ICALEPCS2017 - Classification: User Interfaces and User eXperience (UX)

Paper	Title	Page
TUBPL01	CERN Controls Configuration Service - a Challenge in Usability	159
	L. Burdzanowski, A. Asko, A. Lameiro, K. Penar, C. Roderick, B. Urbaniec, V.I. Vasiloudis CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Complex control systems often require complex tools to facilitate daily operations in a way that assures the highest possible availability. Such a situation poses an engineering challenge, for which system complexity needs to be tamed in a way that everyday use becomes intuitive and efficient. The sensation of comfort and ease of use are matters of ergonomics and usability - very relevant not only to equipment but especially software applications, products and graphical user interfaces. The Controls Configuration Service (CCS) is a key component in CERN's data driven accelerator Control System. Based around a central database, the service provides a range of user interfaces enabling configuration of all different aspects of controls for CERN's accelerator complex. This paper describes the on-going renovation of the service with a focus on the evolution of the provided user interfaces, design choices and architectural decisions paving the way towards a single configuration platform for CERN's control systems in the near future.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/kQdYKpHmyWI
	Slides TUBPL01 [1.679 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUBPL01
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TUBPL02	Taurus Big & Small: From Particle Accelerators to Desktop Labs	166
	C. Pascual-Izarra, G. Cuní, C. Falcon-Torres, D. Fernández-Carreiras, Z. Reszela, M. Rosanes Siscart ALBA-CELLS Synchrotron, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain O. Prades-Palacios ETSE-UAB, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
	Taurus is a popular solution for rapid creation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for experiment control and data acquisition (even by non-programmers) . Taurus is best known for its ability to interact with the Tango and Epics control systems, and thus it is mainly used in large facilities. However, Taurus also provides mechanisms to interact with other sources of data, and it is well suited for creating GUIs for even the smallest labs where the overhead of a distributed control system is not desired. This scalability together with its ease-of-use and the uncontested popularity of Python among the scientific users, make Taurus an attractive framework for a wide range of applications. In this work we discuss some practical examples of usage of Taurus ranging from a very small experimental setup controlled by a single Raspberry Pi, to large facilities synchronising an heterogeneous set of hundreds of machines running a variety of operating systems. C Pascual-Izarra et al. "Effortless creation of control & data acquisition graphical user interfaces with taurus", THHC3O03, ICALEPCS2015, Melbourne, Australia, 2015.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/YOaV9FvRKNc
	Slides TUBPL02 [4.440 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUBPL02
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TUBPL03	PANIC and the Evolution of Tango Alarm Handlers	170
	S. Rubio-Manrique, G. Cuní, D. Fernández-Carreiras ALBA-CELLS Synchrotron, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain G. Scalamera Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy
	The PANIC Alarm System is a python based suite to manage the configuration, triggering and acknowledge of alarms and automated actions in a Tango control system. The suite was developed at Alba in 2007 and since then it has been adopted by several other facilities and installations such as Synchrotrons and large telescopes, integrating in the process a large set of community-requested features. Its scalability is based on the stand-alone PyAlarm engines, that operate distributed across the control system; and the PANIC python API and user interfaces, that centralize the operation and configuration of the system. Each PyAlarm engine performs polled or event-triggered evaluation of alarm rules, complex logical operations and regular expression searches. The activation, recovery or reset of any alarm in the system can trigger actions like email, SMS, audible messages, local/remote logging, database insertion or execution of tango commands. This paper describes the evolution of the suite, its compatibility with other alarm handlers in Tango, the current state-of-the-art features, the compliance with Alarm Management standards and the future needs.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/T3730ZH_NsM
	Slides TUBPL03 [6.277 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUBPL03
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TUBPL04	Streamlining the Target Fabrication Request at the National Ignition Facility	176
	C.P. Manin, E.J. Bond, A.D. Casey, R.D. Clark, G.W. Norman LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
	Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The NIF Shot Data Systems (SDS) team developed the Target Request Tool (TRT) Web application for facilitating the management of target requests from creation to approval. TRT provides a simple-to-use and user-friendly interface that allows the user to create, edit, submit and withdraw requests. The underlying design uses the latest Web technologies such as Node.js, Express, jQuery and Java-Script. The overall software architecture and functionality will be presented in this paper. LLNL-ABS-728266
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/m2AkK_af25g
	Slides TUBPL04 [1.525 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUBPL04
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TUBPL05	MXCuBE3 Bringing MX Experiments to the WEB	180
	M. Oskarsson, A. Beteva, D.D.S. De Sanctis, M. Guijarro, G. Leonard ESRF, Grenoble, France F. Bolmsten, M. Eguiraun, A. Milan-Otero, J. Nan, M. Thunnissen MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
	Funding: This work was in part supported by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union (iNEXT grant, project No. 653706) Originally conceived at ESRF and first deployed in 2005 MXCuBE, Macromolecular Xtallography Customized Beamline Environment, has with its successor MXCuBE2, become a successful international collaboration. The aim of the collaboration is to develop a beamline control application for macromolecular crystallography (MX) that are independent of underlying instrument control software and thus deployable at the MX beamlines of any synchrotron source. The continued evolution of the functionality offered at MX beamlines is to a large extent facilitated by active software development. New demands and advances in technology have led to the development of a new version of MXCuBE, MXCuBE3, The design of which was inspired by the results of a technical pre-study and user survey. MXCuBE3 takes advantage of the recent development in web technologies such as React and Redux to create an intuitive and user friendly application. The access to the application from any web browser further simplifies the operation and natively facilitates the execution of remote experiments.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/GGJib8l20ys
	Slides TUBPL05 [3.014 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUBPL05
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TUBPL06	The Graphical User Interface of the Operator of the Cherenkov Telescope Array	186
	I. Sadeh, I. Oya DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen, Germany D. Dezman Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia E. Pietriga INRIA, Orsay Cedex, France J. Schwarz INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate, Italy
	The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation gamma-ray observatory. CTA will incorporate about 100 imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) at a southern site, and about 20 in the north. Previous IACT experiments have used up to five telescopes. Subsequently, the design of a graphical user interface (GUI) for the operator of CTA poses an interesting challenge. In order to create an effective interface, the CTA team is collaborating with experts from the field of Human-Computer Interaction. We present here our GUI prototype. The back-end of the prototype is a Python Web server. It is integrated with the observation execution system of CTA, which is based on the Alma Common Software (ACS). The back-end incorporates a redis database, which facilitates synchronization of GUI panels. redis is also used to buffer information collected from various software components and databases. The front-end of the prototype is based on Web technology. Communication between Web server and clients is performed using Web Sockets, where graphics are generated with the d3.js Javascript library.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/8ZvUj-DHSgE
	Slides TUBPL06 [54.366 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUBPL06
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TUMPA01	New Visual Alignment Sequencer Tool Improves Efficiency of Shot Operations at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)	328
	M.A. Fedorov, J.R. Castro Morales, V. Pacheu, E.F. Wilson LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
	Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 LLNL-ABS-728701 Established control systems for scientific experimental facilities offer several levels of user interfaces to match domain-specific needs and preferences of experimentalists, operational and engineering staff. At the National Ignition Facility, the low-level device panels address technicians' need for comprehensive hardware control, while Shot Automation software allows NIF Shot Director to advance thousands of devices at once through a carefully orchestrated shot sequence. MATLAB scripting with NIF Layering Toolbox has enabled formation of intricate Deuterium-Tritium ice layers for fusion experiments. The latest addition to this family of user interfaces is the Target Area Alignment Tool (TAAT), which guides NIF operators through hundreds of measurement and motion steps necessary to precisely align targets and diagnostics for each experiment inside of the NIF's 10-meter target chamber. In this paper, we discuss how this new tool has integrated familiar spreadsheet calculations with intuitive visual aids and checklist-like scripting to allow NIF Process Engineers to automate and streamline alignment sequences, contributing towards NIF Shot Rate enhancement goals.
	Slides TUMPA01 [2.173 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUMPA01
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TUPHA179	Management Software and Data Exchange Protocol for the INFN-LNS Accelerators Beamlines	846
	G. Vecchio, S. Aurnia, S. Cavallaro, L. Cosentino, B.F. Diana, E. Furia, P.S. Pulvirenti INFN/LNS, Catania, Italy
	This paper describes the design and the development of an innovative management software for the accelerators beamlines at INFN-LNS. The Graphical User Interface, the data exchange protocol, the software functionality and the hardware will be illustrated. Compared to traditional platforms for the accelerators console, at INFN-LNS we have developed a new concept of control system and data acquisition framework, based on a data structures server which so far has never been used for supervisory control. We have chosen Redis as a highly scalable data store, shared by multiple and different processes. With such system it is possible to communicate cross-platform, cross-server or cross-application in a very simple way, using very lightweight libraries. A complex and highly ergonomic Graphic User Interface allows to control all the parameters with a user-friendly interactive approach, ensuring high functionality so that the beam operator can visually work in a realistic environment. All the information related to the beamline elements involved in the beam transport, can be stored in a centralized database, with suitable criteria to have a historical database.
	Poster TUPHA179 [1.636 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA179
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TUPHA180	Development of Post-mortem Viewer for the Taiwan Photon Source	849
	C.Y. Liao, Y.-S. Cheng, P.C. Chiu, K.T. Hsu, K.H. Hu, C.H. Huang, C.Y. Wu NSRRC, Hsinchu, Taiwan
