Patent ID: 7941262

Claim:
A method for storing plant non-image process signals for a plant having at least two operating states comprising: determining the current operating state of the plant; applying at least one of a plurality of corresponding compression methods responsive to the current operating state to a set of non-image process signals, wherein said applying the at least one of the plurality of compression methods comprises; acquiring non-image process signals at definable time intervals; storing the non-image process signals first in a header buffer at an instant other the instant corresponding to the current operating state; examining the stored non-image process signals to ascertain whether a non-image process signal has remained within an amplitude band since it was last stored and how long ago it was last stored, wherein the examining step involves selecting the size of the amplitude to correspond to the current operating state of the plant; determining the at least one of the plurality of compression methods to apply based on a result from examining the non-image process signals to minimize a loss of data significant for the non-image process signal; and storing the non-image process signal as a part of a compressed signal set if it was last stored longer ago than a predefined time interval.