PANDA EPICS Wiki

This EPICS wiki gives some PANDA-specific programming specs and guidelines for how to write a simple GUI, send and control parameters, announcements of tutorials etc. Please review the GSI-wide, cross-experiment wiki for more general information but add your material herein.

EPICS at GSI

EPICS at GSI wiki - This is the most complete EPICS resource at GSI and should be your starting point. Please also consult the GSI wide controls forum (please post to our own DCS forum in parallel).

What we have now (from Peter Zumbruch, July 2009):

• a standard installation at GSI is available on the Linux cluster: " . epics" (have a look at the http://wiki.gsi.de/Epics topics)
• a set of temperature sensors are running since several months continuously (contact Peter to get the PV names)
• we could install a "virtual Linac" as an interactive toy system (see virtual Linac at the home EPICS at Argonne)

If one wishes access real hardware:

• we have "hadcon" boards available or could produce them (hadcon boards have a multipurpose micro controller on board connected via internal serial bus to an ETRAX processor running EPICS an connected to Ethernet)

                + we have running a CANbus interface (if you want to control e.g. Wiener Crates)
                + 1-Wire Bus support (temperature sensors)
                + ADC readout
                + binary switches
                + contact M.Traxler@gsi.de for more options and infos

• as place we could offer our so-called "vor-ort"-lab: 3 racks and support infrastructure available

Question: is there any interest to have VME based applications/hardware access? Or other rack systems?

Please read more on the EPICS at GSI wiki ...

PANDA PV Naming Convention

PANDA DCS Process Variables should be names following this scheme: PANDA:Subsystem:Sector:Device:Value. Maximum length is 60 characters. For example:

PANDA:DIRC:Endcap:HV:V1
PANDA:DIRC:Endcap:Humidity
PANDA:Solenoid:Main:Current
PANDA:EMC:Forward:DN2:Humidity
PANDA:EMC:Forward:LV:V1
PANDA:EMC:Forward:S1:CH4:LV1

etc. If the hierarchy of your subsystem requires it, more than 4 semicolons (':') can be used, but not less.

Tutorials and HowTos

General EPICS tutorials will be organized at GSI (late 2009 very likely) and will be announced here: EPICS Training. HowTos and documentation related to existing implementations will be linked herein.

Getting started with EPICS using StreamDevice

• Getting started with EPICS using StreamDevice - by Florian Feldbauer and Christof Motzko

Writing GUIs

We will use CSS (css.desy.de and ORNL) as the framework for writing GUIs. Here is a step by step tutorial on installing EPICS and CSS, setting up a toy system and writing your first GUI:

• CSS GUIs Tutorial

Progress on PANDA Subsystems

Please add below specific issues, solutions, ideas, related to your experience with EPICS. If you create your own wiki page or if you document your work in the GSI EPICS wiki, please add a link and a brief explanation herein. Please sign your posts.

GEM

Gas electron multiplier (GEM) hardware is listed here.

-- DanProtopopescu - 01 Jul 2009