Beamline Controls with EPICS at NSLS Zhijian Yin NSLS, BNL EPICS Collaboration Meeting, SSRF, March 2008

The Facility  2 nd Generation LS, ~2300 user/year, X-Ray and UV rings, Sources: IR-UV-X-Ray  Total ~65 active beamlines  PRT beamlines  Facility beamlines  Currently, ~20 facility beamlines

Beamlines Controls: What do we do  Dictated by science and experimental techniques  Motion Controls Beamline Optics: mirrors, monochromator, slits End Stations: Sample/detector manipulation  DAQ: “high level” applications scans, data collection, detectors  Other users devices (e.g., temperature control)

NSLS Beamline Controls: Pre EPICS  Legacy systems: mostly CAMAC based  Non-Uniform: PRTs are typically responsible for their own control systems  NSLS has provided “ACE” program free to beamlines  SPEC software (commercial) was quite popular  Labview programs in Windows; DOS programs  Limited manpower/budget Standardize software (SPEC)

Beamline Controls: EPICS  What drove us to EPICS was a looming hardware crisis in the late 90s CAMAC E500 motor controllers, as extensively used at NSLS beamlines, discontinued. No replacement.  Follow APS beamline controls VME based, OMS motor boards  Implemented a beamline control upgrade program for Facility Beamlines, at ~2-3 beamlines/year (~Y2K)  SPEC added EPICS support (EPICS client)  Currently ~20 beamlines in EPICS  PXRR beamlines controls in EPICS

Beamline Controls: EPICS (Cont)  SynApps: Motion Control, Scalers, sscan, etc  Serial motors (asyn)  MCA devices (asyn)  Detector control (CCD module)  DXP multielement detectors  NSLS detectors (Siddons) - Embedded EPICS IOC  Most EPICS beamlines have SPEC/EPICS/RTEMS  PX beamlines: Python based DAQ program  TO DO: Labview camp (NI EPICS client)

Beamline Controls: EPICS on RTEMS (K. Feng-Berman, P. Siddons)  VxWorks expensive  RTEMS as good, even for real time  EPICS 3.14, made RTEMS support possible  Almost all beamline controls in EPICS now runs in RTEMS (mvme230x, mvme5500)

Beamline Controls: EPICS for Qexafs (I.So, Siddons)  Normal EXAFS slow Scan mono angle, (E) A few minutes per spectrum  Qexafs Continuous scan Read detector data and encoder Spectrum in seconds Measurements of structure change  Need Real time performance  EPICS on real time Linux (RTAI)

“Organization”: Request-Tracker  Database/ /web  Tracking user request  Project documentation  Help Desk support  Project Management

Remote Diagnostics and Operations  NX or freenx server +SSH tunneling  Clients: free download (nomachine.com)  Good for beamline staff diagnostics and even user remote ops  General purpose, not tied to EPICS

Conculding Remarks  We benefited from EPICS, SynApps tremendously  Open Source technologies really work well  Beamline controls works best with collaborations with beamline scientists and engineers  Controls upgrade could make possible new techniques  Important but challenging: training of beamline scientists and engineers to embrace EPICS  Many beamlines are ready for NSLS-II in terms of beamline controls