	The Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) is a 3-GeV third-generation synchrotron light source located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The post-mortem (PM) system is act as an important tool to diagnostic the cause of trip events caused by beam loss. A MATLAB-based and web-based viewer were developed to plot and view the each event to understand the cause and effect of the event. The post-mortem viewer architecture and implementation were presented in this report.
	Poster TUPHA180 [2.184 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA180
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TUPHA181	Web Extensible Display Manager	852
	R.J. Slominski, T. L. Larrieu JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA
	Funding: Authored by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC under U.S. DOE Contract No. DE-AC05-06OR23177 Jefferson Lab's Web Extensible Display Manager (WEDM) allows staff to access EDM control system screens from a web browser in remote offices and from mobile devices. Native browser technologies are leveraged to avoid installing and managing software on remote clients such as browser plugins, tunnel applications, or an EDM environment. Since standard network ports are used firewall exceptions are minimized. To avoid security concerns from remote users modifying a control system, WEDM exposes read-only access and basic web authentication can be used to further restrict access. Updates of monitored EPICS channels are delivered via a Web Socket using a web gateway. The software translates EDM description files (denoted with the edl suffix) to HTML with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) following the EDM's edl file vector drawing rules to create faithful screen renderings. The WEDM server parses edl files and creates the HTML equivalent in real-time allowing existing screens to work without modification. Alternatively, the familiar drag and drop EDM screen creation tool can be used to create optimized screens sized specifically for smart phones and then rendered by WEDM.
	Poster TUPHA181 [1.818 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA181
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TUPHA183	An Interactive Workflow to Manage Tomography Experiments at ESRF	857
	H. Payno, C. Nemoz ESRF, Grenoble, France
	At the ESRF the activity of several beamlines is based upon tomography X-ray imaging in various fields such as Paleontology, Medical Imaging and Materials Science. The instrument control and data processing systems are cloned on all the relevant beamlines, however the steps of the processing pipeline from the data acquisition to their full exploitation in premier quality publications are based upon a heterogeneous software scenario comprised of e.g. SPEC, Python, Octave, PyHST2 and MATLAB modules. The need has thus clearly appeared to logically sequence the operations performed by these different actors into user-friendly workflows. At the ESRF we selected a generic workflow tool, Orange, which was originally developed at the University of Ljubljana and designed for data mining in collaboration with the open source community. The graphical interface enables the easy inclusion/exclusion of functionalities represented by individual boxes. Each box can be managed by simple pieces of Python code generating graphical interfaces via the PyQT5 library and is defined by a set of inputs and outputs which can be linked together to produce consistent data processing workflows.
	Poster TUPHA183 [0.976 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA183
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TUPHA184	Inspector, a Zero Code IDE for Control Systems User Interface Development	861
	V. Costa, B. Lefort CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Developing operational User Interfaces (UI) can be challenging, especially during machine upgrade or commissioning where many changes can suddenly be required. An agile Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with enhanced refactoring capabilities can ease the development process. Inspector is an intuitive UI oriented IDE allowing for development of control interfaces and data processing. It features a state of the art visual interface composer fitted with an ample set of graphical components offering rich customization. It also integrates a scripting environment for soft real time data processing and UI scripting for complex interfaces. Furthermore, Inspector supports many data sources. Alongside the short application development time, it means Inspector can be used in early stages of device engineering or it can be used on top of a full control system stack to create elaborate high level control UIs. Inspector is now a mission critical tool at CERN providing agile features for creating and maintaining control system interfaces. It is intensively used by experts, machine operators and performs seamlessly from small test benches to complex instruments such as LHC or LINAC4.
	Poster TUPHA184 [1.378 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA184
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TUPHA186	JavaFX Charts: Implementation of Missing Features	866
	G. Kruk, O. Da Silva Alves, L. Molinari CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	JavaFX, the GUI toolkit included in the standard JDK, provides charting components with commonly used chart types, a simple API and wide customization possibilities via CSS. Nevertheless, while the offered functionality is easy to use and of high quality, it lacks a number of features that are crucial for scientific or controls GUIs. Examples are the possibility to zoom and pan the chart content, superposition of different plot types, data annotations, decorations or a logarithmic axis. The standard charts also show performance limitations when exposed to large data sets or high update rates. The article will describe the how we have implemented the missing features and overcome the performance problems.
	Poster TUPHA186 [2.293 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA186
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TUPHA187	Enhancing the MxCuBE User Interface by a Finite State Machine (FSM) Model	869
	I. Karpics, G. Bourenkov, T.R. Schneider EMBL, Hamburg, Germany
	The acquisition of X-ray diffraction data from macromolecular crystals is a major activity at many synchrotrons and requires user interfaces that provide robust and easy-to-use control of the experimental setup. Building on the modular design of the MxCuBE beamline user interface, we have implemented a finite state machine model that allows to describe and monitor the interaction of the user with the beamline in a typical experiment. Using a finite state machine, the path of user interaction can be rationalized and error conditions and recovery procedures can be systematically dealt with. Gabadinho, J. et al. (2010). MxCuBE: a synchrotron beamline control environment customized for macromolecular crystallography experiments. J. Synchrotron Rad. 17, 700-707
	Poster TUPHA187 [1.898 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA187
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TUPHA188	SOLARIS Digital User Office	873
	T. Szymocha, A. Górkiewicz, P. Peterman, M.J. Stankiewicz, J. Szota-Pachowicz Solaris National Synchrotron Radiation Centre, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland A. Pulapa, R. Rozanska, T. Szepieniec Cyfronet, Kraków, Poland
	Polish National Center for Synchrotron Radiation SOLARIS UJ is being prepared for first users. In order to facilitate process of user management, proposal submission, review and beam time allocation the SOLARIS Digital User Office project has been started. The DUO is developed in collaboration with Academic Computer Center CYFRONET AGH. The DUO consists of several main components. The user management component allows user registration and user affiliation management. The proposal submission component facilitate filling proposal form, indicating co-proposers and experimentalist. The review component supports process of decision making, including the Review Meeting event and grading proposals process. Apart of managing the main processes, the application provides an additional functionalities (e.g. experimental reports, trainings, feedbacks). DUO was designed as an open platform to face the challenges related to continually changing Solaris facility. Therefore, the business logic is described as an easily maintainable rule-based specification. To achieve good user experience modern web technologies were used including: Angular for the front-end part and Java Spring for server.
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA188
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TUPHA189	Automating Operation Statistics at PETRA-3	876
	P. Duval, R. Bacher, H. Ehrlichmann, D. Haupt, M. Lomperski DESY, Hamburg, Germany J. Bobnar Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
	The quoted machine availability of a particle accelerator over some time range is usually hand-generated by a machine coordinator, who pores over archived operations parameters and logbook entries for the time period in question. When the machine is deemed unavailable for operations, 'blame' is typically assigned to one or more machine sub-systems. With a 'perfect' representation of all possible machine states and all possible fatal alarms it is possible to calculate machine availability and assign blame automatically and thereby remove any bias and uncertainty that might creep in when a human is involved. Any system which attempts to do this must nevertheless recognize the de-facto impossibility of achieving perfection and allow for 'corrections' by a machine coordinator. Such a system for automated availability statistics was recently presented* and we now report on results and improvements following a half year in operation at PETRA-3 and its accelerator chain. * Duval, Lomperski, Ehrlichmann, and Bobar, "Automated Availability Statistics", Proceedings PCaPAC 2016.
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA189
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TUPHA190	Adaptations to CS-Studio for Use at Diamond Light Source	880
	W.A.H. Rogers, N.W. Battam, T.M. Cobb, M.J. Furseman, G. Knap DLS, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
	Control System Studio (CS-Studio) is one of the most widely-used display managers for EPICS. It is based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (Eclipse RCP), allowing for coherent integration of interfaces for different systems with common graphical elements and preferences. However, this user interface presents a different way of working to those from the previous generation of EPICS tools such as Extensible Display Manager (EDM) and Striptool. At Diamond Light Source, EDM has been used since commissioning in two different ways: for machine operations and for beamline controls. Both uses of EDM will eventually be replaced with CS-Studio and significant effort has been put into this transition. Two kinds of change proved necessary: adaptations to CS-Studio itself, and changes to the typical user workflows. This paper presents both types of changes that were needed to make CS-Studio a productive tool at Diamond.
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUPHA190
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TUSH101	Creating Interactive Web Pages for Non-Programmers	976
	T. D'Ottavio, P.S. Dyer, G.J. Marr, S. Nemesure BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA
	Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy. This paper describes a new web page creation system that allows web developers with limited programming experience to create interactive displays of control system data. Web pages can be created that display live control system data that updates in real-time, as well as data stored within our logging/archiving and database systems. Graphical, tabular, and textual displays are supported as well as standard interaction techniques via buttons, menus and tabs. The developer creates a web page using a custom web page builder. The builder presents a web page as a user-defined grid of tiled cells. The developer chooses the display style of each cell from a list of available cell types, then customizes its data content. Final polish can be applied using HTML and CSS. Specialized tools are available for creating mobile displays. This paper shows examples of the web pages created, and provides a summary of the experience of both the web developers and users.
	Poster TUSH101 [1.634 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUSH101
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TUSH102	PShell: from SLS beamlines to the SwissFEL control room	979
