Beamline Control System
Introduction
The Beamline Control System gives full data acquisition and remote control, with different kind of access rights, to beamline users and specialists as well as a full integration with experiment systems. It has a fully distributed architecture, it has been designed and implemented with an extensive use of standards. Software quality aspects, wide use of last generation tools, such as CASE, have been adopted to meet the high level quality requirements of the project.
General Aspects
As many remotely controlled industrial systems a beamline is a set up of very heterogeneous apparatus. It has standard digital and analog Input/Output, a large number of intelligent devices and data acquisition equipments whose serial (RS 232) or parallel (IEEE 488) communications protocols do not fit any general rule or standard. Different users may have large visibility of the system or operate a single beamline in a limited way through an extremely clear, homogeneous and users friendly graphical interaction.
Architecture
The portable Client-Server software architecture is highly modular so any future changes or upgrades can be hidden into the concerned module. The system is completely configurable and upgradable through relational database applications (CS). This aspect becomes extremely interesting for tuning the automatic actions, for creating an "instrument library" and for cutting down human effort in system management. The Control System is distributed over a layered network for the interconnection of the Main Beamline Supervisor (MBS), the Configuration System (CS), each of the Beamline Control System units (BCS) and the Unit Experimental Stations (UES). VME assemblies for BCS's run the Lynx-OS real time Unix operating system while Unix workstations are used for the user's units (MBS, CS. UES).
Programme language | C Ansi |
Operative systems | HP-UX 9.0, Real time Unix (LynxOS V3) |
Network services | TCP/IP, NFS, RPC (LEP_NC V2.12), HTTP |
Database services | Oracle |
Graphic services | X11, OSF/Motif, Dataviews V9.1/9.5, Apache |
BCS | VME crate with Motorola MVME162 CPU, VMIC 7750, Acromag digital and analog I/O board, and multiserial board |
MBS | Linux |
UES | HP9000/715, other platform use web browser |