Re: Looking for feedback on what epics users require

[Claude Saunders <saunders@aps.anl.gov>]

The deployment scenario for these power supplies will likely factor into 
any given customer's requirements. If there are only a few supplies 
being used, then as Tim Mooney pointed out, the simplest integration 
technique is to provide a turn-key IOC. But as Ernest pointed out, there 
will inevitably be many custom tweaks desired for the turn-key IOC 
config, so much of the configuration (and possibly code) needs to be 
exposed.

If there will be hundreds of power supplies being used, then things get 
a bit more complicated. If each supply has an IOC, then each controlling 
Channel Access client will have to make hundreds of TCP connections. 
This can be managed through an EPICS PV Gateway, but the feasibility 
depends on a customers network layout, and whether or not they want to 
introduce PV Gateways into their system.

Probably the most flexible approach is to provide EPICS device support 
and a template of EPICS records that can control your supply. In the 
case of hundreds of power supplies, for example, the customer could put 
your UDP traffic on a private subnet, and have just a couple of IOCs 
running all of the supplies. Then Channel Access clients could access 
all the supplies with just a couple TCP connections (on a separate 
subnet). This approach has the added advantage of not having to package 
up an entire IOC (and reduce your exposure to possible bugs that arise 
in IOC Core).

   just some thoughts - there is lots to evaluate
         Claude


Pawel Kowalski - BiRa Systems Inc. wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> My company is researching providing an epics IOC with some of our 
> power supplies. I would like to get some feedback from the epics 
> community on what exactly would be required. First let me start off by 
> saying that epics is still a new area for me so hopefully these 
> questions aren't dumb, we are still in the early research stages on this.
>  
> What we would like to do is provide a system with each device that 
> will host an EPICS IOC. This will be a vxWorks based system running 
> epics base 3.14. This system will communicate with our device using 
> ethernet and convert standard UDP commands that our devices work on to 
> process variables. So for example our clients would now have a process 
> variable they could use to monitor or set the voltage of a power 
> supply (IE: powersys:voltage).
>  
> For the client side we would like to develop a LabVIEW interface, we 
> would most likely not be developing a custom C/C++ application for the 
> client.
>  
> Would this be adequate for most epics users or would more be required 
> to integrate this into an existing epics network? Would people use the 
> LabVIEW client we develop or do most labs use their own custom 
> software to control/monitor epics enabled equipment? Any feedback from 
> the community would be greatly appreciated, thank you.