EPICS Developments at the Australian Synchrotron

1
EPICS Developments at the Australian Synchrotron
Epics to MySQL The Flange for control system
to internet applications
Contributors Richard Farnsworth, Andrew C
Starritt (Controls Team) Chris Myers Mike
DeSilva (Versi) Presented by Nicholas Hobbs
2
Epics to MySQL

• As have most other facilities, we developed an
  application we called the Facility Status
  Monitor (FSM) .
• Originally intended it to be a stand alone
  application that would be used throughout the
  facility and beamlines.
• It shows beam current, lifetime, operating
  status and messages, shutter status and a few
  other variables
• Proved quite popular
• Needed a web version
• Not to be confused with the Flying Spaghetti
  Monster

3
Internal Facility Status Monitor
4
What we did and didnt want (Requirements)

• The FSM should use the corporate colour scheme
  and contain a summary of all that an Accelerator
  Physicist, Operator or Beamline Scientist wants
  to know at any instant in time
• We did not want to distribute a video signal
  around the facility
• We wanted to publish data on the Web, internally
  and externally
• We wanted the ability to build arbitrary web
  applications in the future

5
Introducing the FLANGE

• First we took the original program, cut the head
  off and made it talk to an SQL database
• It was a good first start, but not very general

6
Introducing the FLANGE

• First we took the original program, cut the head
  off and made it talk to an SQL database
• It was a good first start, but not very general
• Enter the FLANGE. A Flange is a mechanical device
  for joining two differing pipes or similar
  together.
• Our FLANGE uses channel access one end and writes
  EPICS data, and metadata such as enumeration
  type, connection state, update times, element
  count, data type, alarm severity, precision,
  engineering units and high/low operating range to
  a mySQL database

7
Introducing the FLANGE

• First we took the original program, cut the head
  off and made it talk to an SQL database
• It was a good first start, but not very general
• Enter the FLANGE. A Flange is a mechanical device
  for joining two differing pipes or similar
  together.
• Our FLANGE uses channel access one end and writes
  EPICS data, and metadata such as enumeration
  type, connection state, update times, element
  count, data type, alarm severity, precision,
  engineering units and high/low operating range to
  a mySQL database
• Everything we do with the flange is from a
  parameter file
• It runs natively on windows, but is now in
  production under WINE
• It uses a subset of our GUI framework

8
The Database

• The Flange writes to a MySQL database
• It supports arbitrary amounts of historical data
  often at lower resolutions than the EPICs
  archiver (we use the SNS maintained archiver)
• It reads from an EPICS gateway (for the usual
  throttling security and load reasons)
• http//ics-web.sns.ornl.gov/kasemir/archiver/

9
The Database

• The Flange writes to a MySQL database
• It supports arbitrary amounts of historical data
  often at lower resolutions than the EPICs
  archiver (we use the SNS maintained archiver)
• It reads from an EPICS gateway (for the usual
  throttling, security and load reasons)
• We have 1551 PVs at the moment (We have tested
  up to 20,000)
• Including some very special functions
• Historical backfill for Shutters with data for 8
  days
• Historical data for FSM graphs for 1 day
• Specials for images and BMP to Jpegs conversions
  etc
• http//ics-web.sns.ornl.gov/kasemir/archiver/

10
AJAX and Php

• We then access the MySQL database with AJAX
  (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to create web
  applications.
• What does it look like?

11
Web view of the Facility Status Monitor
12
Other things it can do - 1

• We can pass anything through to MySQL within
  limits
• Have tried 20,000 PVs, but it takes a hit so
  we have slightly paralleled it.
• Using a four core machine, we made it possible to
  run four instances of the FLANGE writing to a
  single SQL database and reading from a single
  Channel access archive and gateway.
• This spreads the load over the four cores and
  allows time lags to be introduced, thus spreading
  the load.
• Performance was very good on our web servers.

13
Other things it can do - 2

• Image processing
• It can take an array from EPICS waveform derived
  from a camera image and uses it to convert to a
  JPG to be stored in the SQL database
• This is how we get the beam image.

14
Other things it can do - 3

• EDM to PHP applications
• We have a script that converts EDM screens to
  AJAX applications using the My-SQL database for
  data .
• It runs in multiple ways It can run in real-time
  on the EDM directly, or can pre-process
• This allows many of our Scientists to monitor
  status from home

15
Converted EDM GUI from Protein Crystallography
Beamline
16
Converted EDM GUI from the Linear Accelerator
17
Other things it can do - 4

• http//vbl.synchrotron.org.au/fsm/index.wml

• Because we are using AJAX, we dont have to be
  limited to ordinary web pages.
• For example we have mobile phone friendly pages
  (WML)

18
Database Schema for My SQL database
19
Web page generated from Scratch
20
Thank you for your attention

• A paper is available with more information.

Australian Synchrotronwww.synchrotron.vic.gov.au
www.synchrotron.org.au
21
For more information and software

• Richard Farnsworth
• richard.farnsworth_at_synchrotron.org.au
• Andrew Starritt
• andrew.starrit_at_synchrotron.org.au
• ftp//ftp.synchrotron.org.au/pub/EPICS09/