Mats Lindroos

REX, ISOLDE and off-line controls

Mats Lindroos on behalf of the ISOLDE team

Mats Lindroos

Outline

• What at ISOLDE is CO responsible for?

• What has CO done and completed?• What is started and in need of

completion?• What can be left for later?

Mats Lindroos

CO at ISOLDE

• CO responsibilities:– Controls for targets, Front-ends,

separators and experimental area• Both low-level controls and application

programs– Controls for REX-ISOLDE

• Both low-level controls and application programs

– Low level controls for off-line separator and pump stands

Mats Lindroos

ISOLDE@CERN• 400 Users at 30 experiments each year

• User operated facility

Mats Lindroos

CO history at ISOLDE

• The ISOLDE control system:– Produced by PS division in the 90’s– Windows based– Parts migrated to PS standards in 2001-

2003• The ISOLDE controls September 2005:

– ISOLDE is left with a mixed Windows/LINUX/Lynx control system

• Major problem for maintenance, operationally required modifications and developments

Mats Lindroos

The “new” ISOLDE controls

Mats Lindroos

ISOLDE targets, Front-ends, separators and experimental area

• Migrated to PS standards: – PLC slow control, VME FEs and JAVA

applications– Well executed project with innovative

solutions– Remaining problems:

• Very poor response time measured from CCV to AQN

• Poor stability of JAVA applications and support for JAVA programmers (in OP group)

• Logging programs highly unreliable• Missing applications (instrumentation)

Mats Lindroos

Off-line and pump stands

• PLC low level controls provided by CO group– Application programs written by ATB-

IF section student in CO provided EXCEL environment

– Problems:• New class A lab will need remote control

for some equipment

Mats Lindroos

REX-ISOLDE

• Migration of REX controls started in 2004-2005– Re-structuring of PO side including hardware

modifications– Test with control of some elements– Control of RF amplifiers implemented

• Problems:– No programmers available for application programs

(OP)– REX-EBIS and REX-TRAP, no migration started– ISOLDE collaboration contributes with salary for one

CO engineer• Agreement in memo from 2003: Complete migration

and maintain existing system

Mats Lindroos

New projects

• RFQ cooler– Control hardware selected in collaboration with CO

group– Specification note for integration in ISOLDE control

published• HIE-ISOLDE

– Proposal for the future of ISOLDE to be presented at the NuPAC meeting 10-12 October 2005ID Task Nam e

1 LINAC upgrade 5.5 MeV/u2 LINAC upgrade 10 MeV/u3 Trap and EBIS upgrades4 ECR chargebreedr5 RFQ cooler6 High charge beamline7 New HRS8 Targetry for linac 49 RILIS upgrade10 Ti:saphire lasers11 TS infrastructure12 AT/VAC consolidation

Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q42004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Mats Lindroos

Summary: To be completedISOLDE:• Improve response time of ISOLDE controls

– Objective: Match performance of previous control system• Provide general support for JAVA programs (and programmers) to create a stable control

environment• Advice on PLC low-level controls for Class A lab• Name link person for ISOLDE in CO group

REX-ISOLDE:• Coordinate migration of Front-ends with available resources in the department for application

programs• Complete migration of REX power supplies controls (with PO)• Complete migration of REX EBIS controls (with ABP)• Maintain and support remaining windows based controls

– Transfer of responsibility from “student” to CO for REX-TRAP LabView control system

New projects:• Integrate the standard parts (power supplies) of RFQ cooler controls in the ISOLDE control

system (with ATB)

General:• We need clear CO guidelines for REX extensions and other HIE-ISOLDE projects• We need a “synchronization” between changes in CO standards with available

resources for application programming (OP and specialists). This includes modifications of FE software which requires re-compilation and/or modifications of software on consoles.

Mats Lindroos

Summary: To be left for later

• REX-TRAP migration• Non standard equipment for new

projects– Dedicated control under specialist responsibility– The CO PLC hardware can be used with the Siemens

built in software and Labview• FETCH/WRITE interface of a Siemens Ethernet

Communication Processor (like CP 343-1) • Already implemented for ISOLDE RFQ cooler• Could be used to control new off-line separator in the

Class A lab (works over ethernet).

Mats Lindroos

66 comments from the ISOLDE team concerning this review

“My general feeling is that we have bottom priority and that there is no-one in the CO group who feels responsible for ISOLDE”

“The PLC system was forced on the specialist groups. Now we are supposed to support this systems without sufficient CO support and documentation”

“Key application requested by the Safety Commission are not “stabilized” resulting in in-complete logs and poor records of the number of protons taken on the targets. This is in direct contradiction to commitments made to the host states”

“The application programs provided by the OP group are very good but we lack a central support in the CO group for this environments. The operators do their best to help but as they are on shift work they cannot make interventions, nor address general problems with the JAVA control environment”

“The detail of requested specifications does not correspond to the support eventually received. After having spent months of specifying a program I got something back that wasn’t even de-bugged”

“The control group seem to be detached from the real world in which their control system is supposed to work. They are only interested in making one small process run but not in ensuring that the full system really does what it should do”

Mats Lindroos

Status ISOLDE September 2005 (1)

• Non-application-specific Problems– Intermittent slow down or freeze, affecting entire control system Intermittent slow down or freeze, affecting Java controls only

• "Standard" controls (not Isolde specific)– Working sets Equipment lists recently updated. OK.– Knobs (old) OK– Knobs (new) OK– SEM-grid OK– Eqp-survey Unsupported and no replacement available– Timing survey (unused?)– Radiation monitors OK

• Isolde controls– Rilis Laser Imager OK– Display Alarms Tolerances and error conditions not set correctly for all

equipment– Elogbook Intermittent slow-downs or freezes– Vistar infos (GPS+HRS) Software in need of improvement/update– Easy Eqp Access Not working– QP Array OK– Logger Intermittent stops - under investigation– Synoptics (from CO) Out of date– Synoptics (from OP) Being evaluated

Mats Lindroos

Status ISOLDE September 2005 (2)

• GPS+HRS controls– Target heater OK– Tape station Some minor bugs remain (graph plotting)– HT control OK– Mass control OK– Mass scan OK– Gas mixing OK– GHM/GLM deflectors Some cosmetic changes needed– Proton integrator Some changes being made

• Controls not yet migrated to Linux– Wiregrids– Moving-needle scanners– Fixed-needle scanner

• Other missing things– Calibration of the gas-system pressure gaugues (Volts -> mbar) – Calibration of the thermocouples (mVolts -> degrees-C) – Stepper motors: correct decoding of position encoders (ATB for hardware)– Stepper motors: interlocks to avoid collisions in GPS switchyard Stepper motors: set the Z-

offset from a console Slit control application (ATB for hardware)

• FAQ– How to interface experimentalists' data acquisition systems with the ISOLDE control

system?

Mats Lindroos

Conclusions

It is time consuming to maintain legacy hardware and software…

…but it is even more time consuming to only partly complete a migration to new standards.

The CO group lose major resources on “fire brigade” actions at ISOLDE. Please, use them to complete the started jobs instead.