JACoW is a publisher in Geneva, Switzerland that publishes the proceedings of accelerator conferences held around the world by an international collaboration of editors.
TY - CONF AU - Shen, T.C. AU - Augsburger, R.A. AU - Carrasco, S.A. AU - Galeas, P. AU - Huenupan, F. AU - Seguel, R.S. AU - Sepulveda, A. ED - Furukawa, Kazuro ED - Yan, Yingbing ED - Leng, Yongbin ED - Chen, Zhichu ED - Schaa, Volker R.W. TI - Exploring Alternatives and Designing the Next Generation of Real-Time Control System for Astronomical Observatories J2 - Proc. of ICALEPCS2021, Shanghai, China, 14-22 October 2021 CY - Shanghai, China T2 - International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems T3 - 18 LA - english AB - The ALMA Observatory was inaugurated in 2013, after the 8 years of successful operation, obsolescence has started to emerge in different areas. One of the most critical areas is the control bus of the hardware devices located the antenna, which is based on a customized version of CAN bus. Initial studies were performed to explore alternatives, and one of the candidates could be a solution based on EtherCAT. In this paper, the existing architecture will be presented and new architecture will be proposed, which would not only be compatible with the existing hardware devices but also allow prepared the ground for new subsystems that come with ALMA 2030 initiatives. This document reports the progress achieved in a proof of concept project that explores the possibility to embed the existing ALMA monitor & control data structure into EtherCAT frames and use EtherCAT as the main communication protocol to control hardware devices in all the subsystems that comprise the ALMA telescope. PB - JACoW Publishing CP - Geneva, Switzerland SP - 824 EP - 828 KW - controls KW - hardware KW - software KW - interface KW - real-time DA - 2022/03 PY - 2022 SN - 2226-0358 SN - 978-3-95450-221-9 DO - doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2021-THBL02 UR - https://jacow.org/icalepcs2021/papers/thbl02.pdf ER -