Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
We have developed a control system configuration tool, which provides an easy-to-use interface for quick configuration of the entire facility. It uses Microsoft Excel as the front-end application and allows the user to quickly generate and deploy IOC configuration (EPICS start-up scripts, alarms and archive configuration) onto IOCs; start, stop and restart IOCs, alarm servers and archive engines, and more. The DCDB tool utilizes a relational database, which stores information about all the elements of the accelerator. The communication between the client, database and IOCs is realized by a REST server written in Python. The key feature of the DCDB tool is that the user does not need to recompile the source code. It is achieved by using a dynamic library loader, which automatically loads and links device support libraries. The DCDB tool is compliant with CODAC (used at ITER and ELI-NP), but can also be used in any other EPICS environment (e.g. it has been customized to work at ESS).
DESY, Hamburg, Germany
TUL-DMCS, Łódź, Poland
Aquenos GmbH, Baden-Baden, Germany
Cosylab, Ljubljana, Slovenia
FastLogic Sp. z o.o., Łódź, Poland
The MicroTCA.4 crate standard provides a powerful electronic platform for digital and analogue signal processing. Besides excellent hardware modularity, it is the software reliability and flexibility as well as the easy integration into existing software infrastructures that will drive the widespread adoption of the new standard. The DESY MicroTCA.4 User Tool Kit (MTCA4U) comprises three main components: A Linux device driver, a C++ API for accessing the MicroTCA.4 devices and a control system interface layer. The main focus of the tool kit is flexibility to enable fast development. The universal, expandable PCI Express driver and a register mapping library allow out of the box operation of all MicroTCA.4 devices which are running firmware developed with the DESY board support package. The tool kit has recently been extended with features like command line tools and language bindings to Python and Matlab.