| Paper | Title | Page |
|---|---|---|
| RPPB01 | The CERN Control Centre: Setting Standards for the 21st Century | 603 |
|
||
| After a 15-month construction period, the CERN Control Centre (CCC) began operating on February 1st, 2006. The CCC now controls all of CERN's accelerators, technical infrastructure, and cryogenics plants. In addition, most LHC experiments as well as other scientific laboratories throughout the world, are adopting some of its design options (furniture, layout, colours, …) for their own control rooms. This paper presents the main ideas behind the ergonomic choices. | ||
| RPPB03 | Alarms Configuration Management | 606 |
|
||
| The LHC alarm service, LASER, is the alarm tool used by the operators for the accelerators and the technical services at CERN. To ensure that the alarms displayed are known and understood by the operators, each alarm should go through a well-defined procedure from its definition to being accepted in operation. In this paper we describe the workflow to define alarms for the technical services at CERN. We describe the different stages of the workflow like equipment definition, alarm information specification, control system configuration, test, and final acceptance in operation. We also describe the tools available to support each stage and the actors involved. Although the use of a strict workflow will limit the number of alarms that arrive to LASER and ensure that they are useful for operations, for a large complex like CERN there are still potentially many alarms displayed at one time. Therefore the LASER tool provides facilities for the operators to manage and reduce the list of alarms displayed. The most important of these facilities are described, together with other important services like automatic GSM and/or e-mail notification and alarm system monitoring. | ||
| RPPB04 | SNS Logbook | 609 |
|
||
| An electronic logbook has been developed for the Spallation Neutron Source. This logbook serves as a means of chronologically recording daily operations activities and experiences and communicating them to appropriate groups. The logbook is database-driven and integrates into our existing database schema. The interface to the logbook is web-based and works with most modern web browsers on the major platforms. Additionally, a Java package provides a simple mechanism to post entries from within our XAL applications. | ||
| RPPB05 | Applying Agile Project Management for Accelerator Controls Software | 612 |
|
||
| Developing accelerator controls software is a challenging task requiring not only a thorough knowledge of the different aspects of particle accelerator operations, but also application of good development practices and robust project management tools. Thus, there was a demand for a complete environment for both developing and deploying accelerator controls software, as well as the tools to manage the whole software life cycle. As an outcome, a versatile development process was formulated, covering the controls software life cycle from the inception phase up to the release and deployment of the deliverables. A development environment was created providing management tools that standardize the common infrastructure for all the concerned projects; help to organize work within project teams; ease the process of versioning and releasing; and provide an easy integration of the test procedures and quality assurance reports. Change management and issue tracking are integrated with the development process and supported by the dedicated tools. This approach was successfully applied for all the new controls software for LEIR, SPS, LHC, injection lines, and CNGS extraction. | ||
| RPPB06 | Device Control Tool for CEBAF Beam Diagnostics Software | 615 |
|
||
| By continuously monitoring the beam quality in the CEBAF accelerator, a variety of beam diagnostics software created at Jefferson Lab makes a significant contribution to very high availability of the machine for nuclear physics experiments. The interface between this software and beam instrumentation hardware components is provided by a device control tool, which is optimized for beam diagnostics tasks. As a part of the device/driver development framework at Jefferson Lab, this tool is very easy to support and extend to integrate new beam instrumentation devices. All device control functions are based on the configuration (ASCII text) files that completely define the used hardware interface standards (CAMAC, VME, RS-232, GPIB) and communication protocols. The paper presents the main elements of the device control tool for beam diagnostics software at Jefferson Lab. | ||
| RPPB07 | The System Overview Tool of the Joint Controls Project (JCOP) Framework | 618 |
|
||
| For each control system of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments, there will be many processes spread over many computers. All together, they will form a PVSS distributed system with around 150 computers organized in a hierarchical fashion. A centralized tool has been developed for supervising, error identification and troubleshooting in such a large system. A quick response to abnormal situations will be crucial to maximize the physics usage. The tool gathers data from all the systems via several paths (e.g., process monitors, internal database) and, after some processing, presents it in different views: hierarchy of systems, host view and process view. The relations between the views are added to help to understand complex problems that involve more than one system. It is also possible to filter the information presented to the shift operator according to several criteria (e.g. node, process type, process state). Alarms are raised when undesired situations are found. The data gathered is stored in the historical archive for further analysis. Extensions of the tool are under development to integrate information coming from other sources (e.g., operating system, hardware). | ||
