ICALEPCS2023 - List of Authors (Vrcic, S.)

Paper	Title	Page
TH1BCO04	Asynchronous Execution of Tango Commands in the SKA Telescope Control System: An Alternative to the Tango Async Device	1108
	B.A. Ojur, A.J. Venter SARAO, Cape Town, South Africa D. Devereux CSIRO, Clayton, Australia D. Devereux, S.N. Twum, S. Vrcic SKAO, Macclesfield, United Kingdom
	Equipment controlled by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Control System will have a TANGO interface for control and monitoring. Commands on TANGO device servers have a 3000 milliseconds window to complete their execution and return to the client. This timeout places a limitation on some commands used on SKA TANGO devices which take longer than the 3000 milliseconds window to complete; the threshold is more stricter in the SKA Control System (CS) Guidelines. Such a command, identified as a Long Running Command (LRC), needs to be executed asynchronously to circumvent the timeout. TANGO has support for an asynchronous device which allows commands to be executed slower than 3000 milliseconds by using a coroutine to put the task on an event loop. During the exploration of this, a decision was made to implement a custom approach in our base repository which all devices depend on. In this approach, every command annotated as ¿long running¿ is handed over to a thread to complete the task and its progress is tracked through attributes. These attributes report the queued commands along with their progress, status and results. The client is provided with a unique identifier which can be used to track the execution of the LRC and take further action based on the outcome of that command. LRCs can be aborted safely using a custom TANGO command. We present the reference design and implementation of the Long Running Commands for the SKA Controls System.
	Slides TH1BCO04 [0.674 MB]
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TH1BCO04
About •	Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 24 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 20 December 2023 — Issued ※ 22 December 2023
Cite •	reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)

THMBCMO14	Development of the SKA Control System, Progress, and Challenges	1221
	S. Vrcic, T. Juerges SKAO, Macclesfield, United Kingdom
	The SKA Project is a science mega-project whose mission is to build an astronomical observatory that comprises two large radio-telescopes: the SKA-Low Telescope, located in the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, with the observing range 50 to 350 MHz, and the SKA Mid Telescope, located in the Karoo Region, South Africa, with the observing range 350 MHz to 15 GHz. The SKA Global Headquarters is in the Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Manchester, UK. When completed, the SKA Telescopes will surpass existing radio-astronomical facilities not only in the scientific criteria such as sensitivity, angular resolution, and survey speed, but also in the number of receptors and the range of the observing and processing modes. The Observatory, and each of the Telescopes, will be delivered in stages, thus supporting incremental development of the collecting area, signal and data processing capacity, and the observing and processing modes. Unlike scientific capability, which, in some cases, may be delivered in the late releases, the control system is required from the very beginning to support integration and verification. Development of the control system to support the first delivery of the Telescopes (Array Assembly 0.5) is well under way. This paper describes the SKA approach to the development of the Telescope Control System, and discusses opportunities and challenges resulting from the distributed development and staged approach to the Telescope construction.
DOI •	reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-THMBCMO14
About •	Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 12 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 12 December 2023 — Issued ※ 22 December 2023
Cite •	reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)

Paper

Title

Page

Asynchronous Execution of Tango Commands in the SKA Telescope Control System: An Alternative to the Tango Async Device

1108

B.A. Ojur, A.J. Venter
SARAO, Cape Town, South Africa
D. Devereux
CSIRO, Clayton, Australia
D. Devereux, S.N. Twum, S. Vrcic
SKAO, Macclesfield, United Kingdom

Equipment controlled by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Control System will have a TANGO interface for control and monitoring. Commands on TANGO device servers have a 3000 milliseconds window to complete their execution and return to the client. This timeout places a limitation on some commands used on SKA TANGO devices which take longer than the 3000 milliseconds window to complete; the threshold is more stricter in the SKA Control System (CS) Guidelines. Such a command, identified as a Long Running Command (LRC), needs to be executed asynchronously to circumvent the timeout. TANGO has support for an asynchronous device which allows commands to be executed slower than 3000 milliseconds by using a coroutine to put the task on an event loop. During the exploration of this, a decision was made to implement a custom approach in our base repository which all devices depend on. In this approach, every command annotated as ¿long running¿ is handed over to a thread to complete the task and its progress is tracked through attributes. These attributes report the queued commands along with their progress, status and results. The client is provided with a unique identifier which can be used to track the execution of the LRC and take further action based on the outcome of that command. LRCs can be aborted safely using a custom TANGO command. We present the reference design and implementation of the Long Running Commands for the SKA Controls System.

Slides TH1BCO04 [0.674 MB]

DOI •

reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TH1BCO04

About •

Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 24 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 20 December 2023 — Issued ※ 22 December 2023

Cite •

reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)

THMBCMO14

Development of the SKA Control System, Progress, and Challenges

1221

S. Vrcic, T. Juerges
SKAO, Macclesfield, United Kingdom

The SKA Project is a science mega-project whose mission is to build an astronomical observatory that comprises two large radio-telescopes: the SKA-Low Telescope, located in the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, with the observing range 50 to 350 MHz, and the SKA Mid Telescope, located in the Karoo Region, South Africa, with the observing range 350 MHz to 15 GHz. The SKA Global Headquarters is in the Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Manchester, UK. When completed, the SKA Telescopes will surpass existing radio-astronomical facilities not only in the scientific criteria such as sensitivity, angular resolution, and survey speed, but also in the number of receptors and the range of the observing and processing modes. The Observatory, and each of the Telescopes, will be delivered in stages, thus supporting incremental development of the collecting area, signal and data processing capacity, and the observing and processing modes. Unlike scientific capability, which, in some cases, may be delivered in the late releases, the control system is required from the very beginning to support integration and verification. Development of the control system to support the first delivery of the Telescopes (Array Assembly 0.5) is well under way. This paper describes the SKA approach to the development of the Telescope Control System, and discusses opportunities and challenges resulting from the distributed development and staged approach to the Telescope construction.

DOI •

reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-THMBCMO14

About •

Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Revised ※ 12 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 12 December 2023 — Issued ※ 22 December 2023

Cite •

reference for this paper using ※ BibTeX, ※ LaTeX, ※ Text/Word, ※ RIS, ※ EndNote (xml)