WEMAU —  Mini Orals C   (12-Oct-11   13:30—14:00)
Chair: J.M. Meyer, ESRF, Grenoble, France
Paper Title Page
WEMAU001 A Remote Tracing Facility for Distributed Systems 650
 
  • F. Ehm, A. Dworak
    CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
 
  Today the CERN's accelerator control system is built upon a large number of services mainly based on C++ and JAVA which produce log events. In such a largely distributed environment these log messages are essential for problem recognition and tracing. Tracing is therefore a vital part of operations, as understanding an issue in a subsystem means analyzing log events in an efficient and fast manner. At present 3150 device servers are deployed on 1600 diskless frontends and they send their log messages via the network to an in-house developed central server which, in turn, saves them to files. However, this solution is not able to provide several highly desired features and has performance limitations which led to the development of a new solution. The new distributed tracing facility fulfills these requirements by taking advantage of the Simple Text Orientated Message Protocol [STOMP] and ActiveMQ as the transport layer. The system not only allows to store critical log events centrally in files or in a database but also it allows other clients (e.g. graphical interfaces) to read the same events at the same time by using the provided JAVA API. This facility also ensures that each client receives only the log events of the desired level. Thanks to the ActiveMQ broker technology the system can easily be extended to clients implemented in other languages and it is highly scalable in terms of performance. Long running tests have shown that the system can handle up to 10.000 messages/second.  
slides icon Slides WEMAU001 [1.008 MB]  
poster icon Poster WEMAU001 [0.907 MB]  
 
WEMAU002 Coordinating Simultaneous Instruments at the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope 654
 
  • S.B. Wampler, B.D. Goodrich, E.M. Johansson
    Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, National Solar Observatory, Tucson, USA
 
  A key component of the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope control system design is the efficient support of multiple instruments sharing the light path provided by the telescope. The set of active instruments varies with each experiment and possibly with each observation within an experiment. The flow of control for a typical experiment is traced through the control system to preset the main aspects of the design that facilitate this behavior. Special attention is paid to the role of ATST's Common Services Framework in assisting the coordination of instruments with each other and with the telescope.  
slides icon Slides WEMAU002 [0.251 MB]  
poster icon Poster WEMAU002 [0.438 MB]  
 
WEMAU003 The LabVIEW RADE Framework Distributed Architecture 658
 
  • O.O. Andreassen, D. Kudryavtsev, A. Raimondo, A. Rijllart
    CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
  • S. Shaipov, R. Sorokoletov
    JINR, Dubna, Moscow Region, Russia
 
  For accelerator GUI applications there is a need for a rapid development environment to create expert tools or to prototype operator applications. Typically a variety of tools are being used, such as Matlab™ or Excel™, but their scope is limited, either because of their low flexibility or limited integration into the accelerator infrastructure. In addition, having several tools obliges users to deal with different programming techniques and data structures. We have addressed these limitations by using LabVIEW™, extending it with interfaces to C++ and Java. In this way it fulfills requirements of ease of use, flexibility and connectivity. We present the RADE framework and four applications based on it. Recent application requirements could only be met by implementing a distributed architecture with multiple servers running multiple services. This brought us the additional advantage to implement redundant services, to increase the availability and to make transparent updates. We will present two applications requiring high availability. We also report on issues encountered with such a distributed architecture and how we have addressed them. The latest extension of the framework is to industrial equipment, with program templates and drivers for PLCs (Siemens and Schneider) and PXI with LabVIEW-Real Time.  
slides icon Slides WEMAU003 [0.157 MB]  
poster icon Poster WEMAU003 [2.978 MB]  
 
WEMAU004 Integrating EtherCAT Based IO into EPICS at Diamond 662
 
  • R. Mercado, I.J. Gillingham, J. Rowland, K.G. Wilkinson
    Diamond, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
 
  Diamond Light Source is actively investigating the use of EtherCAT-based Remote I/O modules for the next phase of photon beamline construction. Ethernet-based I/O in general is attractive, because of reduced equipment footprint, flexible configuration and reduced cabling. EtherCAT offers, in addition, the possibility of using inexpensive Ethernet hardware, off-the-shelf components with a throughput comparable to current VME based solutions. This paper presents the work to integrate EtherCAT-based I/O to the EPICS control system, listing platform decisions, requirement considerations and software design, and discussing the use of real-time pre-emptive Linux extensions to support high-rate devices that require deterministic sampling.  
slides icon Slides WEMAU004 [0.057 MB]  
poster icon Poster WEMAU004 [0.925 MB]  
 
