Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Rarback, Harvey" <[email protected]> · Mon, 23 Sep 2002 18:12:53 -0700

	Folks,

In preparing operator interfaces for SPEAR3, our operators have made it clear that they *love* hardware knobs--the more the merrier.  I have explained that we won't have very many knobs directly controlling hardware, so they will be stuck with hardware knobs controlling software.  Our current OpenVMS control system includes a pair of old Hytec (RS232) dual knobs which are used extensively.

SPEAR3 will be mostly an EPICS environment.  We need the ability to assign individual and weighted groups of PVs to knobs, allow nonlinear ramping of PVs, change knob sensitivity, etc.--the usual set of requirements.

I would like to poll the collective intelligence of this group to get recommendations for knob hardware and software.  I have found that SLS, SNS, DESY, LANL, SLAC and CLS all seem to be using some form of knob box, but haven't found out the level of satisfaction with their knob boxes.   SunDials and the new Hytec (Ethernet) knob boxes seem to be commercially available, but other installations seem to have built their own hardware.  km seems to support SunDials, but I have no idea whether this is a satisfactory solution.

Please reply with your ideas about implementing knob boxes in EPICS.

Thanks.
                         --Harvey Rarback

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System