RE: scalcout fails to write to bo - (partially?) solved

["Mooney, Tim M." <mooney@aps.anl.gov>]

Hi Isabella,

Thanks for studying this.  I forgot that the scalcout record did not honor the PREC field for conversions to string until release R3-4-1.

Tim Mooney (mooney@aps.anl.gov) (630)252-5417
Software Services Group (www.aps.anl.gov)
Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab

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From: Isabella Rey [isa.hellen@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2015 6:38 AM
To: Mooney, Tim M.
Cc: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: scalcout fails to write to bo - (partially?) solved

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your reply.

Option 2 is the (only) one that does the trick. I had tried before, with the variant of '1' and '0' being in the DD and EE fields, and it didn't work, but now it did, so maybe I had something not set correctly there...

Option 1 DOES write to the bo correctly, but it breaks the "When Zero" OOPT (as there is no zero output anymore), which I need. So it works in general, but in my case I need to have 1 or 0.

Option 3 doesn't work: I had tried it before, and I re-tested again now, but I get the Illegal choice message.

So overall I have a solution to go ahead with, but it works only when the CALC outputs a string and then converts it to int, I can't seem to use an int directly and push it into the bo, without going through the string.

Thanks for your help!

Isabella

On 15 May 2015 at 18:08, Mooney, Tim M. <mooney@aps.anl.gov> wrote:

Hi Isabella,

There are three ways to get the behavior you want in this situation:

1. Have the calc _expression_ produce a string value that is one of the bo record's ZNAM or ONAM strings:

record(scalcout, "BS:CAMS_OK") {
  field(SCAN, ".1 second")
  field(CALC, "AA==CC ? 'ON' : 'OFF' ")         <---<<
  field(INAA, "CAM1:TRAFFIC_LIGHT")
  field(OUT, "BS:AUTO PP")
  field(OOPT, "When Zero")
  field(CC, "OK")
}

2. Have the calc _expression_ explicitly produce a string value that is '0' or '1':

record(scalcout, "BS:CAMS_OK") {
  field(SCAN, ".1 second")
  field(CALC, "AA==CC ? '1' : '0' ")             <---<<
  field(INAA, "CAM1:TRAFFIC_LIGHT")
  field(OUT, "BS:AUTO PP")
  field(OOPT, "When Zero")
  field(CC, "OK")
}

3. Make the scalcout record's conversion from number to string produce zero decimal digits:

record(scalcout, "BS:CAMS_OK") {
  field(PREC, "0")                                  <---<<
  field(SCAN, ".1 second")
  field(CALC, "AA==CC")
  field(INAA, "CAM1:TRAFFIC_LIGHT")
  field(OUT, "BS:AUTO PP")
  field(OOPT, "When Zero")
  field(CC, "OK")
}

Tim Mooney (mooney@aps.anl.gov) (630)252-5417
Software Services Group (www.aps.anl.gov)
Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab

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From: tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov [tech-talk-bounces@aps.anl.gov] on behalf of Isabella Rey [isa.hellen@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 11:21 AM
To: tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
Subject: scalcout fails to write to bo

Hi All,

I have a scalcout record whose output should go into a bo record, as follows:


record(scalcout, "BS:CAMS_OK") {
  field(SCAN, ".1 second")
  field(CALC, "AA==CC")
  field(INAA, "CAM1:TRAFFIC_LIGHT")
  field(OUT, "BS:AUTO PP")
  field(OOPT, "When Zero")
  field(CC, "OK")
}

record(bo, "BS:AUTO") {
  field(PINI, "YES")
  field(VAL, "0")
  field(ZNAM, "OFF")
  field(ONAM, "ON")
}

When I run the IOC, I get this error message:
Illegal choice PV: BS:AUTO 0.00000000

After looking at other posts, I think the scalcout is trying to write a string in the bo, which generates the error. But my understanding of the scalcout documentation is that the conversion to int should be done automatically, and this should just work.

Interestingly, this workaround does the job:

record(scalcout, "BS:CAMS_OK") {
  field(CALC, "AA==CC")
  field(INAA, "CAM1:TRAFFIC_LIGHT")
  field(CC, "OK")
}

record(calcout, "BS:CAMS_OK_FAN") {
  field(SCAN, ".1 second")
  field(INPA, "BS:CAMS_OK PP")
  field(OUT, "BS:AUTO PP")
  field(OOPT, "When Zero")
}

record(bo, "BS:AUTO") {
  field(PINI, "YES")
  field(VAL, "0")
  field(ZNAM, "OFF")
  field(ONAM, "ON")
}

So it looks like if a record "pulls" the result from scalcout it's OK, but scalcout doesn't "push" it correctly.

I could live with the workaround, but it's a bit of a hack...

Any thoughts on why this is not working?

Cheers,

Isabella