| RPPB08 | The Development of Detector Alignment Monitoring System for the ALICE ITS | 621 |
|
||
| A real-time detector alignment monitoring system has been developed by using commodity USB cameras, spherical mirrors, and laser beams introduced via a single mode fiber. An innovative control and online analysis software has been developed by using the OpenCV (Open Computer Vision) library & PVSS (Prozessvisualisierungs- und Steuerungssystem). This system is being installed in the ALICE detector to monitor the position of ALICE's Inner Tracking System subdetector. The operational principle and software implementation will be described. | ||
| RPPB10 | Use of E-Logbook in VEPP-5 Control System | 624 |
|
||
| An electronic logbook (e-logbook) becomes a must for large experimental facilities not only during operation, but also at building and commissionning stages (where VEPP-5 is now). Unfortunately, the "market" of such products is almost nonexistent. So, the choice is narrow: either use some other lab's software (adapting it for local needs) or create your own one from scratch. We have chosen the former way and picked DOOCS e-logbook from DESY. Main changes concerned localization (since Russian uses cyrillic letters, not latin) and data feeding mechanism (due to different model of logging from applications). Integration with GIS and alarm system is being examined. | ||
| RPPB11 | EPICS CA Gateway Employment in the BEPCII Network | 627 |
|
||
| The control network of the BEPCII is divided into two separate different subnets. In order to access IOC PVs between the separate subnets as well as IOC PVs from the campus network, we adopt EPICS CA gateway in the BEPCII network. This paper describes the EPICS CA gateway employment and network management in the BEPCII . | ||
| RPPB13 | The First Stage of the Post Mortem Analysis Software Used for the Hardware Commissioning of the LHC | 629 |
|
||
| After a failure during the operation of the LHC, leading to a beam abort or a power abort, a coherent set of so called “Post Mortem” information will be collected from the various subsystems to analyze the causes of failure. To be able to understand the failure before resuming LHC operation, the collected information needs to be analysed within a few minutes and this requires a highly automated analysis system. To develop the Postm Mortem Analysis software, we use a staged approach by providing self-contained software modules, first for the individual systems, such as the Quench Protection System, the Power Converter and the Power Interlock Controller, and second for the hardware commissioning when these systems will interact. All of these modules are made using LabVIEW and form the building blocks of the final Post Mortem Analysis software. A large part of the code developed over the last years for the quality test of the LHC magnets has been reused, profiting from the similarity of the algorithms. This paper describes the present state and the additional stages needed to build the final system. | ||
| RPPB14 | Systematic Production of Beamline and Other Turnkey Control Systems | 632 |
|
||
| Turnkey oriented accelerator control system production is often quite complex and challenging. It involves software development as well as substantial project management effort and, almost always, an on-site installation. Most of the labs have developed solutions that to some extent support such processes, but are tailored to the lab's particular needs and environment. We could not recycle these solutions, as we had to keep the choices open for defining the naming convention and choosing the operating system, platform, and even the control system. Based on our experience with control systems, we have defined a complete set of processes that prescribe the highest level of quality and efficiency in all the project segments. To implement these processes, we have developed a number of tools for composing, configuring, and deploying the control system software. Use of these tools enforces strict version control and traceability, enables centralized configuration of the system, and largely reduces the possibility of human errors. These tools also enable us to reuse well-tested building blocks, leaving us more time for system-wide quality assurance. | ||
| RPPB15 | Management System Tailored to Research Institutes | 635 |
|
||
| As with all disciplines, project management has a set of rules that must be followed and a set of recommendations that make work easier. But as in all engineering, there is no single magical formula or equation, no matter how much managers and physicists alike would love to have it. We present a working solution tailored to academic projects that requires only a minimum of effort and discipline and results in huge benefits, which will be presented in this article. Commercially available project management tools are not suited to manage the diversity of work in research institutes. We have therefore adopted a set of open source tools, implemented some custom additions, and integrated the tools into a coherent product to suit our purpose. It enables developers to track their work and communicate effectively, project managers to monitor progress of individual projects, and management to supervise critical parameters of the company at any time. In the article, the experiences gained by using the system are presented. As it has turned out in practice, the product is also ideal for research institutes, as is demonstrated by its use in control groups of DESY and ANKA. | ||
