Announcing the Transient Recorder Framework

[ambroz.bizjak@cosylab.com]

Hello everyone,

SLAC and Cosylab are pleased to announce the Transient Recorder framework, which aims to simplify the integration of digitizers into AreaDetector and EPICS. A module to support General Standards digitizers 16AI64SSA/C is also being released.

The new framework is superficially similar to the old "gtr" module [1] and even reuses some of its PV names, but otherwise it is modernized and based around AreaDetector.

Some of the notable features of the framework are:
- Management of arming and disarming. Many driver functions are allowed to be synchronous and the framework is responsible for synchronization with arm/disarm requests.
- Drivers declare configuration parameters, whose values are captured by the framework automatically at the start of arming. The driver will only see the captured values which are guaranteed to not change until disarmed.
- A generic implementation of a data reading/processing loop, with support for automatic restarting after a buffer overflow.
- Submitting of acquired data into the AreaDetector system is simplified.

The code is located in the following repositories:

Framework
https://github.com/epics-modules/TRCore

General Standards module (including a test IOC)
https://github.com/epics-modules/TRGeneralStandards

Documentation is available through this top-level repository (there is a link in the readme)
https://github.com/epics-modules/transRecorder

Any technical questions may be directed to me. Ernest Williams from SLAC who may also be able to assist.

Best regards,
Ambroz Bizjak (Cosylab)

[1] http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/modules/analog/gtr/