FRIB, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
For more than a decade, the Eclipse-based Control System Studio has provided FRIB with a rich user interface to its EPICS-based control system. At FRIB, we use the Alarm Handler, BOY Display Manager, Scan Monitor/Editor, Channel Client, Save-and-Restore, and Data Browser to monitor and control various parts of the beamline. Our engineers have developed over 3000 displays using the BOY display manager mapping various segments and areas of the FRIB beamline. CS-Studio Phoebus is the latest next-generation upgrade to the Eclipse-based CS-Studio, which is based on the modern JavaFX-based graphics and aims toward providing existing functionalities and more. FRIB has already transitioned away from the old BEAST alarm servers to the new Kafka-based Phoebus alarm servers which have been monitoring thousands of our EPICS PVs with its robust monitoring and notifying capabilities. We faced certain challenges with conversion of FRIB’s thousands of displays and to address those we deployed scripts to help the bulk conversion of screens with automated mapping between BOY and Display Builder and also continually improved the Phoebus auto-conversion tool. This paper details the ongoing transition of FRIB from Eclipse-based CS-Studio to Phoebus and various adaptations and solutions that we used to ease this transition for our users. Moving to the new Phoebus-based services and client have provided us with an opportunity to rectify and improve on certain issues known to have existed with Eclipse-based CS-Studio and its services.
