Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The control systems in big physics facilities may be updated several times a year. Ideally, prior to each release all components of the control system would be tested. One common control system component is a DAQ driver which is generally tested manually according to a predefined test plan. In order to simplify this process, we have developed the TestBed suite, a test framework that executes tests automatically. TestBed is a PXI chassis which contains an embedded controller running the control system on Scientific Linux and a DAQ board capable of generating and acquiring analog and digital signals. TestBed provides an easy-to-use framework written in Python and allows for the quick development and execution of automatic test scripts. From a hardware perspective, each system under test is physically connected to TestBed with a connector board using a predefined pin configuration. Both the system under test and TestBed are connected to the network. The resulting test framework makes it possible for the automatic tests to be executed with each new release of the control system, thus liberating human resources and ensuring complete consistency and repeatability in the testing protocol.
Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
In a physics facility containing numerous instruments, it is advantageous to reduce the amount of effort and repetitive work needed for changing the control system (CS) configuration: adding new devices, moving instruments from beamline to beamline, etc. We have developed a CS configuration tool, which provides an easy-to-use interface for quick configuration of the entire facility. It uses Microsoft Excel as the front-end application and allows the user to quickly generate and deploy IOC configuration (EPICS start-up scripts, alarms and archive configuration) onto IOCs; start, stop and restart IOCs, alarm servers and archive engines, etc. The DCDB tool utilizes a relational database, which stores information about all the elements of the accelerator. The communication between the client, database and IOCs is realized by a REST server written in Python. The key feature of the DCDB tool is that the user does not need to recompile the source code. It is achieved by using a dynamic library loader, which automatically loads and links device support libraries. The DCDB tool is compliant with ITER CODAC (used at ITER and ESS), but can also be used in any other EPICS environment.