| RPPB16 | SPARCbook: A New Electronic Book | 638 |
|
||
| Many electronic books exist for logging the activity of an accelerator, but all of them are basically a translation of a paper book in an electronic format, with some extra features coming from the usage of a database for storing the information. SPARCbook is based on PostgreSQL, an open source database. A new, nice GUI has been developed for manually inserting data (both text and pictures) in the logbook and retrieving the old information, using several filters like date, author, or type of information. This GUI has been developed using HTML, PHP, and JavaScript, and it is quite similar to GUIs of already existing electronic logbooks. The peculiarity of SPARCbook is that it is also possible to insert information in the book from the control system of the accelerator, automatically or after a human decision. The SPARC control system is a distributed system, developed using LabVIEW, based on PCs and real-time CPUs. Information, tables, and graphs can be submitted from each CPU and from the central control system to SPARCbook making a query to PostgreSQL via TCP. That makes the system really powerful because any commercial CPU has TCP capability. | ||
| RPPB18 | NIF ICCS Test Controller for Automated & Manual Testing | 641 |
|
||
| The NIF Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) is a large-scale distributed system with 60,000 control points and 850 computers. The software engineering team delivers updates throughout the year to deliver new functionality for commissioning activities and automated shots. In 2006 there were 48 software releases, including 29 full releases and 19 patches resulting in a code base of 1.4 MSLOC. To ensure the quality of the delivered software, thousands of manual and automated regression and verification tests are performed on the code and GUIs using a Test Controller infrastructure developed by the test group. The infrastructure manages test case inventory, test planning, automated and manual test execution, and generation of test reports. A web browser interface provides test services, searchable test results and dynamic status reports to users. The Test Controller manages the three-stage quality control process of integration, offline and online testing, which assesses and assures the quality of each release. This talk will present the requirements, design and results of this comprehensive software testing infrastructure. | ||
| RPPB19 | Electron Bunch Length Measurement for LCLS at SLAC | 644 |
|
||
| At Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) a Bunch Length Measurement system has been developed to measure the length of the electron bunch for its new Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). This destructive measurement uses a transverse-mounted RF deflector (TCAV) to vertically streak the electron beam and an image taken with an insertable screen and a camera. The device control software was implemented with the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) toolkit. The analysis software was implemented in Matlab using the EPICS/Channel Access Interface for Scilab and Matlab (labCA). This architecture allowed engineers and physicists to develop and integrate their control and analysis without duplication of effort. | ||
| RPPB20 | A Graphical Sequencer for SOLEIL Beamline Acquisitions | 647 |
|
||
|
Addressing batch processing and sequencing needs are fundamentals for daily beamlines operation. The SOLEIL control software group offers two solutions. Firstly, the Python scripting environment, for which a dedicated Tango binding is available, has been proved to be powerful, but is limited to scientists with good programming skills. Secondly, we provide the PASSERELLE software, developed by the ISENCIA* company and based on the PTOLEMY** framework. In this environment, sequences can be designed graphically by drag and drop components called actors (representing elementary tasks). The process execution can be easily “programmed” by defining graphically the data flow between actors. Upon this framework, an existing generic GUI application allows users to configure and execute the sequences. A dedicated GUI application can also be provided on demand to give the beam line’s end user an easy-to-use acquisition application. The work organization, the software architecture and design of the whole system will be presented, as well as the current status of deployment on SOLEIL beamlines.
* http://www.isencia.com/main/web/init** http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ptolemyII/index.htm |
||
| RPPB21 | Finite State Machines for Integration and Control in ALICE | 650 |
|
||