	A. Gobbo, S.G. Ebner PSI, Villigen PSI, Switzerland
	PShell is an in-house developed scripting environment in use at PSI since 2014. Started as a beamline data acquisition tool at SLS, PShell is being used by different SwissFEL groups for the commissioning and operation of the SwissFEL machine. New features were added to meet new requirements, such as supporting beam synchronous data and streamed cameras. Besides providing a workbench for developing data acquisition logic, PShell also offers a convenient way to create user interfaces/panels that can easily trigger the execution of logic. To improve user experience and to simplify operation tools these panels can also be launched and used as standalone applications.
	Poster TUSH102 [1.542 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUSH102
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TUSH103	Web and Multi-Platform Mobile App at Elettra	984
	L. Zambon, A.I. Bogani, S. Cleva, E. Coghetto, F. Lauro Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy M. De Bernardi University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
	A few apps have been recently developed at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. The main requirements are the compatibility with the main mobile device platforms and with the web, as well as the "mobile-first" user interface approach. We abandoned the possibility of developing native apps for the main mobile OSs. There are plenty of libraries and frameworks for the development of modern cross platform web/mobile applications. In this scenario the choice of a particular set of libraries is crucial. In this paper we will discuss the motivation of our choice trying to compare it with the other possibilities in regard to our particular use cases, as well as the first applications developed.
	Poster TUSH103 [3.358 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-TUSH103
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THAPL01	Implementation of Web-based Operational Log System at RIBF	1073
	A. Uchiyama, N. Fukunishi, M. Komiyama RIKEN Nishina Center, Wako, Japan
	The operational log system is one of the electric log systems for recording and viewing the accelerator operation time and contents of an operated device. Zlog (Zope-based log system)* developed by KEK was utilized for the RIBF control system. Zope is an open-source Web server and Web application framework written in Python. Using the Web application, information on accelerator operation is designated by a character string on Web browsers. However, the displayed string character on the Web browser will be complex for accelerator operators because many parameters are changed in accelerator operation, though the Web-based system has many advantages. For smoother accelerator operation, an ergonomically designed operational log system is required. Therefore, we developed a new operational log system for RIBF control system. The new system is possible to provide operational logs with a variety of rich GUI components. As of now, the operational log system has been working for accelerator operation by monitoring approximately 3,000 points as the EPICS record without any serious problem. *K. Yoshii et al.: Proc. ICALEPCS07, (2007), p. 299.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/AK3_8x9KlTM
	Slides THAPL01 [10.499 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THAPL01
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THAPL02	Best Practices for Efficient Development of JavaFX Applications	1078
	G. Kruk, O. Da Silva Alves, L. Molinari, E. Roux CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	JavaFX, the GUI toolkit included in the standard JDK, has reached a level of maturity enabling its usage for Control Systems applications. Property bindings, built-in separation between logic (Controller) and visual part (FXML) that can be designed with Scene Builder, combined with the leverage of Java 8 features such as λ expressions or method references, make this toolkit a very compelling choice for the creation of clean and testable GUI applications. This article describes best practices and tools that improve developer's efficiency even further. Structuring applications for productivity, simplified FXML loading, the application of Dependency Injection and Presentation Model patterns, testability are discussed among other topics, along with support of IDE tooling.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/18aAg4PNeis
	Slides THAPL02 [7.691 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THAPL02
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THAPL03	Usability Recommendations for the SKA Control Room Obtained by a User-Centred Design Approach	1084
	V. Alberti INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy G. Brajnik IDS, Udine, Italy
	Funding: INAF User-Centered Design is a powerful approach for designing UIs that match and satisfy users' skills and expectations. Interviews, affinity diagrams, personas, usage scenarios are some of the fundamental tools for gathering and analysing relevant information. We applied these techniques to the development of the UI for the control room of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescopes. We interviewed the personnel at two of the SKA precursors, LOFAR and MeerKAT, with the goal of understanding what features satisfy operators' needs and which ones can be improved. What was learned includes several usability issues dealing with fragmentation and low cohesiveness of the UIs, some gaps, and an excessive number of user actions needed to achieve certain goals. Low usability of the UI and the large scale of SKA are two challenges in developing its UI because they affect the extent to which operators can focus on important data, the likelihood of human errors and their consequences. This paper illustrates the followed method, provides examples of some of the artefacts that were produced and describes and motivates the resulting usability recommendations which are specific for SKA.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/0jjtwD1wE7w
	Slides THAPL03 [1.017 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THAPL03
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THAPL04	Python for User Interfaces at Sirius	1091
	G.S. Fedel, D.B. Beniz, L.P. Do Carmo, J.R. Piton LNLS, Campinas, Brazil
	Sirius is the new Brazilian Synchrotron and will be finished in 2018. Based on experiences at LNLS UVX light source along with researches and implementations, we present our new approach to develop user interfaces for beamlines control. On this process, the main tools explored are Python, Qt and some Python libraries: PyQt, PyDM and Py4syn. Powerful resources of these modules and Python straightforward coding guarantee flexible user interfaces: it is possible to combine graphical applications with intelligent control procedures. At UVX, EPICS and Python are software tools already used respectively for distributed control system and control routines. These routines often use Py4Syn, a library which provides high-level abstraction for devices manipulation. All these features will continue at Sirius. More recently PyQt turned out to be a compatible and intuitive tool to build GUI applications, binding Qt to Python. Also PyDM offers a practical framework to expose EPICS variables to PyQt. The result is a set of graphical and control libraries to support new user interfaces for Sirius beamlines.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/wZjOwdMuYyM
	Slides THAPL04 [1.391 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THAPL04
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THAPL05	Nomad 3D: Augmented Reality in Instrument Control	1098
	Y. Le Goc, F. Cecillon, P. Mutti ILL, Grenoble, France
	The life cycle of an ILL instrument has two main stages. During the design of the instrument, a precise but static 3D model of the different components is developed. Then comes the exploitation of the instrument of which the control by the Nomad software allows scientific experiments to be performed. Almost all instruments at the ILL have moveable parts often hidden behind radiological protection elements such as heavy concrete walls or casemate. Massive elements of the sample environment like magnets and cryostats must be aligned in the beam. All those devices are able to collide with the surrounding environment. To avoid those types of accident, the instrument moves must be checked by a pre-experiment simulation that will reveal possible interferences. Nomad 3D is the application that links the design and the experiment aspects providing an animated 3D physical representation of the instrument while it moves. Collision detection algorithms will protect the moveable parts from crashes. During an experiment, it will augment the reality by enabling to "see" behind the walls. It will provide as well a precise virtual representation of the instrument during the simulations.
	Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/Gt2u0sH4vb8
	Slides THAPL05 [117.101 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THAPL05
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THPHA180	Visualisation of Real-Time Front-End Software Architecture (FESA) Developments at CERN	1853
	A. Topaloudis CERN, Geneva, Switzerland C. Rachex Polytech Grenoble, Saint Martin d'Hères, France
	The Front-End Software Architecture (FESA) framework is the basis for most real-time software development for accelerator control at CERN. FESA designs are defined in an XML document which is validated against a schema to enforce framework constraints, and are used to automatically generate C++ boilerplate code in which the developer can then implement specific code. Design files can rapidly grow in complexity making the overview of the resulting system almost impossible to understand. One way to overcome this is to benefit from a graph-based representation of the design, with XML fragments summarized into logical blocks and association between the blocks depicted by arrows. As the intricacy of the graph is analogous to a potential complex design, it is also essential to provide an interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) for parameterising and editing the graph generation in order to fine-tune a simpler and cleaner illustration of a FESA design. This paper describes such a GUI (FESA Graph Editor) and outlines how it benefits the design and documentation process of the FESA-design-document.
	Poster THPHA180 [0.987 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA180
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THPHA181	Web Based Visualization Tools for Epics Embedded Systems: An Application to Belle2	1857
	G. Tortone, A. Anastasio, V. Izzo INFN-Napoli, Napoli, Italy A. Aloisio, F. Di Capua, R. Giordano University of Naples, Napoli, Italy F. Ameli INFN-Roma1, Rome, Italy P. Branchini roma3, Rome, Italy
	Common EPICS visualization tools include standalone Graphical User Interface [] or archiving applications [] that are not suitable to create custom web dashboards from IOC published PVs. The solution proposed in this work is a data publishing architecture based on three open-source components: - Collectd: a very popular data collection daemon with a specialized plugin developed to fetch EPICS PVs; - InfluxDB: a Time Series DataBase (TSDB) that provides an high performance datastore written specifically for time series data; - Grafana: a web application for time series analytics and visualization able to query data from different datasources. A live demo will be provided showing flexibility and user friendliness of such developed solution. As a case study, we show the environment developed and deployed in the Belle2 experiment at KEK Laboratory (Tsukuba, Japan) to monitor data from the endcap calorimeter during the installation phase. K.Kasemir, Control System Studio Applications, Proc. of ICALEPCS 2007, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA ** M.Shankar et al., The EPICS Archiver Appliance, Proc. of ICALEPCS 2015, Melbourne, Australia
	Poster THPHA181 [4.457 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA181
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THPHA182	Common Standards for JavaFX GUI Development and its Application to the Renovation of the CERN Beam Instrumentation Software Portal and Delivery Mechanism	1861
