U.S. Particle Accelerator School
EPICS Control Systems
Sponsors:
Northern Illinois University and UT-Battelle
Course Name:
EPICS Control Systems
Instructors:
Kay Kasemir, John Sinclair and Klemen Vodopivec, Oak Ridge National Lab
Purpose and Audience
This course will introduce students to the tools and techniques used to develop distributed control system applications with the EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) toolkit, emphasizing the IOC (Input Output Controller) side of development but also covering the use of client applications. The audience for this course will include electronic engineers, software developers, scientists and operators at laboratories and experimental facilities that are using or considering the use of EPICS.
Prerequisites
- Experience in using Linux and/or Unix from the command-line. Without endorsing a specific web site or book, http://linuxcommand.org is an example web site that introduces the required Linux command line concepts.
- Some programming experience in C/C++ and python. Examples for suitable self-study books include Bjarne Stroustrup, “The C++ Programming Language”, Addison-Wesley, Mark Lutz, “Learning Python”, O’Reilly.
- Familiarity with the concepts of networked control systems.
It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that they meet the course prerequisites or have equivalent experience.
Objectives
By the end of this course, students will:
- Understand the general architecture of a distributed control system based on EPICS.
- Know the capabilities of the Channel Access and PVAccess protocols and client libraries.
- Be able to use various client programs to display and modify information held in an IOC.
- Understand the EPICS database concepts of records, fields and links, record processing, device support and alarms.
- Be able to create, debug and run simple soft IOC control applications using databases and State Notation Language.
- Understand the ways in which EPICS can be extended to interface with new kinds of hardware and software.
Instructional Method
The course consists of lectures interspersed with practical exercises in roughly equal proportion throughout each day. Students will also be given a homework project to complete. All exercises and assignments will require the use of EPICS tools on Linux, for which students will work together in groups of 2 per PC.
Course Content
The course will be based on recent versions of EPICS Base, the SNL Sequencer, AsynDriver and Streams, plus client-side applications with emphasis on CS-Studio. The Linux-based course setup will be available as a Virtual Machine for VirtualBox. In addition to using the course setup on the class PCs, students will thus be able to also use the course environment on their own laptop, during as well as after the class.
Reading Requirements
There are no required texts. The course will refer to the latest applicable versions of the EPICS documentation, available online through the classroom workstations or as a Virtual Machine. Notes and tutorials will be distributed on a course web site.
Credit Requirements
Students will be evaluated based on their project work (50%) and a written exam (50%) on the last day of the course.
Northern Illinois University course number:
PHYSICS 790D - Special Topics in Physics - Beam Physics
Indiana University course number: Physics 671, Advanced Topics in Accelerator Physics
Michigan State University course number: PHY 963, "U.S. Particle Accelerator School"
MIT course number: 8.790, "Accelerator Physics"