WEMAU005 The ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) Detector Control System 666
 
  • J. Olszowska, E. Banaś, Z. Hajduk
    IFJ-PAN, Kraków, Poland
  • M. Hance, D. Olivito, P. Wagner
    University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
  • T. Kowalski, B. Mindur
    AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland
  • R. Mashinistov, K. Zhukov
    LPI, Moscow, Russia
  • A. Romaniouk
    MEPhI, Moscow, Russia
 
  Funding: CERN; MNiSW, Poland; MES of Russia and ROSATOM, Russian Federation; DOE and NSF, United States of America
TRT is one of the ATLAS experiment Inner Detector components providing precise tracking and electrons identification. It consists of 370 000 proportional counters (straws) which have to be filled with stable active gas mixture and high voltage biased. High voltage setting at distinct topological regions are periodicaly modified by closed-loop regulation mechanism to ensure constant gaseous gain independent of drifts of atmospheric pressure, local detector temperatures and gas mixture composition. Low voltage system powers front-end electronics. Special algorithms provide fine tuning procedures for detector-wide discrimination threshold equalization to guarantee uniform noise figure for whole detector. Detector, cooling system and electronics temperatures are continuosly monitored by ~ 3000 temperature sensors. The standard industrial and custom developed server applications and protocols are used for devices integration into unique system. All parameters originating in TRT devices and external infrastructure systems (important for Detector operation or safety) are monitored and used by alert and interlock mechanisms. System runs on 11 computers as PVSS (industrial SCADA) projects and is fully integrated with ATLAS Detector Control System.
 
slides icon Slides WEMAU005 [1.384 MB]  
poster icon Poster WEMAU005 [1.978 MB]  
 
WEMAU007 Turn-key Applications for Accelerators with LabVIEW-RADE 670
 
  • O.O. Andreassen, P. Bestmann, C. Charrondière, T. Feniet, J. Kuczerowski, M. Nybø, A. Rijllart
    CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
 
  In the accelerator domain there is a need of integrating industrial devices and creating control and monitoring applications in an easy and yet structured way. The LabVIEW-RADE framework provides the method and tools to implement these requirements and also provides the essential integration of these applications into the CERN controls infrastructure. We present three examples of applications of different nature to show that the framework provides solutions at all three tiers of the control system, data access, process and supervision. The first example is a remotely controlled alignment system for the LHC collimators. The collimator alignment will need to be checked periodically. Due to limited access for personnel, the instruments are mounted on a small train. The system is composed of a PXI crate housing the instrument interfaces and a PLC for the motor control. We report on the design, development and commissioning of the system. The second application is the renovation of the PS beam spectrum analyser where both hardware and software were renewed. The control application was ported from Windows to LabVIEW-Real Time. We describe the technique used for a full integration into the PS console. The third example is a control and monitoring application of the CLIC two beam test stand. The application accesses CERN front-end equipment through the CERN middleware, CMW, and provides many different ways to view the data. We conclude with an evaluation of the framework based on the three examples and indicate new areas of improvement and extension.  
poster icon Poster WEMAU007 [2.504 MB]  
 
WEMAU009
Plant Information Modeling in Prototype Control Systems  
 
  • E. Reiswich
    University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
 
  The world of control systems can be roughly divided into mature, well established systems and one-of-a-kind, prototype control systems. Developing prototype control systems is a challenging task as there are no comparable systems that can serve as blueprints. As software engineers we've been working in the realm of prototype control systems for over 5 years. During this time we noticed various recurrent problems we had to solve over and over again. Looking out for help in science and industry we've found a gap between research activities in the Control Layer and in the Human Machine Interface layer. While the Control Layer seems to attract the majority of research interest, the HMI layer seems to be rather a side show. The majority of problems we've identified developing prototype control systems at the HMI Layer can be put down to a missing plant information model. The world of plant information modeling is currently dominated by versatile object-oriented methods as well as emerging techniques like CAEX and OPC UA. Approaching these concepts from the software engineering side raises however many questions on how to adapt these concepts to existing control systems and software tools. In this talk we give a brief overview of common problems we've identified developing prototype control systems, present the state of the art in plant information modeling and propose a service oriented, minimally invasive solution which we've been able to evaluate for over one year with our industry partner. Finally we point at challenges we haven't found solutions for yet.  
 