	I. D. Rodis, A. Topaloudis CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	Until recently, Java GUI development in the CERN Beam Instrumentation Group has followed an ad-hoc approach despite several attempts to provide frameworks and coding standards. Triggered by the deprecation of Java's Swing toolkit, the JavaFX toolkit has been adopted for the creation of new GUIs, and is foreseen for future migration of Swing-based GUIs. To increase homogenisation and encourage modular coding of JavaFX GUIs, libraries have been developed to standardise accelerator context selection, provide inter-component GUI communication and optimise data streaming between the control system and modules that make up an expert GUI. This paper describes how this has allowed the use of model-view-controller techniques and naming conventions via Maven archetypes. It also details the modernisation of the software delivery process and subsequent renovation of the software portal. Finally, the paper outlines a vision to extend the principles applied to this Java GUI development for future Python-based developments.
	Poster THPHA182 [1.273 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA182
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THPHA183	Structure and Development of SESAME's Control System Clients	1865
	A. Al-Dalleh, A. Ismail, I. Saleh SESAME, Allan, Jordan
	Funding: IAEA SESAME is a 2.5 GeV synchrotron light source located in Allan, Jordan. It is expected to become operational in late 2017. Storage ring is currently under commissioning. The main components of the control systems software side are: IOCs developed using EPICS toolkit, operator interfaces (OPIs) designed using Control System Studio (CSS), process variables archiving using CSS BEAUTY toolkit, alarm handling using CSS BEAST toolkit and tools to help in automation and reporting. This paper will present the design and development of the client system based on CSS, as well as upgrades that are under research including EPICS Qt framework as a client replacement for CSS and upgrading the archiver engine to a scalable and higher performance engine.
	Poster THPHA183 [1.189 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA183
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THPHA184	MalcolmJS: a Browser-Based Graphical User Interface	1869
	I.J. Gillingham, T.M. Cobb DLS, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
	A browser-based graphical user interface has been developed at Diamond. It is known as known as MalcolmJS as it communicates using Diamond's Malcolm Middleware protocol. The original goal was to communicate, via websockets with a PandABox in order to allow a user to examine and set attributes of numerous functional blocks within the instrument. With the continuing maturity of the JavaScript language, in particular the release of ES6, along with the availability of off-the-shelf reactive open-source JavaScript libraries, such as Facebook's React and Node.js, a rich set of tools and frameworks have entered the arena of user interface development suitable for control systems. This paper describes the design decisions based on these tools, experiences and lessons learned during and after the development process and the possibilities for future development as a generic, adaptable framework for instrument and control system user interfaces.
	Poster THPHA184 [1.665 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA184
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THPHA185	Radar 2.0, a Drag and Drop, Cross Platform Control System Design Software	1873
	O.Ø. Andreassen, R.M. Knudsen, J.W. Rachucki CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
	In the ever-growing control system at CERN, there is a need for having an easy to use, yet fast and flexible tool that interfaces with all the different middleware in the accelerator, experiments and technical infrastructures. With RADAR 2.0 we wanted to address this issue, making a LabVIEW based, drag and drop visual tool that hides much of the system complexity from the user and within seconds gives the operator a ready to use, fully functional control system GUI. RADAR 2.0 interfaces with the CERN Middleware (CMW), the CERN Accelerator and Logging system (CALS), OPC-UA and DIM. With its class based implementation it can easily be extended to other data sources (Files, Databases, middleware) on demand.
	Poster THPHA185 [2.471 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA185
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THPHA186	Parallel Execution of Sequential Data Analysis	1877
	J.F.J. Murari, K. Klementiev MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
	The Parallel Execution of Sequential Data Analysis (ParSeq) software has been developed to work on large data sets of thousands spectra of a thousand points each. The main goal of this tool is to perform spectroscopy analysis without delays on the large amount of data that will be generated on Balder beamline at Max IV . ParSeq was developed using Python and PyQt and can be operated via scripts or graphical user interface (GUI). The pipeline is consisted of nodes and transforms. Each node generally has a common group of components: data manager (also serves as legend), data combiner, metadata viewer, transform dialog, help panel and a plot window (from silx library ) as main element. The transforms connect nodes, applying the respective parameters in the active data. It is also possible to create cross-data linear combinations (e.g. averaging, RMS or PCA) and propagate them downstream. Calculations will be done with parallel execution on GPU. The GUI is very flexible and user-friendly, containing splitters, dock widgets, colormaps and undo/redo options. The features mentioned are missing in other analysis platforms what justifies the creation of ParSeq. Klementiev, K., et al. "The BALDER Beamline at the MAX IV Laboratory" Journal of Physics: Conference Series. IOP Publishing, 2016 ** Scientific Library for eXperimentalists - http://www.silx.org/
	Poster THPHA186 [0.407 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA186
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THPHA188	The SKA Dish Local Monitoring and Control System User Interface	1880
	A. Marassi INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy M. Brambilla PoliMi, Milano, Italy A. Ingallinera, S. Riggi, C. Trigilio INAF-OACT, Catania, Italy G. Nicotra INAF IRA, Bologna, Italy G. Smit SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa
	The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is responsible for developing the SKA Observatory, the world's largest radiotelescope ever built: eventually two arrays of radio antennas - SKA1-Mid and SKA1-Low - will be installed in the South Africa's Karoo region and Western Australia's Murchison Shire, each covering a different range of radio frequencies. In particular SKA1-Mid array will comprise 133 15m diameter dish antennas observing in the 350 MHz-14 GHz range, each locally managed by a Local Monitoring and Control (LMC) system and remotely orchestrated by the SKA Telescope Manager (TM) system. Dish LMC will provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be used for monitoring and Dish control in standalone mode for testing, TM simulation, integration, commissioning and maintenance. This paper gives a status update of the LMC GUI design involving users and tasks analysis, system prototyping, interface evaluation and provides details on the GUI prototypes being developed and technological choices.
	Poster THPHA188 [0.712 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA188
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THPHA189	LCLS Machine Protection System High Level Interface Improvements	1885
	C. Bianchini, S. L. Hoobler SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
	The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free electron laser (FEL) facility operating at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC). The LCLS Machine Protection System (MPS) contains thousands of inputs and hundreds of protection interlocks. The inputs and logic configuration are defined in SQLite database files. Real-time state information is hosted by EPICS signals. Control room operators use a Graphical User Interface (MPSGUI) to view and manage faults. The MPSGUI provides a wealth of useful information, from hardware input details to high-level logic flow, but it was difficult for operators to take advantage of this. The workflow required cross-referencing between several screens. This poster presents the greatly improved workflow and usability of the MPSGUI. The requested improvements were defined in meetings between the MPS controls team and the control room operators. The improved GUI allow operators to more quickly respond to MPS faults and diagnose problems reducing troubleshooting time by 20 percent.
	Poster THPHA189 [1.291 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA189
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THPHA190	Implementing CS-Studio at ReA3	1887
	T. Summers, D.B. Crisp, A. Lapierre, S. Nash, M. Steiner NSCL, East Lansing, Michigan, USA E.T. Berryman, D.G. Maxwell, A.C.C. Villari FRIB, East Lansing, USA
	Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-1565546. ReA3 is the rare isotope beam (RIB) reaccelerator at the Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). ReA3 is unique in its specialty and is being used to reaccelerate RIBs presently produced by the Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) and in the future, by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) which is currently under construction. A transition to CS-Studio as the graphical user interface tool is underway to align ReA3 Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) with the FRIB style, providing operators with a consistent and integrated environment. This contribution will describe the challenges and strategies for implementing the new HMIs at an operating facility. It will demonstrate the use of mock-ups and a simulated environment for interface design and testing.
	Poster THPHA190 [1.627 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA190
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THSH101	Using Control Surfaces to Operate CS-Studio OPIs	1953
	C. Rosati ESS, Lund, Sweden
	Modern control software has given us virtually unlimited possibilities for monitoring and controlling EPICS systems, but sacrifices the organic feel of faders and knobs at our fingertips. This article will show how to reclaim that experience without losing the power of software through control surfaces commonly used with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) to manipulate audio, demonstrating how real motorised touch-sensitive faders, buttons and assignable V-pots will improve and speed up the control experience.
	Poster THSH101 [2.650 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THSH101
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THSH103	Using Color Blindness Simulator During User Interface Development for Accelerator Control Room Applications	1958
	S. Aytac DESY, Hamburg, Germany
	For normally sighted developers it is hard to imagine how the user interface is going to look to a color blind person. Our purpose is to draw attention to people with color blindness and to consider their color vision. For that, this paper presents the integration of color blindness simulators into the development process of user interfaces. At the end we discuss the main contributing factors.
	Poster THSH103 [1.168 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THSH103
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THSH303	CS-Studio Display Builder	1978
	K.-U. Kasemir ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA M.L. Grodowitz ORNL RAD, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
	Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. The Display Builder started as a comprehensive update to the CS-Studio BOY panel editor and runtime. The design was changed to a modular approach, separating the model of widgets and their properties from the graphical representation and the runtime. The model is fully multithreaded. The representation has been demonstrated in both SWT and JavaFX, for now intending to concentrate on the latter. The runtime, based on the thread-safe model, avoids user thread delays and improves overall performance for complex widgets like images as well as scripts and rules. We present the current state of the development and initial deployments at beam lines of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Spallation Neutron Source.
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THSH303
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Paper