| From the control point of view a physics experiment can be seen as a vast hierarchy of systems and subsystems with an experiment control node at the top and single atomic control channels at the bottom. In the case of the ALICE experiment at CERN the many systems and subsystems are being built by many engineers and physicists in different institutes around the world. The integration of the various parts to form a homogeneous system enabling coherent automatic control can therefore be seen as a major challenge. A distributed PVSS SCADA system complemented with a device and system modeling schema based on finite state machines has been used to achieve this. This paper will describe the schema and the tools and components that have been developed at CERN and it will show how this has been implemented and used in Alice. The efforts of standardizing the state diagrams for different types of devices and systems at different levels will be described and some detailed examples will be shown. The Alice graphics user interface integrating both the FSM control hierarchy and the PVSS monitoring will also be described. | ||
| RPPB22 | Tracking Accelerator Settings | 653 |
|
||
| Recording setting changes within an accelerator facility provides information that can be used to answer questions about when, why, and how changes were made to some accelerator system. This can be very useful during normal operations, but can also aid with security concerns and in detecting unusual software behavior. The Set History System (SHS) is a new client/server system developed at the Collider-Accelerator Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory to provide these capabilities. The SHS has been operational for over two years and currently stores about 100K settings per day into a commercial database management system. The SHS system consists of a server written in Java, client tools written in both Java and C++, and a web interface for querying the database of setting changes. The design of the SHS focuses on performance, portability, and a minimal impact on database resources. In this paper, we present an overview of the system design along with benchmark results showing the performance and reliability of the SHS over the last year. | ||
| RPPB23 | SCORE – A Save, Compare, and Restore Application for Snapshotting Machine Settings | 656 |
|
||
| SCORE is an application used to snapshot machine settings. Features include sorting by systems and subsystems, comparing live values with saved values, and database storage of the information. The compare feature is useful for diagnosing problems, and the restore feature is useful in recovering good beam tune. Features of the application and performance experience with respect to data base retrieval and live comparison will be discussed. | ||
| RPPB24 | Processing and Visualization of EPICS Data with MATLAB Applications | 659 |
|
||
| To conserve control system resources it is often desirable to run compute-intensive real-time data processing applications on a dedicated host computer. In the EPICS-based control system of the ISAC radioactive beam facility, the Extensible Display Manager tool (EDM) is used for the operator interface. EDM screens control data acquisition and processing and provide visualization of the processed data. Matlab is used as the data processing engine. A number of Matlab applications were created in collaboration with the beam physics group. These applications are running on a dedicated Linux host, using EPICS Matlab Channel Access (MCA) to obtain raw data from beam diagnostic IOCs (Linux-based) and store the processed results in the IOC. The raw data are provided to the IOC by fast data acquisition applications through a shared memory interface. | ||
| RPPB25 | Live Capfast Schematics in the ISAC Control System | 662 |
|
||
| The Capfast schematic editor is used to design EPICS IOC runtime databases in the EPICS-based control system of the ISAC radioactive beam facility. This graphical tool provides a view of the database with strong visual cues about the functional behavior of the database elements and their interrelationships, modularity, and hierarchy. The EDM display manager tool is used for the Human-Machine-Interface, providing a graphical view of the accelerator state to machine operators. This paper describes a new tool, Sch2Edl, which combines some of the functionality of Capfast and EDM. Sch2Edl creates a view of the runtime database in a format geared toward the system developer/tester/debugger. Sch2Edl is a perl script that translates a set of Capfast schematic files into a corresponding set of EDM screens. The visual representation of the runtime database on the EDM display is nearly identical to the static Capfast views and hierarchies, but incorporates the display of real-time data. This allows software developers to examine and modify some aspects of a working runtime database in an environment that is rich in visual information. | ||
| RPPB26 | The New Soft-IOC-Based Alarm Handler at the Spallation Neutron Source | 665 |
|
||
|
The standard EPICS alarm handler tool (ALH) does not integrate well with other EPICS client applications. At SNS, we wanted the ability to incorporate alarm summaries and alarm controls such as masks and resets into screens in the display manager as well as the ability to call display screens from alarm screens. To achieve these aims, we built a soft-IOC-based alarm handler that runs in Linux soft IOCs. A set of scripts builds EPICS databases, display manager screens, and startup scripts for standard Linux soft IOCs from old style (ALH) or .xml configuration files. With this new tool the summaries, masks and latch status can be incorporated into other EPICS client applications. In this paper we describe our experience building and using the soft-IOC-based alarm handler everywhere that alarms are defined in the SNS control system.
