Keyword: embedded
Paper Title Other Keywords Page
MO2BCO06 Embedded Controller Software Development Best Practices at the National Ignition Facility controls, software, hardware, interface 54
 
  • V.K. Gopalan, A.I. Barnes, C.M. Estes, J.M. Fisher, V.J. Hernandez, P. Kale, A. Pao, P.K. Singh
    LLNL, Livermore, USA
 
  Funding: This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.
Software development practices such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) are widely adopted by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) which helps to automate the software development, build, test, and deployment processes. However, using CI/CD in an embedded controller project poses several challenges due to the limited computing resources such as processing power, memory capacity and storage availability in such systems. This paper will present how CI/CD best practices were tailored and used to develop and deploy software for one of the NIF Master Oscillator Room (MOR) embedded controllers, which is based on custom designed hardware consisting of a microcontroller and a variety of laser sensors and drivers. The approach included the use of automated testing frameworks, customized build scripts, simulation environments, and an optimized build and deployment pipeline, leading to quicker release cycles, improved quality assurance and quicker defect correction. The paper will also detail the challenges faced during the development and deployment phases and the strategies used to overcome them. The experience gained with this methodology on a pilot project demonstrated that using CI/CD in embedded controller projects can be challenging, yet feasible with the right tools and strategies, and has the potential to be scaled and applied to the vast number of embedded controllers in the NIF control system.
LLNL Release Number: LLNL-ABS-848418
 
slides icon Slides MO2BCO06 [1.346 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-MO2BCO06  
About • Received ※ 29 September 2023 — Revised ※ 12 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 14 November 2023 — Issued ※ 30 November 2023
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MO4AO03 The DESY Open Source FPGA Framework framework, FPGA, simulation, hardware 222
 
  • Ł. Butkowski, A. Bellandi, M. Büchler, B. Dursun, C. Gümüş, N. Omidsajedi, K. Schulz
    DESY, Hamburg, Germany
 
  Modern FPGA firmware development involves integrating various intellectual properties (IP), modules written in hardware description languages (HDL), high-level synthesis (HLS), and software/hardware CPUs with embedded Linux or bare-metal applications. This process may involve multiple tools from the same or different vendors, making it complex and challenging. Additionally, scientific institutions such as DESY require long-term maintenance and reproducibility for designs that may involve multiple developers, further complicating the process. To address these challenges, we have developed an open-source FPGA firmware framework (FWK) at DESY that streamlines development, facilitates collaboration, and reduces complexity. The FWK achieves this by providing an abstraction layer, a defined structure, and guidelines to create big FPGA designs with ease. FWK also generates documentation and address maps necessary for high-level software frameworks like ChimeraTK. This paper presents an overview and the idea of the FWK.  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-MO4AO03  
About • Received ※ 05 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 13 October 2023 — Issued ※ 13 October 2023  
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TUMBCMO07 Dynamic Control Room Interfaces for Complex Particle Accelerator Systems interface, controls, operation, lattice 351
 
  • B.E. Bolling, G. Fedel, M. Muñoz, D.N. Nordt
    ESS, Lund, Sweden
 
  The European Spallation Source (ESS) is a research facility under construction aiming to be the world’s most powerful pulsed neutron source. It is powered by a complex particle accelerator designed to provide a 2.86 ms long proton pulse at 2 GeV with a repetition rate of 14 Hz. Commissioning of the first part of the accelerator has begun and the requirements on the control system interfaces varies greatly as progress is made and new systems are added. In this paper, three such applications are discussed in separate sections. A Navigator interface was developed for the control room interfaces aimed towards giving operators and users a clear and structured way towards quickly finding the needed interface(s) they need. The construction of this interface is made automatically via a Python-based application and is built on applications in any directory structure both with and without developer interference (fully and semi-automatic methods). The second interface discussed in this paper is the Operations Accelerator Synoptic interface, which uses a set of input lattices and system interface templates to construct configurable synoptic view of the systems in various sections and a controller panel for any selected system. Lastly for this paper there is a configurable Radio Frequency Orchestration interface for Operations, which allows in-situ modification of the interface depending on which systems and components are selected.  
slides icon Slides TUMBCMO07 [3.248 MB]  
poster icon Poster TUMBCMO07 [10.503 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TUMBCMO07  
About • Received ※ 04 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 21 November 2023 — Issued ※ 04 December 2023  
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TUPDP025 Board Bring-up with FPGA Framework and ChimeraTK on Yocto controls, hardware, software, Linux 557
 
