1. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 1 Experiments Controls Vision, ideas, tasks to begin with … Alain Buteau Andy Götz

2. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 2 Vision  Functional description of the problem:  A guiding “Use Cases document”  Division of the problem in “independent” subproblems  Develop the so called “Experiment development framework”

3. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 3 Logging Bus Logiciel TANGO Supervision Configuration Séquencement Acquisition Logic Services Control of equipements How to we present the architecture to our future customers How to we present the architecture ? Device ADC Signal Acquisition Device ADC Signal Acquisition Capteur Device T° Capteur Device T° Control systems services Archiving Archiving services Fits … Scientific data Management /Analysis Database File storage Spectra creation

4. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 4 Control of equipements  SOLEIL’s philosophy: Control of equipements Must always be done with TANGO devices  Because all upper layers services are based on the TANGO software bus  Coupling of devices must also be done within TANGO devices : Example of Monochromator, Slits,etc  Task : Define standard interfaces  It must be possible to develop Tango Devices with a scripting langage  Task : Python DeviceServers

5. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 5 Control systems services

6. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 6 Control system services  Configuration :  Jive is a good candidate even if a « jive for dummies » would be appreciated  Ideas : Importation in jive of predefined configuration files for « common hardware » with predefined parameters Implement the jive functionnalities described in last year Jens’ specs (« DataViews »,etc..)  Tasks : Nothing really urgent for experiments !! Enhance the tool for the Machine may be enough for now Add support for SKINS (different views of database)

7. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 7 Control system services  Logging :  Gathers, displays, filters messages from DeviceServer and output of « acquisition logic » scripts  Tasks :  Develop logging mechanisms in bindings (python for instance) as messages are also emitted by this upper layer

8. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 8 Supervision: control individually each equipement on the beamline  Ideas  1 generic application as DeviceTree  Some specific applications like Synoptics and/or specific panels for ergonomy  Tasks  Work on this topic for Machine !!

9. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 9 Archiving services

10. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 10 Archiving services  Historical DataBase  May be useful for beamline engineers  Not use to manage experimental data !!  Tasks Make it work with good extraction tools for the Machine Use free DATABASE (MySQL?) as scientists are probably not ready to pay for a service they ignore the existence  Snapshots  Service of major importance on beamlines  Tasks Make it work with good extraction tools for the Machine Use free DATABASE

11. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 11 Acquisition logic or Batch files

12. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 12 Acquisition logics  Idea : 1 acquisition logic = 1 batch = 1 script  Scripts may be written in Users Environments like MATLAB or IGOR if : Scientists maintain this part of the software Acquition logic on the beamline are not well defined and are subject to frequent changes  Python is a good scripting choice for Controls Systems provided as « turn key » systems by the Controls group  Tasks :  Define in TANGO the notion of « attribute alias » : Phi  px1/sample_environment/galilbox1/galilaxis1 So that it is possible at each step of scan to –Change a writeable attribute (like the SPEC notion of motor) –Read a readable attribute (like the SPEC notion of counter)  Write generic scripts from the SPEC list of macros : Ascan, a2scan,  Write hkl scripts at least for diffractometers

13. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 13 Acquisition logics: Execution systems  Ideas :  Parameter each recipe for a « particular execution » This « acquisition logic/batch » is a scan on motor phi with 5° steps and with sample « AlCuO »  Executes sequences of recipes, linked by transitions  Tasks  Begin with NICOS as a python sequencer to provide a command line end user interface  Find a good existing product to make a first GUI command line interface (from SCADA and/or GPL) Motor scan TOF Counting Simple Counting

14. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 14 Scientific Data management

15. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 15 Spectrum creation  Definition : At predefined steps in an acquisition logic, scientists want to :  Create a file called spectrum/image containing : Either raw data from electronics or data pre-treated by the script The context of the experiment : –Name of sample, of scientist –Position of all encoders, pressure, temperature,etc  Controls people want to have a file creation mechanism independent of The hardware existing on the experiment The physical format of the output file  A possible solution : Use a self describing data format with an API to access Data inside the file NeXus is a good candidate  Display experiment status on the web

16. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 16 Spectrum creation  Tasks :  Write a DeviceServer whose task is : to create the Spectrum/Image envelop creation to deal with underlying NeXus file format Gather all the context of the experiment  The FRM II TACO NexusDataCollector is a good starting point  Enhance NeXus format to use XML as the underlying physical format instead of HDF (to avoid binary format for small files)

17. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 17 DataVisualisation  Problem definition : transfer the data  from the batch and/or hardware to the end user favorite plotting tool  from the end user favorite plotting tool to the running recipe to continue the data collection  Ideas :  Write batch files in generic data visualisation terms (to avoid plotting tools religion wars): Ex: plot(my_vector) or Image (my_matrix)  Use TANGO as the software bus to transfer Data between these 2 worlds ? Pros : benefit from existing bindings Cons : need to define a DataManager TANGO interface  Tasks :  Develop NeXus spectrum/image reader for MATLAB, IGOR

18. Réunion Contrôle Expérience 28/03/2003 18 Conclusion  Future  Work on the integration of these various software in a coherent whole  Now :  Put all source code on SourceForge  SOLEIL tasks list :  Batch sequencer  Scanning scripts  Hkl scripts  DataBase topics  NeXus ??  ESRF tasks list :  Beamline server to serve experiment context  Attributes as objects  Define standard interfaces  Web interface  Test on ID14