15th of January, 2007 3rd ACS Workshop, Garching

Cosylab:Your Professional

ACS Partner

Klemen Žagarklemen.zagar@cosylab.com

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Overview

• Cosylab – who we are and what we do

– Role in ACS development

• Services

– Consulting

– Training

– Support

– Development

– Student internships

– New Service Model

• Products

– microIOC

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Cosylab

• Established in 2001– Spin-off of the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI)

– Research-grade competence with a professional attitude

• Field of work:– Control systems for (large) experimental physics

facilities

– Geographical information systems (GIS)

– Telecommunications

– Automotive electronics

– …

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Cosylab

• Employees:

– From 6 in 2001 to 29 in 2006

– Graduates in physics, computing and electronics

– Approximately 50 talented and motivated students sharpening their skills through our internship programs

• ISO 9001 quality management system

– Paper-free, distributed and flexible (project) management

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Control systems …

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… telecommunications …

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… project management tools …

Web and e-mail access: anytime, anywhere.

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… project management tools

Project management, reporting and analysis.

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Cosylab and ACS• JSI developed a control system for ANKA synchrotron

– 1996-1999

– CORBA-based

– Runs on standard PCs

– Use of Java for the user interface

• Gianluca (ESO) and Mark Pleško (JSI) met at ICALEPCS’99

• Management subsystem– ACS Manager, container/component model

– Configuration database (CDB)

– Architecture, design, implementation and maintenance

• Basic Access and Control Interface (BACI)– Properties, monitors, characteristics, asynchronous/synchronous semantics

• Archiving and logging– Design, implementation

• Abeans/CosyBeans

• Applications– Object Explorer, jLog

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Cosylab’s Services to Users of ACS

• Consulting– Need help figuring out how to start an ACS project?

– Wonder if you are on the right track?

– Having trouble and don’t see a way out?

– Have an unanswered question?

• Training– Starting a project – got the fingers, need the knowledge.

• Custom development– Too much work, too little time.

– Tough problem that needs to be solved well and quick.

• Support– Support of ACS core.

– Support of Cosylab’s or other code.

– Additional pair of hands during commissioning.

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Student internships

• Cosylab and JSI have contact with students that:

… are motivated,

… talented,

… need experience,

… and are eager to see new places.

• Why not let them help you on your project, at your site, while they learn?

• Option:

– Cosylab provides a mentor to supervise student’s work.

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The New Service Model

• The idea: – keep one person permanently at your site to collect

requests and make quick fixes,

– keep a larger team at Cosylab to provide expertise on all possible aspects,

– pay one, get many.

• We are working on long-term partnership with customers and equipment suppliers.

• We believe we can deliver extra value to in-house development: “do what you do best and leave to us the rest”

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The Right Way to Outsourcing: Rightsourcing

• Start with smaller projects (2-4 person-weeks)

• Regular visits or work on-site

• Between “in-sourcing” and “out-sourcing”:– 1 person on-site (gather requirements, communicate with customers, organize,

support, service…)

– expert team at home, professionally organized and managed

• Benefits– pay only one person, get an expert in every area

– retain the established work practice:• (almost) no specs

• creative academic environment

• ask and get (almost) the next day

– value for money• efficiently managed

• optimized procedures

• no cure, no pay!

– Lifetime support

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microIOC

• IOC: Input/Output Controller

• Signals in, ACS out

• Variety of I/O:– Serial communication (RS-232, RS-485, USB, …)

– Analog/digital input/output

– Motion controller

– Oscilloscope

– Signal generator

– Delay generator

– USB camera (with image analysis)

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microIOC

Dual Ethernet8 serial ports

Bootable Compact Flash

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microIOC

• The microIOC is a black box for installation:

– with built-in ACS container

– preconfigured components

• Made of standard components:

– a reliable power supply (55 years MTBF)

– an PC104(+) bus

– Intel-compatible processor

– Linux or RTEMS operating system

– Off-the-shelf parts easy to replace

• No moving parts (fan, disk) to break in first place

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Integrate Devices into ACS

USB/Ethernet camera

GPIB

RS 232/422/485

Analog/digital I/O

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Possible Applications

• Diskless booting – reduce boot-up time

• Large distributed systems (e.g., an array of telescopes)

• Integrate a few signals here and there (utilities)

• Integrate PLCs into ACS

• Protocol converter: eg. Modbus - EPICS

• Isolate device Ethernet network from other IOCs

• Allows equipment vendors to integrate ACS

• Office desktop ACS development/test system

• ACS course hardware

• Replacement contracts

– 24h replacement shipping

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The microIOC Family

• Small 9”

• Display 13”

• Rack mount 19”

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Thanks to …

Gianluca Chiozzi

• Organization of this workshop.

• Showed us how to manage a complex software development project (ACS).

• Letting me have this presentation.

• Cosylab’s first customer.

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How to reach us …

http://www.cosylab.com

http://www.microioc.com

klemen.zagar@cosylab.com

Ljubljana, Slovenia