| Paper | Title | Page |
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| TPPB19 | A GUI Builder Environment Based on LabVIEW for the Virgo Project | 202 |
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The Virgo project consists of a suspended Michelson Interferometer with two 3-km-long arms aiming to detect gravitational wave signals from cosmic sources. In order to support the ongoing Virgo commissioning activities and facilitate the transition to full operational mode, the need for new, quickly built, flexible, and graphically rich Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) arose. The challenge was to set up a GUI building environment able to deal with those requirements and to smoothly integrate it with the existing distributed control software framework. We have been able to fulfill these requirements by using LabVIEW and by enhancing its functionalities within three main components: a LabVIEW interface to the Virgo control framework, similarly to what has been done for other frameworks such as EPICS or Tango*, **; a common functions library; and a common building blocks. This GUI building environment required an initial effort of customization by establishing the right methodology and implementing the basic components, but has enabled the building of new GUIs with a high level of flexibility and maintainability.
* D. Thompson and W. Blokland, “A Shared Memory Interface between LabVIEW and EPICS,” ICALEPCS 2003. ** J-M Chaize et al., The ESRF Tango Control System Status, ICALEPCS 2001. |