Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Akeroyd, Freddie \(STFC, RAL, ISIS\) via Tech-talk" <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Mon, 2 Nov 2020 22:56:39 +0000

Hi Jalal,

There is a slight variation on (2)  http://epics.isis.stfc.ac.uk/doxygen/NetShrVar/  which is an EPICS asyn driver that talks directly to shared variables, so gives you a bit more flexibility that the NI EPICS implementation. If TSE is -2 the EPICS timestamp is taken from the shared variable timestamp, and records can be I/O Intr scan and update directly from the shared variable. You can also map shared variable alarms to EPICS alarms, but it looks like I haven't  updated the web documentation to mention that yet.

Regards,

Freddie 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> On Behalf Of Mostafa, Jalal
> (IPE) via Tech-talk
> Sent: 02 November 2020 13:44
> To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
> Subject: LabView-EPICS Integration using SoftIoc
> 
> 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

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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System