What is the Alarm System and can it be used from my code?

The Alarm System provides a mechanism for notifying asynchronously operators and registered applications of the occurrence of important anomalous conditions that can disrupt the observation or be potentially dangerous for the ALMA system. For more detailed information, please see section 3.14 of the ACS Architecture document.

Using it from my code

The current callback implementation of the ACS Alarm System does not quite match ALMA requirements and is undergoing major changes at the moment. While there are a few examples around (see ACS/LGPL/CommonSoftware/acsexmpl/ws/src/acsexmplClientAlarmThread.cpp in the ALMA CVS repository) it is recommended to delay incorporating alarms into your subsystem code until the new event-based implementation stabilizes and adequate documentation is provided. This should save you time in the future. If you are curious about the current status of the newer implementation, the info you desire can be found here.