Title

Page

CERN Controls Configuration Service - a Challenge in Usability

159

L. Burdzanowski, A. Asko, A. Lameiro, K. Penar, C. Roderick, B. Urbaniec, V.I. Vasiloudis
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Complex control systems often require complex tools to facilitate daily operations in a way that assures the highest possible availability. Such a situation poses an engineering challenge, for which system complexity needs to be tamed in a way that everyday use becomes intuitive and efficient. The sensation of comfort and ease of use are matters of ergonomics and usability - very relevant not only to equipment but especially software applications, products and graphical user interfaces. The Controls Configuration Service (CCS) is a key component in CERN's data driven accelerator Control System. Based around a central database, the service provides a range of user interfaces enabling configuration of all different aspects of controls for CERN's accelerator complex. This paper describes the on-going renovation of the service with a focus on the evolution of the provided user interfaces, design choices and architectural decisions paving the way towards a single configuration platform for CERN's control systems in the near future.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/kQdYKpHmyWI

Slides TUBPL01 [1.679 MB]

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TUBPL02

Taurus Big & Small: From Particle Accelerators to Desktop Labs

166

C. Pascual-Izarra, G. Cuní, C. Falcon-Torres, D. Fernández-Carreiras, Z. Reszela, M. Rosanes Siscart
ALBA-CELLS Synchrotron, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
O. Prades-Palacios
ETSE-UAB, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

Taurus is a popular solution for rapid creation of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for experiment control and data acquisition (even by non-programmers) *. Taurus is best known for its ability to interact with the Tango and Epics control systems, and thus it is mainly used in large facilities. However, Taurus also provides mechanisms to interact with other sources of data, and it is well suited for creating GUIs for even the smallest labs where the overhead of a distributed control system is not desired. This scalability together with its ease-of-use and the uncontested popularity of Python among the scientific users, make Taurus an attractive framework for a wide range of applications. In this work we discuss some practical examples of usage of Taurus ranging from a very small experimental setup controlled by a single Raspberry Pi, to large facilities synchronising an heterogeneous set of hundreds of machines running a variety of operating systems.
* C Pascual-Izarra et al. "Effortless creation of control & data acquisition graphical user interfaces with taurus", THHC3O03, ICALEPCS2015, Melbourne, Australia, 2015.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/YOaV9FvRKNc

Slides TUBPL02 [4.440 MB]

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TUBPL03

PANIC and the Evolution of Tango Alarm Handlers

170

S. Rubio-Manrique, G. Cuní, D. Fernández-Carreiras
ALBA-CELLS Synchrotron, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
G. Scalamera
Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy

The PANIC Alarm System is a python based suite to manage the configuration, triggering and acknowledge of alarms and automated actions in a Tango control system. The suite was developed at Alba in 2007 and since then it has been adopted by several other facilities and installations such as Synchrotrons and large telescopes, integrating in the process a large set of community-requested features. Its scalability is based on the stand-alone PyAlarm engines, that operate distributed across the control system; and the PANIC python API and user interfaces, that centralize the operation and configuration of the system. Each PyAlarm engine performs polled or event-triggered evaluation of alarm rules, complex logical operations and regular expression searches. The activation, recovery or reset of any alarm in the system can trigger actions like email, SMS, audible messages, local/remote logging, database insertion or execution of tango commands. This paper describes the evolution of the suite, its compatibility with other alarm handlers in Tango, the current state-of-the-art features, the compliance with Alarm Management standards and the future needs.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/T3730ZH_NsM

Slides TUBPL03 [6.277 MB]

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TUBPL04

Streamlining the Target Fabrication Request at the National Ignition Facility

176

C.P. Manin, E.J. Bond, A.D. Casey, R.D. Clark, G.W. Norman
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA

Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
The NIF Shot Data Systems (SDS) team developed the Target Request Tool (TRT) Web application for facilitating the management of target requests from creation to approval. TRT provides a simple-to-use and user-friendly interface that allows the user to create, edit, submit and withdraw requests. The underlying design uses the latest Web technologies such as Node.js, Express, jQuery and Java-Script. The overall software architecture and functionality will be presented in this paper.
LLNL-ABS-728266

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/m2AkK_af25g

Slides TUBPL04 [1.525 MB]

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TUBPL05

MXCuBE3 Bringing MX Experiments to the WEB

180

M. Oskarsson, A. Beteva, D.D.S. De Sanctis, M. Guijarro, G. Leonard
ESRF, Grenoble, France
F. Bolmsten, M. Eguiraun, A. Milan-Otero, J. Nan, M. Thunnissen
MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Funding: This work was in part supported by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union (iNEXT grant, project No. 653706)
Originally conceived at ESRF and first deployed in 2005 MXCuBE, Macromolecular Xtallography Customized Beamline Environment, has with its successor MXCuBE2, become a successful international collaboration. The aim of the collaboration is to develop a beamline control application for macromolecular crystallography (MX) that are independent of underlying instrument control software and thus deployable at the MX beamlines of any synchrotron source. The continued evolution of the functionality offered at MX beamlines is to a large extent facilitated by active software development. New demands and advances in technology have led to the development of a new version of MXCuBE, MXCuBE3, The design of which was inspired by the results of a technical pre-study and user survey. MXCuBE3 takes advantage of the recent development in web technologies such as React and Redux to create an intuitive and user friendly application. The access to the application from any web browser further simplifies the operation and natively facilitates the execution of remote experiments.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/GGJib8l20ys

Slides TUBPL05 [3.014 MB]

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TUBPL06

The Graphical User Interface of the Operator of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

186

I. Sadeh, I. Oya
DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen, Germany
D. Dezman
Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
E. Pietriga
INRIA, Orsay Cedex, France
J. Schwarz
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Merate, Italy

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation gamma-ray observatory. CTA will incorporate about 100 imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) at a southern site, and about 20 in the north. Previous IACT experiments have used up to five telescopes. Subsequently, the design of a graphical user interface (GUI) for the operator of CTA poses an interesting challenge. In order to create an effective interface, the CTA team is collaborating with experts from the field of Human-Computer Interaction. We present here our GUI prototype. The back-end of the prototype is a Python Web server. It is integrated with the observation execution system of CTA, which is based on the Alma Common Software (ACS). The back-end incorporates a redis database, which facilitates synchronization of GUI panels. redis is also used to buffer information collected from various software components and databases. The front-end of the prototype is based on Web technology. Communication between Web server and clients is performed using Web Sockets, where graphics are generated with the d3.js Javascript library.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/8ZvUj-DHSgE

Slides TUBPL06 [54.366 MB]

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TUMPA01

New Visual Alignment Sequencer Tool Improves Efficiency of Shot Operations at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)

328

M.A. Fedorov, J.R. Castro Morales, V. Pacheu, E.F. Wilson
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA

Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 LLNL-ABS-728701
Established control systems for scientific experimental facilities offer several levels of user interfaces to match domain-specific needs and preferences of experimentalists, operational and engineering staff. At the National Ignition Facility, the low-level device panels address technicians' need for comprehensive hardware control, while Shot Automation software allows NIF Shot Director to advance thousands of devices at once through a carefully orchestrated shot sequence. MATLAB scripting with NIF Layering Toolbox has enabled formation of intricate Deuterium-Tritium ice layers for fusion experiments. The latest addition to this family of user interfaces is the Target Area Alignment Tool (TAAT), which guides NIF operators through hundreds of measurement and motion steps necessary to precisely align targets and diagnostics for each experiment inside of the NIF's 10-meter target chamber. In this paper, we discuss how this new tool has integrated familiar spreadsheet calculations with intuitive visual aids and checklist-like scripting to allow NIF Process Engineers to automate and streamline alignment sequences, contributing towards NIF Shot Rate enhancement goals.

Slides TUMPA01 [2.173 MB]

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TUPHA179

Management Software and Data Exchange Protocol for the INFN-LNS Accelerators Beamlines

846

G. Vecchio, S. Aurnia, S. Cavallaro, L. Cosentino, B.F. Diana, E. Furia, P.S. Pulvirenti
INFN/LNS, Catania, Italy

This paper describes the design and the development of an innovative management software for the accelerators beamlines at INFN-LNS. The Graphical User Interface, the data exchange protocol, the software functionality and the hardware will be illustrated. Compared to traditional platforms for the accelerators console, at INFN-LNS we have developed a new concept of control system and data acquisition framework, based on a data structures server which so far has never been used for supervisory control. We have chosen Redis as a highly scalable data store, shared by multiple and different processes. With such system it is possible to communicate cross-platform, cross-server or cross-application in a very simple way, using very lightweight libraries. A complex and highly ergonomic Graphic User Interface allows to control all the parameters with a user-friendly interactive approach, ensuring high functionality so that the beam operator can visually work in a realistic environment. All the information related to the beamline elements involved in the beam transport, can be stored in a centralized database, with suitable criteria to have a historical database.

Poster TUPHA179 [1.636 MB]

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TUPHA180

Development of Post-mortem Viewer for the Taiwan Photon Source

849

C.Y. Liao, Y.-S. Cheng, P.C. Chiu, K.T. Hsu, K.H. Hu, C.H. Huang, C.Y. Wu
NSRRC, Hsinchu, Taiwan

The Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) is a 3-GeV third-generation synchrotron light source located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The post-mortem (PM) system is act as an important tool to diagnostic the cause of trip events caused by beam loss. A MATLAB-based and web-based viewer were developed to plot and view the each event to understand the cause and effect of the event. The post-mortem viewer architecture and implementation were presented in this report.

