The use of EPICS as a C&I tool for the RFQ accelerator facility at Necsa Mr M. Matabane
P-LABS R&D needs Improve and modernize aging tools and instruments. Develop new instruments to meet our current research needs. Reduce development costs and prototyping time. Align ourselves with the rest of the accelerator community. All this within an extremely limited budget. 2
DCS Development Tools Common Open source solutions –Free, adaptable, bug free etc Great track record –Uses in large experiments, particle accelerators, large telescopes etc. Easy to use –Modular tools, function blocks etc. DCS capable –IOCs, OPI, secure, PV Loggers, archives systems, archive readers, –Supports majority, Field I/Os, data-bus, hardware, CPUs, OS etc Great user community support 3
EPICS 4 info-
Architecture and structure 5 EPICS Physical Structure EPICS IOC Software Components Attributes: Tool based, Distributed, Event Driven, High performance Multi Platform support. IOC Software components supplied. Channel Access Software supplied. OPI Tools. EPICS Core supplied.
EPICS Records 6 Record Structure record(ao, “PV Name") { field(DESC, “PV description") field(SCAN, ".1 second") field(DTYP, "VMIVME-4100") field(OUT, "#C0 } Record Linking Record Types VDCT Record Configuration Tool
The RFQ LINAC 7 Item Beam Energy (MeV) Beam Current Peak (mA) Duty Cycle (%) Typical run time(h) Output Proton241.2 – Deuteron461.2 – 2.02 Ongoing Activities Fast neutron radiography Materials damage Materials irradiation etc
The RFQ LINAC 8 I/S LEBTRFQ HEBTBOOSTERTarget SCM Old SCM Successor
The Synchronous Control Module (SCM) 9 NEC:DWIK :IS NEC:DWIK :HEBT NEC:DWIK :RFQ NEC:DWIK :Detector NEC:DWIK : Booster LAN I/O Interface Cards Notes: Prepare SD Card NOOBS Fedora-arm-installer.exe Use putty Use cntlm proxy Use local repository “wget” repo. Install epics Install pyEpics, Apache, Sqllite Cyclone III Raspberry Pi OPI Browser, CA-Client NEC:DWIK :E/S
Other Implementations Fast neutron camera focusing and control. –Tomography & Radiography –Focusing of +/-200kg lenses and image intensifiers Scattering Chamber with iThemba Labs –Control of detector arms and sample holders 10 OPI Design Tools ● Extensible Display Manager (EDM) ● Motif Editor and Display Manager (MEDM) ● CSStudio
Summary Initially a great learning curve with customary setup hurdles. Online presence requires improvement. Great forums, exploders, user groups, publications, training material on the official site. Great potential. Start small and expand. 11
THANK YOU 12