Array of strings with asyn?

[Ryan Pierce <rdpierce@pobox.com>]

I'm wondering how best to model the following situation....

I have a number of DS18B20 temperature sensors on a OneWire serial bus 
controlled by an Arduino Mega. A Raspberry Pi runs an IOC and 
communicates with the Arduino via asyn. In other words, I'm implementing 
a smaller version of the solution I suggested back in January to measure 
a large number of temperatures.

Each of these sensors has the equivalent of a unique MAC address that is 
8 bytes long, and the sensors can be hot swapped on the bus. I'd like an 
operator to be able to retrieve these. I can easily have the Arduino 
scan the bus and create a list of addresses. I'm just not sure how to 
get that info back to the IOC.

I know I can create individual stringin records for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd. 
etc. address that was scanned, up to a defined maximum limit of 
temperature sensors, and have the Arduino return these as hex formatted 
strings. But I'm wondering if there's a better way.

Ideally, I'd like it to be returned as an array of type stringin. But I 
don't know if such a thing exists in EPICS, or if it does, how to pass 
it through asyn.

I can't return it as a single space or comma delineated string either, 
since I exceed the 40 character limit with 3 devices.

I considered trying to pass these in binary form and convert it as hex 
for operator display, but I don't know if a 64 bit datatype exists.

Is this something that a waveform record could do? If so, could CSS Boy 
display this as some kind of box or list of strings?

Thanks,
Ryan

P.S. Latest EPICS controlled beer brewing update: As I mentioned last 
September, I had been stalled waiting for a CNC mill at a hackerspace to 
be repaired so that I could easily do precision drilling for the 60+ 
holes I need to mount jacks on a control box. The mill still doesn't 
work, but I found a better solution: a friend with a waterjet cutter. It 
made short work of cutting all those holes, as well as a panel insert 
for more DIN rails. So things are progressing.... Update here: 
http://www.mackenziegems.com/2016/02/21/cnc-beer-part-3-fusion-360-and-waterjet-overkill/