Author: Cuni, G.    [Cuní, G.]
Paper Title Page
TU2AO03 A Successful Emergency Response Plan: Lessons in the Controls Section of the ALBA Synchrotron 316
 
  • G. Cuní, O. Matilla, J. Nicolàs, M. Pont
    ALBA-CELLS, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
 
  These are challenging times for research institutes in the field of software engineering. Our designs are becoming increasingly complex, and a software engineer needs years of experience to become productive. On the other hand, the software job market is very dynamic, and a computer engineer receives tens of offers from private companies with attractive salaries every year. Occasionally, the perfect storm can occur, and in a short period of time, several key people in a group with years of experience leave. The situation is even more critical when the institute is plunged into a high growth rate with several new instruments under way. Naturally, engaged teams will resist reducing operational service quality, but, on the other hand, the new installations milestones dates will approach quickly. This article outlines the decision-making process and the measures taken to cope with this situation in the ALBA Synchroton’s Controls Section. The plan included reorganizing teamwork, but more importantly, redefining the relationship with our clients and prioritization processes. As a result, the team was restructured and new roles were created. In addition, effective coordination was vital, and new communication channels were established to ensure smooth workflows. The emergency peak period is over in our case, but we have learned a lot of lessons and implemented many changes that will stay with us. They have made us more efficient and more resilient in case of future emergencies.  
slides icon Slides TU2AO03 [1.132 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TU2AO03  
About • Received ※ 02 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 19 November 2023 — Issued ※ 28 November 2023  
Cite • reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)  
 
TUPDP076 Preliminary Design for the ALBA II Control System Stack 685
 
  • S. Rubio-Manrique, F. Becheri, G. Cuní, R.H. Homs, Z. Reszela
    ALBA-CELLS, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
 
  One of the main pillars of the ALBA Synchrotron Light Source (Barcelona, Spain) Strategy Plan is the preparation of ALBA to be upgraded to a fourth-generation light source. To accomplish this, a preliminary design of the accelerator has already been initiated in 2021. On the Computing side, the upgrade of the accelerator will require a comprehensive overhaul of most parts of the Control System, DAQ, Timing, and many other systems as well as DevOps strategies. This need for a major redesign will bring new architectural challenges, and opportunities to benefit from new technologies that were not present at the time ALBA was designed and build. This paper presents the preliminary design studies, pilot projects, new approaches to development coordination and management, and the preparation plan to acquire the knowledge and experience needed to excel in the ALBA II Control System Stack design.  
poster icon Poster TUPDP076 [1.095 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TUPDP076  
About • Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 11 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 14 December 2023 — Issued ※ 17 December 2023
Cite • reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)  
 
TUPDP077 Towards the ALBA II : the Computing Division Preliminary Study 691
 
  • O. Matilla, J.A. Avila-Abellan, F. Becheri, S. Blanch-Torné, A.M. Burillo, A. Camps Gimenez, I. Costa, G. Cuní, T. Fernández Maltas, R.H. Homs, J. Moldes, E. Morales, C. Pascual-Izarra, S. Pusó Gallart, A. Pérez Font, Z. Reszela, B. Revuelta, A. Rubio, S. Rubio-Manrique, J. Salabert, N. Serra, X. Serra-Gallifa, N. Soler, S. Vicente Molina, J. Villanueva
    ALBA-CELLS, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
 
  The ALBA Synchrotron has started the work for up-grading the accelerator and beamlines towards a 4th gen-eration source, the future ALBA II, in 2030. A complete redesign of the magnets lattice and an upgrade of the beamlines will be required. But in addition, the success of the ALBA II project will depend on multiple factors. First, after thirteen years in operation, all the subsystems of the current accelerator must be revised. To guarantee their lifetime until 2060, all the possible ageing and obsoles-cence factors must be considered. Besides, many tech-nical enhancements have improved performance and reliability in recent years. Using the latest technologies will also avoid obsolescence in the medium term, both in the hardware and the software. Considering this, the pro-ject ALBA II Computing Preliminary Study (ALBA II CPS) was launched in mid-2021, identifying 11 work packages. In each one, a group of experts were selected to analyze the different challenges and needs in the compu-ting and electronics fields for future accelerator design: from power supplies technologies, IOC architectures, or PLC-based automation systems to synchronization needs, controls software stack, IT Systems infrastructure or ma-chine learning opportunities. Now, we have a clearer picture of what is required. Hence, we can build a realistic project plan to ensure the success of the ALBA II. It is time to get ALBA II off the ground.  
poster icon Poster TUPDP077 [0.687 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TUPDP077  
About • Received ※ 05 October 2023 — Revised ※ 09 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 11 December 2023 — Issued ※ 15 December 2023
Cite • reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)  
 
