8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger 1

EPICS Support for Group3 Control System

Carl Lionberger

Group3™ optical-fiber-connected I/O

Software and operational experience

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Group3 control system

• VME-Based fiber-optic loop controller– 2 loops/VME bd, 8 bds/VME crate– SDLC 1.152 Mbaud on loop

• 16 DI’s (Device Interface) / loop– CNA – 2 AI, 1 AO, 8BI, 8BO

• Has PID (not supported)

– CN3 – CPU + 3 I/O boards• digital I/O, analog I/O, motor control• Serial, gpib (not supported)

– Diagnostic Port on each DI

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Optical Fiber Items

• HP HFBR Versatile Link– 40 meters max/link plastic, 3 km max/link glass

• Plastic easy to terminate in-house

• Glass & SMA connectors by special order

– Have had bad experience with passive cable extenders (barrel connectors, feed-throughs)

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Group3 controls in a rack

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Group3 EPICS support• CNA combination module

– Ai, ao, bi, bo, mbbi, mbbiD, mbbo, mbboD• B digital module

– bi, bo, mbbi, mbbiD, mbbo, mbboD• C 8 16-bit analog input – ai• D 8 12-bit analog output – ao• E 4-channel DC motor controller

– Mbbo for mode, ao for speed, accel• G 4-channel stepper – steppermotor record• H 4-channel encoder – ai, steppermotor record• F dual-serial, diagnostic port – vxWorks tty driver• Loop Controller (status) – ai, mbbi, mbbiD

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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CNA Module

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Power Supply Control with CNA

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Directly connected CNAs

• 2 CNA’s connected directly to each other by two fiber cables

• Output of each one reflects corresponding inputs of other

• Nice for remote power switches and resets

• No Software!

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Cache Polling Loop

~30Hz

DI1

DI2

DI3

Loop Controller

input PV

Output PV

Device Support

drvG3

Sequence-number concurrency control

Per-DI semaphore protected

Interrupt IO Scan Queue

vxWorks tty driver

Group3 EPICS support

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

10Group3 layout screen

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Loop Controller Diagnostic

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Group3 Diagnostic Port

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Dbior report level 3Scanner has run 13221688 times.

Loop Controller 12 in use at 0xffffc000 with status 0x0

Extended error: 0x1 error count: 3477 DI online bits: 0x7f

IO Buffer memory 34 percent used; 14 of 60 iodefs used.

Receive count 288247461 and Send count 292452437

Error vector 0x1000000 DI vector 0x0 IO vector 0x0 SDLC 0x84

Error vector bits:

Bad SDLC Packet

Active nodes:

IODef 0 DI 0 Board 0 Type 6 IO Address 0xcf80 updates/sec 0 OK

vxWorks tty name: LEBT:Extr receive index 0

IODef 8 DI 3 Board 1 Type 101 IO Address 0xcc48 updates/sec 1 OK

Ints/sec: 1 0 0

IODef 9 DI 6 Board 1 Type 3 IO Address 0xcc24 updates/sec 28 OK

Ints/sec: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Dbior report level 4IODef 3 DI 3 Board 0 Type 6 IO Address 0xce00 updates/sec 0 OK

vxWorks tty name: LEBT:Chop_P receive index 0

r mses r tries data buffer

136003 0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

00 75 66 66 65 72 20 6f 76 65 72 66 6c 6f 77 0d

0a 20 6f 76 65 72 66 6c 6f 77 0d 0a 20 20

IODef at 0xffffc070 DI 0x3 Bd 0x0 Type 0x6 offset 0xe00

IODef 9 DI 6 Board 1 Type 3 IO Address 0xcc24 updates/sec 20 OK

Ints/sec: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

r mses r tries data buffer

265969 0 01 00 03 00 02 00 02 00 02 00 01 00 03 00 03 00

IODef at 0xffffc0d0 DI 0x6 Bd 0x1 Type 0x3 offset 0xc24

IODef 10 DI 0 Board 1 Type 101 IO Address 0xcbdc updates/sec 7 OK

Ints/sec: 5 2 0

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Sparks Can Still Get In

• Power (24V AC/DC)– Isolation transformer types– Routing of 110 V

• Signals– RC networks in CN3, CNA connector blocks– Grounding and shielding

• VME crates – Overall grounding and power quality

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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General Problems

• No readback of outputs through normal channels.– Could startup with diagnostic ports only to obtain

initial readback value for glitchless performance.• Rewrite driver

• CN3 board addressing flaw– Don’t use multiple boards of same type in same CN3!– Firmware fix in the works?

• Addresses not reconfigurable on the fly• Diagnostic port-level automatic configuration

support inadequate

8 May 2001 EPICS Group3 Carl Lionberger

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Conclusions

• Easy to set up and use

• Runs reliably under reasonable conditions

• Optical fiber communication link does not solve all electrical isolation problems

• There are still some possible driver level issues