating and editing assets section above.
Creating and editing individual alarms
For more control over alarm creation, alarms can be created and calibrated individually, using the Create new alarm or Edit control on the alarm management page. When these controls are clicked you will be presented with the edit alarm page.
Here the following items can be specified
Item | Description |
Name | The name of the alarm |
Severity | Defines the severity level of the alarm, which will be included in the alarm email and alarm status page. |
Asset Alarm Type | For EBITrack 400, specify the asset health alarm type. |
Asset | The asset to alarm on. |
Site | The site on which the asset is located. |
Health Score | The asset channel showing the health score – note that this channel will be created and populated automatically by Centrix for EBITrack 400 assets. |
Threshold | The alarm threshold – if the health score drops below this an alarm will be raised. |
Debounce Period | If the health score rises above the threshold (after dropping below it) within this period of time, an alarm will not be raised. |
Suppression | The suppression periods for the alarm. If duplicate or additional alarms are raised immediately after this alarm is raised, within the specified period, they will be suppressed. This can be used to prevent multiple alarms being raised for the same fault event. |
Emails | The emails of individual alarm recipients. Can be used in addition to alarm labels. |
Labels | The label applied to the alarm. Can be considered as a sort of mailing list. See the section on alarm labels below. |
Subscribed | If unchecked, alarms can be raised but the alarm emails won’t be sent out, requiring the user to monitor the alarm status page instead. |
Once all of these items have been completed, use the Save Alarm control to save or update the alarm.
Using alarm labels
Alarm labels can be considered as a mailing list, typically used where a team of people are monitoring a group of assets. When an alarm label is created, a list of emails can be added to it, so that when an alarm with this label is raised all the recipients will receive an email. Alarm labels can be created and edited by navigating to the Alarm Labels page via the menu in the top left of the front-end.
Viewing the current and historical status of alarms
The current and historical status of alarms can be monitored in real-time by navigating to the Alarm Status page via the Centrix menu in the top left of the Centrix front-end.
By default, this page lists all active alarms. Alarms which have just been raised have a red exclamation icon next to them, and alarms which have been raised in the past but not yet acknowledged have a blue icon. The list of alarms can be filtered by type, site, and severity using the controls on the left of the page, with an option to include alarms which are not active.
Clicking on an alarm raise report will open a small menu below it (as illustrated above). From here you can navigate to the asset status page, the alarm raise history, or alarm raise report using the relevant control. Once the alarm has been investigated and dealt with, clicking the Clear Alarm control will remove the alarm raise from this page.
Viewing the current and historical status of an asset
The current and historical status of an asset can be investigated and viewed by clicking on the asset in the asset list page.
When the asset view page is first opened, the asset playback tab is shown by default.
For EBITrack 400 devices, the most recent track occupation is shown. Using the time and navigation control above the chart, occupations can be flicked through by date, alarm raise, event, or tag. In the image above we can see that this occupation has been given two tags by Centrix: a high current and unstable current tag, indicating that this occupation is anomalous. When occupations receive tags like this, the health score for the associated asset drops.
Beneath the occupation chart, the most recent value recorded on each asset channel is displayed. These values will be updated as the time and navigation control at the top of the page is moved.
Configuration parameters associated with the asset are listed in the asset details table at the bottom.
The next tab on the asset page is the alarm tab. Here all the alarms associated with this asset are shown in the alarms table. If there are other alarm types available for this asset which have not yet been created, they are listed in the missed asset alarms table. By clicking the checkmark next to the missing alarm entries and using the Generate Selected Alarms control, these alarms can be automatically generated.
Finally, by clicking on the health tab, a time-series chart showing the historical health score is shown, allowing the user to review the health of the asset over time.
Generating reports
The reporting tool in Centrix can be accessed via the Centrix menu in the top left of the Centrix front-end.
Several types of report can be generated to summarise historical data in Centrix. For EBITrack 400 assets, the following reports may be useful.
Report Type | Description |
Alarm Raise Times | A report which groups alarm raises by day, week, or month. Can be used to spot patterns in asset condition. |
Alarm Raise Count | Lists alarm raises per asset over a period of time. Can be used to see which assets have historically suffered poor performance and rank assets for triage. |
Analogue Histogram | Can be used to look at the distribution of analogue samples, for example to identify anomalous data on the non-current channels of the device. |
Raw Analogue Events | Can be used to export raw data for analysis in Excel. |
If additional reports would be useful, please notify the Centrix team so that they can be included in a future release.