Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Hi all,


I agree with Giles completely.  The OS module is now out of date and lacks many features available from the new pmac module.  The old OS module is for powerPMAC only.  The new module works with powerPMAC and geobrick, the communications layer has been re-written, dynamic parameters are supported, trajectory scanning is supported etc.


I have added a message to the README of the original OSL powerPMAC module to forward people to the Diamond version.


The direct answer to your question Giles is no, the dynamic parameter feature is not implemented in the OS driver.


Thanks, Alan


________________________________
From: Knap, Giles (DLSLtd,RAL,LSCI)
Sent: 03 January 2019 09:46:54
To: Wayne Lewis
Cc: Chanaka; [email protected]; Greer, Alan (OBS,RAL,DIA)
Subject: Re: asynError in write on Power PMAC IOC


Hi Wayne,


The DLS support module can be used without any DLS specific dependencies and is the currently maintained module. The power pmac support in https://github.com/dls-controls/pmac is based on https://github.com/Observatory-Sciences/powerPMAC and the latter is being deprecated.


I'm not sure if the dynamic parameter feature I discussed is implemented in the OS driver. (Alan?)


Regards,

giles.

________________________________
From: Wayne Lewis <[email protected]>
Sent: 02 January 2019 16:41:15
To: Knap, Giles (DLSLtd,RAL,LSCI)
Cc: Chanaka; [email protected]; Greer, Alan (OBS,RAL,DIA)
Subject: Re: asynError in write on Power PMAC IOC

Hi Giles, Chanaka,

I've also seen a similar error on the IOC console when using a
StreamDevice connection to the PowerPMAC.

I notice that there are (at least) two versions of PowerPMAC EPICS
support available:

https://github.com/dls-controls/pmac

https://github.com/Observatory-Sciences/powerPMAC

A couple of questions:

- is the DLS version dependent on anything other than standard EPICS
base and modules?

- is the Observatory Sciences version still maintained and used?

Thanks,
Wayne


On Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 10:08:14AM +0000, giles.knap--- via Tech-talk wrote:
> Hi Chanaka,
>
>
> It appears that you are sharing the connection port with a stream device (in order to determine if PLC 15 is running)? I would not recommend this. Instead you can add a dynamic parameter to one of the poll loops so that the driver will monitor it for you and efficiently manage communications with the power pmac.
>
> In this case you could use
> record(longin, "$(P){$(DEV)}TrajInitPlc-Read")
> {
>     field(DTYP, "asynInt32")
>     field(INP, "@asyn(PMAC_CONTROLLER,0)PMAC_VIM_Plc[15].Running")
>     field(SCAN, "I/O Intr")
> }
>
> This will update on the medium scan loop every 2 seconds. The slow loop is 5 seconds and the fast loop has two rates, idle and moving, which are specified as parameters to pmacController constructor.
>
> You should replace all of you protocol functions with a similar pattern.
>
> I do not think the documentation covers dynamic parameters as yet, but the comments under pmacController::drvUserCreate give the following details:
>
> // Accepted parameter formats
> //
> // For reading variables
> // PMAC_VxF_...  => PMAC Variable Fast Loop
> // PMAC_VxM_...  => PMAC Variable Medium Loop
> // PMAC_VxS_...  => PMAC Variable Slow Loop
> //
> // x is I for int, H for hex, D for double or S for string
> //
> // There must be no j or = in a variable, these items will simply be polled for their current status
> //
> // For Writing only
> // PMAC_WI_... => Write Integer Value
> // PMAC_WD_... => Write Double Value
> // PMAC_WS_... => Write String Value
> //
> // Writing to these parameters will result in immediate writes to the PMAC
>
> ( One of the main goals of the pmac driver is to efficiently manage communications with the hardware. We have a message broker that batches up all requests to poll for values into the 3 poll loops, the responses are distributed to any objects that have registered interest. There is only one instance of the message broker and it is the only object that communicates with the hardware. Thus requests through drvAsynPowerPMACPort are on a single thread. If you share the drvAsynPowerPMACPort with a stream device then it will be being called on more than one thread. It should be using locking and should work but has not been tested in this fashion. )
>
> Regards,
> giles.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Chanaka via Tech-talk <[email protected]>
> Sent: 31 December 2018 16:03:40
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: asynError in write on Power PMAC IOC
>
> Dear All,
>
> I am running into a hanging issue while performing scans using higher level software due to a WRITE INVALID caused by lower-level EPICS PVs. The occurrence is intermittent. From what I can find on line this *could* be due to how SCAN filed is setup in this database for the relevant PVs. I am not entirely sure if that could be the case. Any help would be appreciated.
>
> --The specific error I see in the IOC shell is the following. This is for one of the PVs.
>
> 2018/12/28 17:46:07.974527 SSH1 XF:07BMA-OP{MC:03}TrajInitPlc-Read: asynError in write: 10.7.130.93 write error
>
> --And camonitor returned the following.
>
> XF:07BMA-OP{MC:03}TrajInitPlc-Read 2018-12-28 17:46:07.974595 0 WRITE INVALID
>
> --The PV is defined as follows.
>
> record(ai, "$(P){$(DEV)}TrajInitPlc-Read")
> {
>     field(DTYP, "stream")
>     field(INP,     "@ppmac_stream.proto getVarInt(Plc[15].Running) $(SSH)")
>     field(SCAN, "0.5 second")
> }
>
> -- getVarInt is defined as follows
>
> getVarInt{
>     out "\$1";
>     in "\n\$1=%d";
> }
>
> -- Port configuration is as follows
>
> drvAsynPowerPMACPortConfigure("SSH1", "10.7.130.93", "root", "deltatau", "0", "0", "0")
>
> Thank you,
>
> Chanaka De Silva
> NSLSII
>
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  Wayne Lewis
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