SNS is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 for the U. S. Department of Energy. |
||
| RPPB27 | A Proposed Alarm Handling System Management Plan for SNS with Application to Target Control System | 668 |
|
||
| We have developed a set of requirements for an SNS alarm handling system and have applied these to the control system for the SNS liquid mercury target to gain experience with an implementation first on a limited scale before applying them to the whole accelerator. This implementation is based on the EPICS alarm handler ALH. The requirements address such topics as alarm classification, priorities, types of warning, hierarchies, and management under different modes of target operation. Alarms are currently organized by system and subsystem. Target control systems considered in the examples here include the Hg loop, three light-water and one heavy-water cooling loops. Modifications to ALH include addition of “drag and drop” capabilities for individual PVs and drop-down lists of selectable actions. One such action provides access to the alarm response procedures required for a process variable that shows an alarm. Alarm and operator action log files are maintained separately from instances of ALH launched for operator displays. Database reporting tools have been developed to aid analysis of data in these files. Examples of the use of our tools and features will be presented. | ||
| RPPB28 | BESSY Control System Administration and Analysis Tools | 671 |
|
||
| The BESSY II storage ring has been in continuous operation for more than 8 years. With BESSY's new projects and facilities requiring an increasing amount of attention, maintaining the BESSY II control system's high reliability and availability with less effort has become an important task. A set of professional noncommercial tools has been introduced. These tools are combined to detect and track errors, support system administration, and allow an efficient analysis and maintenance of the control system's hardware, software, and configuration. The paper discusses problems and difficulties encountered, and presents the selected approaches and tools as well as the gained experiences. | ||
| RPPB29 | Requirements and Coherent Realization of the HICAT Control System Functionality for Test, Commissioning, and Operation | 674 |
|
||
| The control system for the HICAT project comprises several rather different functionalities for the whole range of demands starting from tests of single components up to the specified operation mode where the accelerator has to deliver a beam of high-energy ions with requested energy, focus and intensity for tumor treatment. We outline the concept and realization of this system which is capable of fulfilling all those needs within the implemented functions and GUIs. The range of functionality spans from test environments and trace-possibilities for single front-end controllers up to complete integrity tests of the whole accelerator for the designed operation mode. For example, for commissioning of the LINAC division the control system utilizes a 5Hz mode while typical synchrotron cycles last for several seconds and can be used with similar adjustments. In normal operation mode diagnostics like beam current are only evaluated at special times in a cycle, but it is possible to monitor and record these data at high sampling rates in a continuous mode over several hours. Furthermore it is possible to accomplish long-term stability tests of single components during normal operation. | ||
| RPPB31 | Distributed Timing Diagnostic Applications | 677 |
|
||
| The CERN timing system delivers events to the accelerator complex via a distribution network to receiver modules located around the laboratory. These modules generate pulses for nearby equipment and interrupts for the local host. Despite careful planning, hardware failure and human error can lead to anomalies within the control system. Diagnosing such errors requires a formal description of the logical and topological timing layout. This paper describes the design and implementation of a suite of timing diagnostic software applications that allow users to quickly diagnose and remedy faults within the CERN timing system. | ||
| RPPB32 | A MySQL-based Data Archiver: Preliminary Results | 680 |
|
||
| Following an evaluation of the archival requirements of the Jefferson Laboratory accelerator's user community, a prototyping effort was executed to determine if an archiver based on mySql had sufficient functionality to meet those requirements. This approach was chosen because an archiver based on a relational database enables the development effort to focus on data acquisiti and management, letting the database take care of storage, indexing and data consistency. It was clear from the prototype effort that there were no performance impediments to successful implementation of a final system. With our performance concerns addressed, the lab undertook the design and development of an operational system. The system is in its operational testi phase now. This paper discusses the archiver system requirements, some of th design choices and their rationale, and presents the acquisition, storage and retrieval performance levels achieved with the system. | ||
| RPPB34 | Global Search Tool for the Advanced Photon Source Integrated Relational Model of Installed Systems (IRMIS) Database | 683 |
|
||
| The Integrated Relational Model of Installed Systems (IRMIS) is a relational database tool that has been implemented at the Advanced Photon Source to maintain an updated account of approximately 600 control system software applications, 400,000 process variables, and 30,000 control system hardware components. To effectively display this large amount of control system information to operators and engineers, IRMIS was initially built with nine Web-based viewers: Applications Organizing Index, IOC, PLC, Component Type, Installed Components, Network, Controls Spares, Process Variables, and Cables. However, since each viewer is designed to provide details from only one major category of the control system, the necessity for a one-stop global search tool for the entire database became apparent. The user requirements for extremely fast database search time and ease of navigation through search results led to the choice of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) technology in the implementation of the IRMIS global search tool. Unique features of the global search tool include a two-tier level of displayed search results, and a database data integrity validation and reporting mechanism. | ||
| RPPB35 | Administration of Control Systems at the Advanced Photon Source Using Applications Organizing Index | 686 |
|
||
| Applications Organizing Index (AOI) is a relational database tool that has been implemented at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to aid in the management of more than 600 unique control system applications. AOI provides control system developers an intuitive view of and navigation links to the components that make up a single control system such as source code files, operator displays, process variables, work history notes, programmable components, validation procedures, drawings, and more. The foundation for the Applications Organizing Index tool is the collaborative effort between several Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) sites to build the common relational database schema for documenting large and complex particle accelerator control systems, Integrated Relational Model of Installed Systems (IRMIS). This paper describes the evolution of AOI as it became populated with APS control systems component data and as users’ requests for new features of AOI became apparent. |