Australian Synchrotron

1
Australian Synchrotron

• Richard Farnsworth
• With Steven Banks and Mark Clift

2
Australian Synchrotron

• The Australian Synchrotron Project
• Naming
• ASP for the project.
• Boomerang for the ring, or worse Boomering
• AusSy favoured by the IMAC
• The only official name is
• The Australian Synchrotron.
• Politics
• Not part of a lab. No operating authority yet.
• Funding to build is established
• First beam mid 2007
• Funding for initial suite of 12 Beamlines

3
Artists Impression
4
Australian Synchrotron being built
5
Just before we started building
6
Drive in - Circa 1970s
7
Plans
8
Choosing EPICS

• Selected EPICS last year.
• Unknown to us - third Australian user
  previously used on a 10 MeV tandem accelerator
  and on a telescope (Part of Gemini - destroyed by
  bushfire Jan 2003 being rebuilt)
• The most comparable Australian Facility is the
  Neutron source in Sydney, which uses SICS from
  PSI

9
http//www.synchrotron.vic.gov.au

10
Controls Group

• Richard Farnsworth, Steven Banks, Mark Clift
• All are Melbourne locals, Engineers and
  Physicists with an IT background, combined
  engineering experience with large control systems
  including Water, Sewerage, railways, Electrical
  Power systems, Large scale radar, Computer
  Hardware, Radiation dose accelerators, Computer
  Maintenance engineering, Animatronics, Cyclotron,
  Hydrographics surveys.
• No prior EPICS or Synchrotron experience

11
WAP and EPICS
The weak anthropomorphic principle argues that
the universe appears to be well designed for the
existence of life forms such as ourselves
because, if it was not then we wouldnt be here
to observe how poorly it was designed for our
existence. As applied to EPICS If it is very
difficult to do in EPICS, it probably isnt
needed to operate a synchrotron ! This is a
great comfort at times !
12
EPICS Toolbox

• Too much to choose from spanning a huge variety
  of times, technologies and choices.
• So, we decided to
• Using EDM and Matlab (MCA) for complex GUIs
• Using Linux where possible
• IOC choice not settled Like the idea of RT
  linux a lot (More later), not keen on VxWorks.
• Not put much in the IOC
• Possibly will put in a middle layer

13
Epics and the development system

• Choice of operating systems
• We chose Linux for Servers compatible, common,
  cheap, reliable, open. EPICS seems well
  supported.
• And Windows (XP for the moment). Common,
  comfortable, can run other standard office type
  things. Cheap and cheerful.
• Can use X terminal packages for Unix displays.
• All hardware uses standard PC commodity

14
Issues with EPICS

• Build system was bit painful
• More and better how-tos would be nice
• Full examples would be good
• Sample IOCs with real functionality
• i.e. A real database, or design patterns
• Will try to avoid VME hardware and VxWorks (and
  wind river)
• There is lots of stuff out there but its not
  all on a single website (e.g the EPICS home
  page).

15
Good things about EPICS

• The price (but free Software .ne. free Beer)
• The wide support for Operating systems (let us
  choose what suits us at the time)
• The community (VERY important). Huge support
• Getting things working
• Designed for our type of facility
• Observatory Sciences gave us a course
• Gateways can give a bit of security
• Channel access solid

16
MCA - Matlab Channel access

• Work on MCA
• Removed 1000 Channel Limit
• Matlab Monitor Callbacks now fully supported
• Is Favoured by our Accelerator Physicists
• Will use for complex displays and some processing
• Slots into Accelerator Toolbox - Important for us
  to simulate as we have no machine.
• See Steven Banks offline for more detail

17
Development and Support System
Simulate everything at the start and then
replace. Separate development and
production Systems engineering, Config management