The Slow Controls System of P̄ANDA

The Slow Controls framework of the P̄ANDA experiment is discussed, with an accent on recent progress, available documentation and tools, and development trends foreseen for the near future. Experiment Control System We envisage the Slow Controls System of the P̄ANDA experiment [1] rather as an Experiment Control System (ECS) [2], since it must control vital processes as machine state, run start/stop, must handle critical conditions and at the same time must supervise data acquisition parameters and ensure the quality of the physics data. Despite its complexity, we aim to deliver a complete monitoring and control system, tested and fine tuned well ahead of the first HESR beam at FAIR. Framework and Components The basis of the P̄ANDA ECS is EPICS [3]. EPICS is a set of Open Source software tools, libraries and applications developed collaboratively and used worldwide to create distributed real-time control systems for scientific instruments and industrial applications. EPICS expertise already exists within the GSI community and the framework will be used by other FAIR experiments such as NuSTAR and CBM [4]. EPICS can also interface with LabVIEW [5], which is used for the P̄ANDA Target controls. On top of EPICS, we will have an integration layer build with AFECS [6]. AFECS is a pure Java based software framework developed at Jefferson Lab, VA. AFECS is designed to work with EPICS and, due to its agent-based architecture, is able to interface with any type of hardware or software component. In addition, MonALISA [7] components and services will be used for DAQ and physics data monitoring and control, since the P̄ANDA software framework is based on ROOT [8], which has built-in MonALISA communication capabilities. User interfaces will be built in CSS [9], which is the industry standard nowadays and is fully supported by the EPICS community. Tools and Documentation The prototyping and implementation of the P̄ANDA ECS started in 2008 with the collection of the requirements from the various P̄ANDA subdetector groups [10]. This allowed for the organisation and standardisation of the Process Variable names, hardware for control and monitoring, and provides a means for continual updates during the prototyping and design stage. It also supplies a mechanism to automatically create EPICS channel database files for the early prototyping of local control components and GUIs (thus ensuring naming conventions are observed etc.). An electronic logbook (eLog) for P̄ANDA is up and running on a dedicated GSI server since early 2010. The software of this eLog was custom written within the P̄ANDA ECS group [11], to make sure it contains the best features of existing electronic logbooks, but has been adopted in the meantime by other experimental groups, such as A2@MAMI and WASA@FZJ. The main source of information however remains the group’s wiki [2] set up in 2007, where organisational information, links to subdetector groups our forum and mailing list, databases and tools, howtos and manuals, and a talk archive are provided. As things progress towards component prototyping, dedicated howtos are being added.