  • J. Georg, A.W.C. Barker, L. Butkowski, M. Hierholzer, M. Killenberg, T. Kozak, N. Omidsajedi, M. Randall, D. Rothe, N. Shehzad, C. Willner
    DESY, Hamburg, Germany
  • K. Zenker
    HZDR, Dresden, Germany
 
  This presentation will showcase our experience in board bring-up using our FPGA Framework and ChimeraTK, our C++ hardware abstraction library. The challenges involved in working with different FPGA vendors will be discussed, as well as how the framework and library help to abstract vendor-specific details to provide a consistent interface for applications. Our approach to integrating this framework and libraries with Yocto, a popular open-source project for building custom Linux distributions, will be discussed. We will show how we leverage Yocto’s flexibility and extensibility to create a customized Linux image that includes our FPGA drivers and tools, and discuss the benefits of this approach for embedded development. Finally, we will share some of our best practices for board bring-up using our framework and library, including tips for debugging and testing. Our experience with FPGA-based board bring-up using ChimeraTK and Yocto should be valuable to anyone interested in developing embedded systems with FPGA technology  
poster icon Poster TUPDP025 [0.567 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TUPDP025  
About • Received ※ 06 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 11 December 2023 — Issued ※ 15 December 2023  
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TUPDP075 OPC UA EPICS Bridge EPICS, PLC, controls, software 681
 
  • W. Duckitt
    Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa
  • J.K. Abraham
    iThemba LABS, Somerset West, South Africa
 
  OPC UA is a service-orientated communication architecture that supports platform-independent, data exchange between embedded micro-controllers, PLCs or PCs and cloudbased infrastructure. This makes OPC UA ideal for developing manufacturer independent communication to vendor specific PLCs, for example. With this in mind, we present an OPC UA to EPICS bridge that has been containerized with Docker to provide a micro-service for communicating between EPICS and OPC UA variables.  
poster icon Poster TUPDP075 [0.681 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TUPDP075  
About • Received ※ 03 October 2023 — Revised ※ 20 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 11 December 2023 — Issued ※ 12 December 2023
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TH2AO01 Log Anomaly Detection on EuXFEL Nodes FEL, network, GUI, monitoring 1126
 
  • A. Sulc, A. Eichler, T. Wilksen
    DESY, Hamburg, Germany
 
  Funding: This work was supported by HamburgX grant LFF-HHX-03 to the Center for Data and Computing in Natural Sciences (CDCS) from the Hamburg Ministry of Science, Research, Equalities and Districts.
This article introduces a method to detect anomalies in the log data generated by control system nodes at the European XFEL accelerator. The primary aim of this proposed method is to offer operators a comprehensive understanding of the availability, status, and problems specific to each node. This information is vital for ensuring the smooth operation. The sequential nature of logs and the absence of a rich text corpus that is specific to our nodes pose a significant limitation for traditional and learning-based approaches for anomaly detection. To overcome this limitation, we propose a method that uses word embedding and models individual nodes as a sequence of these vectors that commonly co-occur, using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). We score individual log entries by computing a probability ratio between the probability of the full log sequence including the new entry and the probability of just the previous log entries, without the new entry. This ratio indicates how probable the sequence becomes when the new entry is added. The proposed approach can detect anomalies by scoring and ranking log entries from EuXFEL nodes where entries that receive high scores are potential anomalies that do not fit the routine of the node. This method provides a warning system to alert operators about these irregular log events that may indicate issues.
 
slides icon Slides TH2AO01 [1.420 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-TH2AO01  
About • Received ※ 30 September 2023 — Accepted ※ 08 December 2023 — Issued ※ 13 December 2023  
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THPDP026 Voltumna Linux: A Custom Distribution for (Embedded) Systems Linux, software, target, controls 1366
 
  • L. Pivetta, A.I. Bogani, G. Scalamera
    Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy
 
  In the last years a thorough approach has been adopted to address the aging and the variability of control system platforms at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. The second generation of an in-house built operating system, named Voltumna Linux, which is based on immutable image approach, is now ready for production, supporting a number of commercial-off-the-shelf embedded systems. Moreover, the same approach is perfectly suitable for rack-mount servers, with large memory support, that often require the inclusion of third party or closed source packages. Being entirely based on Git for revision control, Voltumna Linux brings in a number of advantages, such as reproducibility of the product, ease of upgrading or downgrading complete systems, centralized management and deployment of the user software to name a few.  
poster icon Poster THPDP026 [1.482 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-THPDP026  
About • Received ※ 04 October 2023 — Revised ※ 25 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 13 December 2023 — Issued ※ 15 December 2023
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