ELI-ALPS, Szeged, Hungary
ELI-ALPS will be the first large-scale attosecond facility accessible to the international scientific community and its user groups. Control system development has three major directions: vacuum control systems, optical control systems, as well as the integrated control, monitoring and data acquisition systems. The development of the systems has asked for different levels of integration. In certain cases low-level devices are integrated (e.g. vacuum valves), while in other cases complete systems are integrated (e.g. the Tango interface of a laser system). This heterogeneous environment is managed through the elaboration of a common and general architecture. Most of the hardware elements are connected to PLCs (direct control level), which are responsible for the low-level operation of devices, including machine protection functions, and data transfer to the supervisory control level (CLIs, GUIs). Certain hardware elements are connected to the supervisory layer (cameras), as well as the Tango interface of the laser systems. This layer handles also data acquisition with a special focus on the metadata catalogue.
