Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Shen, Guobao via Tech-talk" <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Wed, 17 Aug 2022 21:49:46 +0000

If your system is small, and you don't need to worry to manage redeployment the same system again and again, I would probably not go with a container based solution.
You would not gain that much with it, and manage the container is an extra maintenance burden.

If you like Debian, you could probably go with Debian style OS, like Ubuntu LTS or others.
There are many facilities have EPICS packages available on Debian-like system, and you don’t need to compile everything from scratch. 
But managing a small system with all source code is not really an issue as long as you have your version control system in place.

I would say for long term purpose, you might want to consider Archiver Appliance, or Channel Archiver from SNS/ORNL.
They have good integration with CS-Studio, which would save your effort in the future, when you want to link your history data with your live data.

Thanks,
Guobao

On 8/17/22, 2:48 PM, "Tech-talk on behalf of Sean Leavey - STFC UKRI via Tech-talk" <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov on behalf of tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> wrote:

    > Sounds reasonable to me!

    Great. Do you have any recommendations on how the single box should be set up? I saw some Docker images but not sure it's worth the effort over just building from source manually. I'd probably opt for Debian because that's what I know best. I'd put the IOC on the same box as the base, and use the Modbus support that I think is baked in already.

    Archival is something I wanted to ask more about. It doesn't look like a good idea to use Archiver Appliance. Is there a lightweight archiver for a handful of channels (say up to 20) at 1 Hz or less? I could probably write one in 20 lines of Python (camonitor some channels, write values to a text file every N seconds, rotate file once per day), but I hope there's one that also supports data access, e.g. retrieving data between certain times via some network request... wishful thinking?

    ________________________________________
    From: Arnold, Ned D. <nda at anl.gov>
    Sent: 17 August 2022 20:41
    To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov; Leavey, Sean (STFC,ROE,UKATC)
    Subject: Re: EPICS for a small lab - overkill?

    >> Has anyone used EPICS on such a small scale? Was it more trouble than it was worth compared to turnkey commercial solutions?

    We use it in the labs and for small test stands all the time ... and those are much easier to manage than the large deployments ... you don't have to manage 100's of IOCs, hundreds of thousands of process variables, data archiving does not require a large "archiver" etc, etc, etc.  The size of the system greatly increases the maintenance overhead.

    It also sounds like your I/O could be accomplished with Ethernet-based I/O with the IOC running whereever convenient.

    Sounds reasonable to me!

      Ned

    ________________________________
    From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> on behalf of Sean Leavey - STFC UKRI via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
    Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2022 02:26 PM
    To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
    Subject: EPICS for a small lab - overkill?

    Hi all,

    I'm trying to determine the feasibility of using EPICS for simple monitoring of a small clean room facility. We'll need to read out various sensors (particle counters, temperature, etc.) via Modbus over Ethernet and archive the data at low speed (a few times per minute maybe) and also ideally display live data to lab users on a GUI (e.g. MEDM or modern equivalents). We're probably going to have a small number of outputs as well: automated switching of lights, fans, motors, that kind of thing. Maybe some alarms for e.g. triggering a warning light if particle counts get too high. No closed loops.

    We could probably just use LabVIEW or similar but I don't like it much and prefer a licence-free and open source solution that can be easily adapted as needed. Plus, I may clone the EPICS setup to a different lab in a different city that we work with, so it would be nice to be able to use a gateway to access and archive their channels as well.

    Has anyone used EPICS on such a small scale? Was it more trouble than it was worth compared to turnkey commercial solutions?

    Any input would be appreciated!
    Sean Leavey
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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System