WEMAU010 Web-based Control Application using WebSocket 673
 
  • Y. Furukawa
    JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken, Japan
 
  The Websocket [1] brings asynchronous full-duplex communication between a web-based (i.e. java-script based) application and a web-server. The WebSocket started as a part of HTML5 standardization but has now been separated from the HTML5 and developed independently. Using the WebSocket, it becomes easy to develop platform independent presentation layer applications of accelerator and beamline control software. In addition, no application program has to be installed on client computers except for the web-browser. The WebSocket based applications communicate with the WebSocket server using simple text based messages, so the WebSocket can be applicable message based control system like MADOCA, which was developed for the SPring-8 control system. A simple WebSocket server for the MADOCA control system and a simple motor control application was successfully made as a first trial of the WebSocket control application. Using google-chrome (version 10.x) on Debian/Linux and Windows 7, opera (version 11.0 beta) on Debian/Linux and safari (version 5.0.3) on MacOSX as clients, the motors can be controlled using the WebSocket based web-application. The more complex applications are now under development for synchrotron radiation experiments combined with other HTML5 features.
[1] http://websocket.org/
 
poster icon Poster WEMAU010 [44.675 MB]  
 
WEMAU011 LIMA: A Generic Library for High Throughput Image Acquisition 676
 
  • A. Homs, L. Claustre, A. Kirov, E. Papillon, S. Petitdemange
    ESRF, Grenoble, France
 
  A significant number of 2D detectors are used in large scale facilities' control systems for quantitative data analysis. In these devices, a common set of control parameters and features can be identified, but most of manufacturers provide specific software control interfaces. A generic image acquisition library, called LIMA, has been developed at the ESRF for a better compatibility and easier integration of 2D detectors to existing control systems. The LIMA design is driven by three main goals: i) independence of any control system to be shared by a wide scientific community; ii) a rich common set of functionalities (e.g., if a feature is not supported by hardware, then the alternative software implementation is provided); and iii) intensive use of events and multi-threaded algorithms for an optimal exploit of multi-core hardware resources, needed when controlling high throughput detectors. LIMA currently supports the ESRF Frelon and Maxipix detectors as well as the Dectris Pilatus. Within a collaborative framework, the integration of the Basler GigE cameras is a contribution from SOLEIL. Although it is still under development, LIMA features so far fast data saving on different file formats and basic data processing / reduction, like software pixel binning / sub-image, background subtraction, beam centroid and sub-image statistics calculation, among others.  
slides icon Slides WEMAU011 [0.073 MB]  
 
WEMAU012 COMETE: A Multi Data Source Oriented Graphical Framework 680
 
  • G. Viguier, Y. Huriez, M. Ounsy, K.S. Saintin
    SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
  • R. Girardot
    EXTIA, Boulogne Billancourt, France
 
  Modern beamlines at SOLEIL need to browse a large amount of scientific data through multiple sources that can be scientific measurement data files, databases or Tango [1] control systems. We created the COMETE [2] framework because we thought it was necessary for the end users to use the same collection of widgets for all the different data sources to be accessed. On the other side, for GUI application developers, the complexity of data source handling had to be hidden. These 2 requirements being now fulfilled, our development team is able to build high quality, modular and reusable scientific oriented GUI software, with consistent look and feel for end users. COMETE offers some key features to our developers: Smart refreshing service , easy-to-use and succinct API, Data Reduction functionality. This paper will present the work organization, the modern software architecture and design of the whole system. Then, the migration from our old GUI framework to COMETE will be detailed. The paper will conclude with an application example and a summary of the incoming features available in the framework.
[1] http://www.tango-controls.org
[2] http://comete.sourceforge.net
 
slides icon Slides WEMAU012 [0.083 MB]