EPICS Council: Enhancing Collaboration for Scientific Facility Control System Development
The EPICS Council, formed at Oakridge with representatives from seven EPICS facilities, aims to support long-term development efforts through coordinated resource allocation. With 11 member organizations, they prioritize major upgrades, develop roadmaps, support managers, and promote open collaboration in optimizing EPICS as the preferred control system toolkit for scientific facilities.
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The EPICS council What is it What are we doing Why should you care anyway? Update Richard Farnsworth Nov 15th2018
What is this thing anyway? Formed at Oakridge two years ago with representatives from seven EPICS facilities of a council to work towards the long-term support of EPICS development efforts. While EPICS has always been successful by the various collaborating organizations developing the new core functions and tools driven by their project needs, we believe investments in major upgrades to EPICS Base and key Extensions would benefit from some longer-term planning and coordinated resource allocation. To that end, we formed EPICS Council
Nod to earlier characters Much of the EPICS collaboration was driven by individuals, notably but not exclusively Bob Dalesio. When Bob moved on from the DOE labs, and into a private company Osprey (Thanks to him and Cosylab for the tea breaks), he could no longer fill an unbiased co-ordination role. A number of us realised we need to to it for ourselves. Bob helped us set it up.
EPICS Members The Council currently has representation from 11 organisations. Karen White (ORNL) is the current Council Chair. The 2018 members are as follows: APS John Maclean Diamond Light Source Mark Herron European Spallation Source Henrik Carling ITER Anders Wallander LANSCE Jeff Hill NSLS-II Richard Farnsworth PSI Markus Janousch SLAC Accelerator Joe DeLong SLAC Instruments Daniel Flath SNS Accelerator Karen White SNS and HFIR Instruments Steven Hartman We meet via Video conference approx monthly, most members or sometimes a second join in. I m often late. Next meeting is next week (3:00 a.m. from here)
The councils wants To optimize the use of resources available at investing facilities to ensure the ongoing viability of EPICS as the control system toolkit of choice for scientific facilities. Prioritize major EPICS upgrade projects for Base and Extensions to guide resource allocation decisions at investing facilities. Develop a roadmap for future EPICS Core and Extensions development to facilitate planning for all EPICS sites. The roadmap will be developed using technical input from the chairs of relevant working groups (currently EPICS Core Working Group and CS Studio Working Group). Provide support to control system managers in promoting EPICS development efforts to their organization leadership. Co-ordinate/Select semi-annual (6 months) EPICS Collaboration Meeting sites and dates. Ensure that EPICS continues to be an open collaboration and that contributions are open source.
EPICS Charter https://epics.anl.gov/council/EPICS-Council- Charter-June-2018.pdf This describes the previous slide in full detail.
Update from SLAC 1) We ve awarded the pvaGateway contract. We expect a production version for release in June 19! 2) We have committed 70% FTE support in FY19 to complete the full feature set of PyDM. However, funding for a [M]EDM translator was not allocated this is an opportunity for another lab to contribute to the PyDM effort. We can provide guidance if anyone is interested.
Proposed - Python Tools WG Many sites are using/developing Python based tools for EPICS: LCLS, BNL, SNS, PSI, others? Used on most beamlines Would be more efficient to coordinate efforts on common tools We currently have more than one Channel Access Python client I will develop a survey (send to tech-talk?) to assess current efforts and usage From this information, a working group could be proposed
Python EPICS working group Looking to form a Special interest group For EPICS python issues/expansions E.g At NSLS-II we have created Caproto, a python CA server, others have done the same. Please see me if interested.
EPICS Training Potential need for four types of training EPICS Basics (for beginning developers) EPICS Intermediate (beyond beginner) EPICS, what s new (experienced EPICS developers, how to use new features of EPICS) EPICS User E.G. they have a monthly course for EPICS Users at PSI Some EPICS Collaboration Meetings have been preceded by a training day or two.
New training material Council about to add 1/ Series talks by Mark Rivers on Area Detector 2/ Series of talk by Tim Mooney on EPICS modules (also here) https://www.bnl.gov/ps/epics/ I might try to get some Bluesky talks up? (Workshop next week here Blatant plug) If anyone has training material, let me know,
Notable EPICS web sites (others encouraged) https://epics-controls.org/ The original APS https://epics.anl.gov/ And Git https://github.com/epics-base
Join the council? If your project/operation can support a manpower effort, I d encourage you to consider joining. I d like to make the case that you can share between another institute to make the FTE equivalent e.g if ANSTO and CSIRO (not a suggestions, just picking local groups) could make a contribution then one member represented?
