Beamline control using LabVIEW and EPICS on the PNC-CAT beamline at the APS
D.L. Brewe, K.H. Kim, R. Gordon and S.M. Heald
PNC CAT, Argonne National Laboratory
The Pacific Northwest Consortium Collaborative Access Team is developing software for beamline control at the Advanced Photon Source, sector 20, using LabVIEW and EPICS. Use of EPICS provides us with the opportunity to implement beamline control software developed by the XFD group at the APS, while use of LabVIEW gives us the capability to easily develop a sophisticated graphical user interface, and provides additional flexibility in terms of the hardware we use to control the beamline. Developing with LabVIEW for Windows NT, the interface to EPICS is accomplished by means of Win32 channel Access DLL's developed at LBNL. Our LabVIEW microimaging application incorporates EPICS-based motor control and PC-based data acquisition, using a National Instruments I/O board, and saves image data to HDF files. We also currently use LabVIEW to monitor our beamline Equipment Protection System and control Stanford Research SR570 current amplifiers. Our EPICS development thus far is
concentrated primarily on construction of EPICS databases to facilitate the setup and execution of XAFS (i.e. x-ray energy) scans, and monochromator control. We are continuing to develop both the EPICS and LabVIEW aspects of our control systems.
(posted 11-Nov-97 jw)