A monitoring software idea

[pourkascheff]

Hi all, o7.
I'm working on a monitoring software in VB.NET but I'm looking for its root idea, the way it works, even if it's not in VB or C#, instead being a flowchart can vast my perspective to the matter. Since there is other old-school congeners living out there perfectly, without an error. Before creating a huge mess, I wanted to taste a few things first, seeking advice from you experts, then dive into it and share results for people with similar difficulties.

1) This thing asks a lot of external RS485 devices through 8 COM ports (Do you people transmit individually? I mean since it is sequential first it finishes COM1 then goes to 2 or you write it in a parallel way with BackgroundWorker thing?).
2) Then arrange all 300 parameters (Which each has a control on form either boolean (0, 1) or single or integer) based on their specified limits (minimum and maximum) if their offscan is false, for a not normal value, after spending an on-delay if condition still remains, trigger the alarm.
3) Missing a device will also considered as alarm.
4) Alarms should behave like a flip-flop way. Meaning that triggering it then getting normal immediately, is still alarm. In alarm history it turns to NORMAL but symbol is flickering and sounder is buzzing. After clicking on "Acknowledge" button Alarms (which are still alarm) turn from flickering to steady on and for normal ones will be rectified and steady off.

There is no documentations neither open-source examples nor algorithm-name is available.

What do you suggest to start?
Those 300 parameters/symbols (we call it tags) and their related names, offscan, on-delay, serialframe address, current value, compression value and status should be a CSV DGV table or dictionary? Cause it seems functions being repeated for them all. i.e.
001, House power main braker fail, False, 100, A2.2, True, False, Normal

Should I cycle a timer for getting new data (interpolation) and another for raising alarm?