Re: Looking for feedback on what epics users require

[Paul Sichta <psichta@pppl.gov>]

Pawel,
Would the power supply/IOC process variables be only scalar values, or 
will there be waveforms as well.  How fast can the waveforms/scalars be 
updated/monitored/served.  Regarding the configuration of the records 
served, how can the user customize the names and other attributes, such 
as Access Security (ASG) and units?

Regarding the client,
the Channel Access protocol is the interface for any client. That means 
you should provide a specification of the served record names and their 
characteristics, at least one good enough so that users can write their 
own clients.  If you provide a LabVIEW-based client, that is readily 
useable but will it be an executable?  Otherwise the user needs to 
purchase LabVIEW.  Also, NI supports the Channel Access protocol in 
their DSC (data supervisory and control) LabVIEW add-on.  But, that's 
also expensive.

-ps


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.