Poster TUPHA180 [2.184 MB]

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TUPHA181

Web Extensible Display Manager

852

R.J. Slominski, T. L. Larrieu
JLab, Newport News, Virginia, USA

Funding: Authored by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC under U.S. DOE Contract No. DE-AC05-06OR23177
Jefferson Lab's Web Extensible Display Manager (WEDM) allows staff to access EDM control system screens from a web browser in remote offices and from mobile devices. Native browser technologies are leveraged to avoid installing and managing software on remote clients such as browser plugins, tunnel applications, or an EDM environment. Since standard network ports are used firewall exceptions are minimized. To avoid security concerns from remote users modifying a control system, WEDM exposes read-only access and basic web authentication can be used to further restrict access. Updates of monitored EPICS channels are delivered via a Web Socket using a web gateway. The software translates EDM description files (denoted with the edl suffix) to HTML with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) following the EDM's edl file vector drawing rules to create faithful screen renderings. The WEDM server parses edl files and creates the HTML equivalent in real-time allowing existing screens to work without modification. Alternatively, the familiar drag and drop EDM screen creation tool can be used to create optimized screens sized specifically for smart phones and then rendered by WEDM.

Poster TUPHA181 [1.818 MB]

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TUPHA183

An Interactive Workflow to Manage Tomography Experiments at ESRF

857

H. Payno, C. Nemoz
ESRF, Grenoble, France

At the ESRF the activity of several beamlines is based upon tomography X-ray imaging in various fields such as Paleontology, Medical Imaging and Materials Science. The instrument control and data processing systems are cloned on all the relevant beamlines, however the steps of the processing pipeline from the data acquisition to their full exploitation in premier quality publications are based upon a heterogeneous software scenario comprised of e.g. SPEC, Python, Octave, PyHST2 and MATLAB modules. The need has thus clearly appeared to logically sequence the operations performed by these different actors into user-friendly workflows. At the ESRF we selected a generic workflow tool, Orange, which was originally developed at the University of Ljubljana and designed for data mining in collaboration with the open source community. The graphical interface enables the easy inclusion/exclusion of functionalities represented by individual boxes. Each box can be managed by simple pieces of Python code generating graphical interfaces via the PyQT5 library and is defined by a set of inputs and outputs which can be linked together to produce consistent data processing workflows.

Poster TUPHA183 [0.976 MB]

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TUPHA184

Inspector, a Zero Code IDE for Control Systems User Interface Development

861

V. Costa, B. Lefort
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Developing operational User Interfaces (UI) can be challenging, especially during machine upgrade or commissioning where many changes can suddenly be required. An agile Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with enhanced refactoring capabilities can ease the development process. Inspector is an intuitive UI oriented IDE allowing for development of control interfaces and data processing. It features a state of the art visual interface composer fitted with an ample set of graphical components offering rich customization. It also integrates a scripting environment for soft real time data processing and UI scripting for complex interfaces. Furthermore, Inspector supports many data sources. Alongside the short application development time, it means Inspector can be used in early stages of device engineering or it can be used on top of a full control system stack to create elaborate high level control UIs. Inspector is now a mission critical tool at CERN providing agile features for creating and maintaining control system interfaces. It is intensively used by experts, machine operators and performs seamlessly from small test benches to complex instruments such as LHC or LINAC4.

Poster TUPHA184 [1.378 MB]

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TUPHA186

JavaFX Charts: Implementation of Missing Features

866

G. Kruk, O. Da Silva Alves, L. Molinari
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

JavaFX, the GUI toolkit included in the standard JDK, provides charting components with commonly used chart types, a simple API and wide customization possibilities via CSS. Nevertheless, while the offered functionality is easy to use and of high quality, it lacks a number of features that are crucial for scientific or controls GUIs. Examples are the possibility to zoom and pan the chart content, superposition of different plot types, data annotations, decorations or a logarithmic axis. The standard charts also show performance limitations when exposed to large data sets or high update rates. The article will describe the how we have implemented the missing features and overcome the performance problems.

Poster TUPHA186 [2.293 MB]

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TUPHA187

Enhancing the MxCuBE User Interface by a Finite State Machine (FSM) Model

869

I. Karpics, G. Bourenkov, T.R. Schneider
EMBL, Hamburg, Germany

The acquisition of X-ray diffraction data from macromolecular crystals is a major activity at many synchrotrons and requires user interfaces that provide robust and easy-to-use control of the experimental setup. Building on the modular design of the MxCuBE beamline user interface, we have implemented a finite state machine model that allows to describe and monitor the interaction of the user with the beamline in a typical experiment. Using a finite state machine, the path of user interaction can be rationalized and error conditions and recovery procedures can be systematically dealt with.
Gabadinho, J. et al. (2010). MxCuBE: a synchrotron beamline control environment customized for macromolecular crystallography experiments. J. Synchrotron Rad. 17, 700-707

Poster TUPHA187 [1.898 MB]

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TUPHA188

SOLARIS Digital User Office

873

T. Szymocha, A. Górkiewicz, P. Peterman, M.J. Stankiewicz, J. Szota-Pachowicz
Solaris National Synchrotron Radiation Centre, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
A. Pulapa, R. Rozanska, T. Szepieniec
Cyfronet, Kraków, Poland

Polish National Center for Synchrotron Radiation SOLARIS UJ is being prepared for first users. In order to facilitate process of user management, proposal submission, review and beam time allocation the SOLARIS Digital User Office project has been started. The DUO is developed in collaboration with Academic Computer Center CYFRONET AGH. The DUO consists of several main components. The user management component allows user registration and user affiliation management. The proposal submission component facilitate filling proposal form, indicating co-proposers and experimentalist. The review component supports process of decision making, including the Review Meeting event and grading proposals process. Apart of managing the main processes, the application provides an additional functionalities (e.g. experimental reports, trainings, feedbacks). DUO was designed as an open platform to face the challenges related to continually changing Solaris facility. Therefore, the business logic is described as an easily maintainable rule-based specification. To achieve good user experience modern web technologies were used including: Angular for the front-end part and Java Spring for server.

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TUPHA189

Automating Operation Statistics at PETRA-3

876

P. Duval, R. Bacher, H. Ehrlichmann, D. Haupt, M. Lomperski
DESY, Hamburg, Germany
J. Bobnar
Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The quoted machine availability of a particle accelerator over some time range is usually hand-generated by a machine coordinator, who pores over archived operations parameters and logbook entries for the time period in question. When the machine is deemed unavailable for operations, 'blame' is typically assigned to one or more machine sub-systems. With a 'perfect' representation of all possible machine states and all possible fatal alarms it is possible to calculate machine availability and assign blame automatically and thereby remove any bias and uncertainty that might creep in when a human is involved. Any system which attempts to do this must nevertheless recognize the de-facto impossibility of achieving perfection and allow for 'corrections' by a machine coordinator. Such a system for automated availability statistics was recently presented* and we now report on results and improvements following a half year in operation at PETRA-3 and its accelerator chain.
* Duval, Lomperski, Ehrlichmann, and Bobar, "Automated Availability Statistics", Proceedings PCaPAC 2016.

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TUPHA190

Adaptations to CS-Studio for Use at Diamond Light Source

880

W.A.H. Rogers, N.W. Battam, T.M. Cobb, M.J. Furseman, G. Knap
DLS, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Control System Studio (CS-Studio) is one of the most widely-used display managers for EPICS. It is based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (Eclipse RCP), allowing for coherent integration of interfaces for different systems with common graphical elements and preferences. However, this user interface presents a different way of working to those from the previous generation of EPICS tools such as Extensible Display Manager (EDM) and Striptool. At Diamond Light Source, EDM has been used since commissioning in two different ways: for machine operations and for beamline controls. Both uses of EDM will eventually be replaced with CS-Studio and significant effort has been put into this transition. Two kinds of change proved necessary: adaptations to CS-Studio itself, and changes to the typical user workflows. This paper presents both types of changes that were needed to make CS-Studio a productive tool at Diamond.

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TUSH101

Creating Interactive Web Pages for Non-Programmers

976

T. D'Ottavio, P.S. Dyer, G.J. Marr, S. Nemesure
BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York, USA

Funding: Work supported by Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-SC0012704 with the U.S. Department of Energy.
This paper describes a new web page creation system that allows web developers with limited programming experience to create interactive displays of control system data. Web pages can be created that display live control system data that updates in real-time, as well as data stored within our logging/archiving and database systems. Graphical, tabular, and textual displays are supported as well as standard interaction techniques via buttons, menus and tabs. The developer creates a web page using a custom web page builder. The builder presents a web page as a user-defined grid of tiled cells. The developer chooses the display style of each cell from a list of available cell types, then customizes its data content. Final polish can be applied using HTML and CSS. Specialized tools are available for creating mobile displays. This paper shows examples of the web pages created, and provides a summary of the experience of both the web developers and users.

