Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Mostafa, Jalal \(IPE\) via Tech-talk" <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Mon, 2 Nov 2020 14:44:11 +0100

Hi all!

We have many systems from NI that we would like to integrate with EPICS
for the KATRIN experiment (katrin.kit.edu)
The old control system was written in LabView but we would like to
replace it with EPICS without rewriting the code again. Therefore, we
are looking for a nice LabView-EPICS integration.

We have seen two options for LabView:
- CALAB which does not work with realtime devices
- Official NI EPICS module. It is good but I can list several problems:
huge loss of EPICS features (it is only an implementation of CA plus
alarming, the other metadata and configuration fields are not available)
- not very developer-friendly (adding/removing PVs relies on shared
variables so it is time consuming)

Another two solutions we thought of:
1. Using AsynDriver and communicate with the realtime device using a TCP
protocol
2. Running an EPICS server on the realtime device using NI EPICS module
then shadowing it with a SoftIoc using CA links.
(a softIoc server running with input and output records to read and
write to the original LabView EPICS server)

I have several concerns here:
- Am I missing any other way to integrate LabView with EPICS? I would
like to hear from your experiences.

- Although solution (1) is time consuming, I am in favor of it but let's
check if we can do it more easily with solution (2). Anyway, can the
experts comment on its feasibility?

- Solution (2): What do you think about performance? Alarms? I/O Intr
are not available on a softIoc, so the developer has to use periodic
SCAN. How can I add custom SCAN periods?

Thanks for your help.

Best,

Jalal

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System