TH1BCO03 The Tango Controls Collaboration Status in 2023 1100
 
  • T. Juerges
    SKAO, Macclesfield, United Kingdom
  • G. Abeillé
    SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
  • R.J. Auger-Williams
    OSL, St Ives, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
  • B. Bertrand, V. Hardion, A.F. Joubert
    MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
  • R. Bourtembourg, A. Götz, D. Lacoste, N. Leclercq
    ESRF, Grenoble, France
  • T. Braun
    byte physics, Annaburg, Germany
  • G. Cuní, C. Pascual-Izarra, S. Rubio-Manrique
    ALBA-CELLS, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
  • Yu. Matveev
    DESY, Hamburg, Germany
  • M. Nabywaniec, T.R. Noga, Ł. Żytniak
    S2Innovation, Kraków, Poland
  • L. Pivetta
    Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy
 
  Since 2021 the Tango Controls collaboration has improved and optimised its efforts in many areas. Not only have Special Interest Group meetings (SIGs) been introduced to speed up the adoption of new technologies or improvements, the kernel has switched to a fixed six-month release cycle for quicker adoption of stable kernel versions by the community. CI/CD provides now early feedback on test failures and compatibility issues. Major code refactoring allowed for a much more efficient use of developer resources. Relevant bug fixes, improvements and new features are now adopted at a much higher rate than ever before. The community participation has also noticeably improved. The kernel switched to C++14 and the logging system is undergoing a major refactoring. Among many new features and tools is jupyTango, Jupyter Notebooks on Tango Controls steroids. PyTango is now easy to install via binary wheels, old Python versions are no longer supported, the build-system is switching to CMake, and releases are now made much closer to stable cppTango releases.  
slides icon Slides TH1BCO03 [1.357 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TH1BCO03  
About • Received ※ 05 October 2023 — Revised ※ 24 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 21 November 2023 — Issued ※ 13 December 2023
Cite • reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)  
 
THPDP050 Improving User Experience and Performance in Sardana and Taurus: A Status Report and Roadmap 1420
 
  • Z. Reszela, J. Aguilar Larruy, M. Caixal i Joaniquet, G. Cuní, R. Homs-Puron, E. Morales, M. Navarro, C. Pascual-Izarra, J.A. Ramos, S. Rubio-Manrique, O. Vallcorba
    ALBA-CELLS, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
  • B. Bertrand, J. Forsberg
    MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
  • M.T. Núñez Pardo de Vera
    DESY, Hamburg, Germany
  • M. Piekarski
    NSRC SOLARIS, Kraków, Poland
  • D. Schick
    MBI, Berlin, Germany
 
  Sardana Suite is an open-source scientific SCADA solution used in synchrotron light beamlines at ALBA, DESY, MAXIV and SOLARIS and in laser labs at MBI-Berlin. It is formed by Sardana and Taurus - both mature projects, driven by a community of users and developers for more than 10 years. Sardana provides a low level interface to the hardware, middle level abstractions and a sequence engine. Taurus is a library for developing graphical user interfaces. Sardana Suite uses client - server architecture and is built on top of TANGO. As a community, during the last few years, on one hand we were focusing on improving user experience, especially in terms of reliability and performance and on the other hand renewing the dependency stack. The system is now more stable, easier to debug and recover from a failure. An important effort was put in profiling and improving performance of Taurus applications startup. The codebase has been migrated to Python 3 and the plotting widgets were rewritten with pyqtgraph. This didn’t prevent us from delivering new features, like for example the long-awaited configuration tools and format based on YAML which is easy and intuitive to edit, browse, and track historical changes. Now we conclude this phase in the project’s lifetimes and are preparing for new challenging requirements in the area of continuous scans like higher data throughput and more complex synchronization configurations. Here we present the status report and the future roadmap.  
poster icon Poster THPDP050 [0.605 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-THPDP050  
About • Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 26 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 13 December 2023 — Issued ※ 21 December 2023
Cite • reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)