Poster TUSH101 [1.634 MB]

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TUSH102

PShell: from SLS beamlines to the SwissFEL control room

979

A. Gobbo, S.G. Ebner
PSI, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

PShell is an in-house developed scripting environment in use at PSI since 2014. Started as a beamline data acquisition tool at SLS, PShell is being used by different SwissFEL groups for the commissioning and operation of the SwissFEL machine. New features were added to meet new requirements, such as supporting beam synchronous data and streamed cameras. Besides providing a workbench for developing data acquisition logic, PShell also offers a convenient way to create user interfaces/panels that can easily trigger the execution of logic. To improve user experience and to simplify operation tools these panels can also be launched and used as standalone applications.

Poster TUSH102 [1.542 MB]

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TUSH103

Web and Multi-Platform Mobile App at Elettra

984

L. Zambon, A.I. Bogani, S. Cleva, E. Coghetto, F. Lauro
Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy
M. De Bernardi
University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy

A few apps have been recently developed at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. The main requirements are the compatibility with the main mobile device platforms and with the web, as well as the "mobile-first" user interface approach. We abandoned the possibility of developing native apps for the main mobile OSs. There are plenty of libraries and frameworks for the development of modern cross platform web/mobile applications. In this scenario the choice of a particular set of libraries is crucial. In this paper we will discuss the motivation of our choice trying to compare it with the other possibilities in regard to our particular use cases, as well as the first applications developed.

Poster TUSH103 [3.358 MB]

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THAPL01

Implementation of Web-based Operational Log System at RIBF

1073

A. Uchiyama, N. Fukunishi, M. Komiyama
RIKEN Nishina Center, Wako, Japan

The operational log system is one of the electric log systems for recording and viewing the accelerator operation time and contents of an operated device. Zlog (Zope-based log system)* developed by KEK was utilized for the RIBF control system. Zope is an open-source Web server and Web application framework written in Python. Using the Web application, information on accelerator operation is designated by a character string on Web browsers. However, the displayed string character on the Web browser will be complex for accelerator operators because many parameters are changed in accelerator operation, though the Web-based system has many advantages. For smoother accelerator operation, an ergonomically designed operational log system is required. Therefore, we developed a new operational log system for RIBF control system. The new system is possible to provide operational logs with a variety of rich GUI components. As of now, the operational log system has been working for accelerator operation by monitoring approximately 3,000 points as the EPICS record without any serious problem.
*K. Yoshii et al.: Proc. ICALEPCS07, (2007), p. 299.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/AK3_8x9KlTM

Slides THAPL01 [10.499 MB]

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THAPL02

Best Practices for Efficient Development of JavaFX Applications

1078

G. Kruk, O. Da Silva Alves, L. Molinari, E. Roux
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

JavaFX, the GUI toolkit included in the standard JDK, has reached a level of maturity enabling its usage for Control Systems applications. Property bindings, built-in separation between logic (Controller) and visual part (FXML) that can be designed with Scene Builder, combined with the leverage of Java 8 features such as λ expressions or method references, make this toolkit a very compelling choice for the creation of clean and testable GUI applications. This article describes best practices and tools that improve developer's efficiency even further. Structuring applications for productivity, simplified FXML loading, the application of Dependency Injection and Presentation Model patterns, testability are discussed among other topics, along with support of IDE tooling.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/18aAg4PNeis

Slides THAPL02 [7.691 MB]

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THAPL03

Usability Recommendations for the SKA Control Room Obtained by a User-Centred Design Approach

1084

V. Alberti
INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy
G. Brajnik
IDS, Udine, Italy

Funding: INAF
User-Centered Design is a powerful approach for designing UIs that match and satisfy users' skills and expectations. Interviews, affinity diagrams, personas, usage scenarios are some of the fundamental tools for gathering and analysing relevant information. We applied these techniques to the development of the UI for the control room of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescopes. We interviewed the personnel at two of the SKA precursors, LOFAR and MeerKAT, with the goal of understanding what features satisfy operators' needs and which ones can be improved. What was learned includes several usability issues dealing with fragmentation and low cohesiveness of the UIs, some gaps, and an excessive number of user actions needed to achieve certain goals. Low usability of the UI and the large scale of SKA are two challenges in developing its UI because they affect the extent to which operators can focus on important data, the likelihood of human errors and their consequences. This paper illustrates the followed method, provides examples of some of the artefacts that were produced and describes and motivates the resulting usability recommendations which are specific for SKA.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/0jjtwD1wE7w

Slides THAPL03 [1.017 MB]

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THAPL04

Python for User Interfaces at Sirius

1091

G.S. Fedel, D.B. Beniz, L.P. Do Carmo, J.R. Piton
LNLS, Campinas, Brazil

Sirius is the new Brazilian Synchrotron and will be finished in 2018. Based on experiences at LNLS UVX light source along with researches and implementations, we present our new approach to develop user interfaces for beamlines control. On this process, the main tools explored are Python, Qt and some Python libraries: PyQt, PyDM and Py4syn. Powerful resources of these modules and Python straightforward coding guarantee flexible user interfaces: it is possible to combine graphical applications with intelligent control procedures. At UVX, EPICS and Python are software tools already used respectively for distributed control system and control routines. These routines often use Py4Syn, a library which provides high-level abstraction for devices manipulation. All these features will continue at Sirius. More recently PyQt turned out to be a compatible and intuitive tool to build GUI applications, binding Qt to Python. Also PyDM offers a practical framework to expose EPICS variables to PyQt. The result is a set of graphical and control libraries to support new user interfaces for Sirius beamlines.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/wZjOwdMuYyM

Slides THAPL04 [1.391 MB]

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THAPL05

Nomad 3D: Augmented Reality in Instrument Control

1098

Y. Le Goc, F. Cecillon, P. Mutti
ILL, Grenoble, France

The life cycle of an ILL instrument has two main stages. During the design of the instrument, a precise but static 3D model of the different components is developed. Then comes the exploitation of the instrument of which the control by the Nomad software allows scientific experiments to be performed. Almost all instruments at the ILL have moveable parts often hidden behind radiological protection elements such as heavy concrete walls or casemate. Massive elements of the sample environment like magnets and cryostats must be aligned in the beam. All those devices are able to collide with the surrounding environment. To avoid those types of accident, the instrument moves must be checked by a pre-experiment simulation that will reveal possible interferences. Nomad 3D is the application that links the design and the experiment aspects providing an animated 3D physical representation of the instrument while it moves. Collision detection algorithms will protect the moveable parts from crashes. During an experiment, it will augment the reality by enabling to "see" behind the walls. It will provide as well a precise virtual representation of the instrument during the simulations.

Talk as video stream: https://youtu.be/Gt2u0sH4vb8

Slides THAPL05 [117.101 MB]

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THPHA180

Visualisation of Real-Time Front-End Software Architecture (FESA) Developments at CERN

1853

A. Topaloudis
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
C. Rachex
Polytech Grenoble, Saint Martin d'Hères, France

The Front-End Software Architecture (FESA) framework is the basis for most real-time software development for accelerator control at CERN. FESA designs are defined in an XML document which is validated against a schema to enforce framework constraints, and are used to automatically generate C++ boilerplate code in which the developer can then implement specific code. Design files can rapidly grow in complexity making the overview of the resulting system almost impossible to understand. One way to overcome this is to benefit from a graph-based representation of the design, with XML fragments summarized into logical blocks and association between the blocks depicted by arrows. As the intricacy of the graph is analogous to a potential complex design, it is also essential to provide an interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) for parameterising and editing the graph generation in order to fine-tune a simpler and cleaner illustration of a FESA design. This paper describes such a GUI (FESA Graph Editor) and outlines how it benefits the design and documentation process of the FESA-design-document.

Poster THPHA180 [0.987 MB]

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THPHA181

Web Based Visualization Tools for Epics Embedded Systems: An Application to Belle2

1857

G. Tortone, A. Anastasio, V. Izzo
INFN-Napoli, Napoli, Italy
A. Aloisio, F. Di Capua, R. Giordano
University of Naples, Napoli, Italy
F. Ameli
INFN-Roma1, Rome, Italy
P. Branchini
roma3, Rome, Italy

Common EPICS visualization tools include standalone Graphical User Interface [*] or archiving applications [**] that are not suitable to create custom web dashboards from IOC published PVs. The solution proposed in this work is a data publishing architecture based on three open-source components: - Collectd: a very popular data collection daemon with a specialized plugin developed to fetch EPICS PVs; - InfluxDB: a Time Series DataBase (TSDB) that provides an high performance datastore written specifically for time series data; - Grafana: a web application for time series analytics and visualization able to query data from different datasources. A live demo will be provided showing flexibility and user friendliness of such developed solution. As a case study, we show the environment developed and deployed in the Belle2 experiment at KEK Laboratory (Tsukuba, Japan) to monitor data from the endcap calorimeter during the installation phase.
* K.Kasemir, Control System Studio Applications, Proc. of ICALEPCS 2007, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
** M.Shankar et al., The EPICS Archiver Appliance, Proc. of ICALEPCS 2015, Melbourne, Australia

Poster THPHA181 [4.457 MB]

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THPHA182

Common Standards for JavaFX GUI Development and its Application to the Renovation of the CERN Beam Instrumentation Software Portal and Delivery Mechanism

1861

I. D. Rodis, A. Topaloudis
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Until recently, Java GUI development in the CERN Beam Instrumentation Group has followed an ad-hoc approach despite several attempts to provide frameworks and coding standards. Triggered by the deprecation of Java's Swing toolkit, the JavaFX toolkit has been adopted for the creation of new GUIs, and is foreseen for future migration of Swing-based GUIs. To increase homogenisation and encourage modular coding of JavaFX GUIs, libraries have been developed to standardise accelerator context selection, provide inter-component GUI communication and optimise data streaming between the control system and modules that make up an expert GUI. This paper describes how this has allowed the use of model-view-controller techniques and naming conventions via Maven archetypes. It also details the modernisation of the software delivery process and subsequent renovation of the software portal. Finally, the paper outlines a vision to extend the principles applied to this Java GUI development for future Python-based developments.

Poster THPHA182 [1.273 MB]

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THPHA183

Structure and Development of SESAME's Control System Clients

1865

A. Al-Dalleh, A. Ismail, I. Saleh
SESAME, Allan, Jordan

Funding: IAEA
SESAME is a 2.5 GeV synchrotron light source located in Allan, Jordan. It is expected to become operational in late 2017. Storage ring is currently under commissioning. The main components of the control systems software side are: IOCs developed using EPICS toolkit, operator interfaces (OPIs) designed using Control System Studio (CSS), process variables archiving using CSS BEAUTY toolkit, alarm handling using CSS BEAST toolkit and tools to help in automation and reporting. This paper will present the design and development of the client system based on CSS, as well as upgrades that are under research including EPICS Qt framework as a client replacement for CSS and upgrading the archiver engine to a scalable and higher performance engine.

Poster THPHA183 [1.189 MB]

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THPHA184

MalcolmJS: a Browser-Based Graphical User Interface

1869

I.J. Gillingham, T.M. Cobb
DLS, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

A browser-based graphical user interface has been developed at Diamond. It is known as known as MalcolmJS as it communicates using Diamond's Malcolm Middleware protocol. The original goal was to communicate, via websockets with a PandABox in order to allow a user to examine and set attributes of numerous functional blocks within the instrument. With the continuing maturity of the JavaScript language, in particular the release of ES6, along with the availability of off-the-shelf reactive open-source JavaScript libraries, such as Facebook's React and Node.js, a rich set of tools and frameworks have entered the arena of user interface development suitable for control systems. This paper describes the design decisions based on these tools, experiences and lessons learned during and after the development process and the possibilities for future development as a generic, adaptable framework for instrument and control system user interfaces.

Poster THPHA184 [1.665 MB]

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reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA184

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THPHA185

Radar 2.0, a Drag and Drop, Cross Platform Control System Design Software

1873

O.Ø. Andreassen, R.M. Knudsen, J.W. Rachucki
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

In the ever-growing control system at CERN, there is a need for having an easy to use, yet fast and flexible tool that interfaces with all the different middleware in the accelerator, experiments and technical infrastructures. With RADAR 2.0 we wanted to address this issue, making a LabVIEW based, drag and drop visual tool that hides much of the system complexity from the user and within seconds gives the operator a ready to use, fully functional control system GUI. RADAR 2.0 interfaces with the CERN Middleware (CMW), the CERN Accelerator and Logging system (CALS), OPC-UA and DIM. With its class based implementation it can easily be extended to other data sources (Files, Databases, middleware) on demand.

Poster THPHA185 [2.471 MB]

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reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA185

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THPHA186

Parallel Execution of Sequential Data Analysis

1877

J.F.J. Murari, K. Klementiev
MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

The Parallel Execution of Sequential Data Analysis (ParSeq) software has been developed to work on large data sets of thousands spectra of a thousand points each. The main goal of this tool is to perform spectroscopy analysis without delays on the large amount of data that will be generated on Balder beamline at Max IV *. ParSeq was developed using Python and PyQt and can be operated via scripts or graphical user interface (GUI). The pipeline is consisted of nodes and transforms. Each node generally has a common group of components: data manager (also serves as legend), data combiner, metadata viewer, transform dialog, help panel and a plot window (from silx library **) as main element. The transforms connect nodes, applying the respective parameters in the active data. It is also possible to create cross-data linear combinations (e.g. averaging, RMS or PCA) and propagate them downstream. Calculations will be done with parallel execution on GPU. The GUI is very flexible and user-friendly, containing splitters, dock widgets, colormaps and undo/redo options. The features mentioned are missing in other analysis platforms what justifies the creation of ParSeq.
* Klementiev, K., et al. "The BALDER Beamline at the MAX IV Laboratory" Journal of Physics: Conference Series. IOP Publishing, 2016
** Scientific Library for eXperimentalists - http://www.silx.org/

Poster THPHA186 [0.407 MB]

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reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA186

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THPHA188

The SKA Dish Local Monitoring and Control System User Interface

1880

A. Marassi
INAF-OAT, Trieste, Italy
M. Brambilla
PoliMi, Milano, Italy
A. Ingallinera, S. Riggi, C. Trigilio
INAF-OACT, Catania, Italy
G. Nicotra
INAF IRA, Bologna, Italy
G. Smit
SKA South Africa, National Research Foundation of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is responsible for developing the SKA Observatory, the world's largest radiotelescope ever built: eventually two arrays of radio antennas - SKA1-Mid and SKA1-Low - will be installed in the South Africa's Karoo region and Western Australia's Murchison Shire, each covering a different range of radio frequencies. In particular SKA1-Mid array will comprise 133 15m diameter dish antennas observing in the 350 MHz-14 GHz range, each locally managed by a Local Monitoring and Control (LMC) system and remotely orchestrated by the SKA Telescope Manager (TM) system. Dish LMC will provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be used for monitoring and Dish control in standalone mode for testing, TM simulation, integration, commissioning and maintenance. This paper gives a status update of the LMC GUI design involving users and tasks analysis, system prototyping, interface evaluation and provides details on the GUI prototypes being developed and technological choices.

Poster THPHA188 [0.712 MB]

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reference for this paper ※ https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2017-THPHA188

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THPHA189

LCLS Machine Protection System High Level Interface Improvements

1885

C. Bianchini, S. L. Hoobler
SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a free electron laser (FEL) facility operating at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC). The LCLS Machine Protection System (MPS) contains thousands of inputs and hundreds of protection interlocks. The inputs and logic configuration are defined in SQLite database files. Real-time state information is hosted by EPICS signals. Control room operators use a Graphical User Interface (MPSGUI) to view and manage faults. The MPSGUI provides a wealth of useful information, from hardware input details to high-level logic flow, but it was difficult for operators to take advantage of this. The workflow required cross-referencing between several screens. This poster presents the greatly improved workflow and usability of the MPSGUI. The requested improvements were defined in meetings between the MPS controls team and the control room operators. The improved GUI allow operators to more quickly respond to MPS faults and diagnose problems reducing troubleshooting time by 20 percent.

Poster THPHA189 [1.291 MB]

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THPHA190

Implementing CS-Studio at ReA3

1887

T. Summers, D.B. Crisp, A. Lapierre, S. Nash, M. Steiner
NSCL, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
E.T. Berryman, D.G. Maxwell, A.C.C. Villari
FRIB, East Lansing, USA

Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-1565546.
ReA3 is the rare isotope beam (RIB) reaccelerator at the Michigan State University's National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). ReA3 is unique in its specialty and is being used to reaccelerate RIBs presently produced by the Coupled Cyclotron Facility (CCF) and in the future, by the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) which is currently under construction. A transition to CS-Studio as the graphical user interface tool is underway to align ReA3 Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) with the FRIB style, providing operators with a consistent and integrated environment. This contribution will describe the challenges and strategies for implementing the new HMIs at an operating facility. It will demonstrate the use of mock-ups and a simulated environment for interface design and testing.

Poster THPHA190 [1.627 MB]

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THSH101

Using Control Surfaces to Operate CS-Studio OPIs

1953

C. Rosati
ESS, Lund, Sweden

Modern control software has given us virtually unlimited possibilities for monitoring and controlling EPICS systems, but sacrifices the organic feel of faders and knobs at our fingertips. This article will show how to reclaim that experience without losing the power of software through control surfaces commonly used with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) to manipulate audio, demonstrating how real motorised touch-sensitive faders, buttons and assignable V-pots will improve and speed up the control experience.

Poster THSH101 [2.650 MB]

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THSH103

Using Color Blindness Simulator During User Interface Development for Accelerator Control Room Applications

1958

S. Aytac
DESY, Hamburg, Germany

For normally sighted developers it is hard to imagine how the user interface is going to look to a color blind person. Our purpose is to draw attention to people with color blindness and to consider their color vision. For that, this paper presents the integration of color blindness simulators into the development process of user interfaces. At the end we discuss the main contributing factors.

Poster THSH103 [1.168 MB]

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THSH303

CS-Studio Display Builder

1978

K.-U. Kasemir
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
M.L. Grodowitz
ORNL RAD, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

Funding: This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725.
The Display Builder started as a comprehensive update to the CS-Studio BOY panel editor and runtime. The design was changed to a modular approach, separating the model of widgets and their properties from the graphical representation and the runtime. The model is fully multithreaded. The representation has been demonstrated in both SWT and JavaFX, for now intending to concentrate on the latter. The runtime, based on the thread-safe model, avoids user thread delays and improves overall performance for complex widgets like images as well as scripts and rules. We present the current state of the development and initial deployments at beam lines of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Spallation Neutron Source.

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