EVENT NAME Epics Collaboration Meeting 2020 EVENT DATE: WEDNESDAY, 21 OCTOBER, 2020 - 04:00 PM to 10:00 AM EVENT BY: HEINZ JUNKES Posted Questions [06:52 PM] Maurizio Montis asked : Are Ansible ioc roles available for the community? 1 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [06:53 PM] Tom Cobb (DLS) asked : What were your reasons for choosing Ansible over Kubernetes + containers? 1 upvote | 1 answer | 0 reply Kacper Klys answered - We chose Ansible since in the lab, there are systems basing on procServ and we wanted to keep the compatibility with them [07:41 PM] Ernest Williams asked : What commercial or government agencies are using RTEMS 5 1 upvote | 1 answer | 1 reply Heinz Junkes answered - From Joel Sherill: There are plans to baseline it for NASA and ESA missions. But the release is new. Ernest Williams replied - Thanks :) [04:23 PM] Jure Varlec asked : Cool stuff! Are there plans to add a time-based decimation filter? E.g. "only send monitors at most every 300ms". IO interrupt records can have unpredictable frequency, so the current decimation filter, while very useful, isn't always sufficient. 0 upvote | 2 answers | 0 reply Heinz Junkes answered - FYI. active developments can be followed at https://code.launchpad.net/epics-base/+activereviews and https://github.com/epics-base/epics-base/pulls Andrew Johnson answered - As I said verbally, I don't currently plan to work on that myself but filters don't have to be part of Base so anyone can experiment. I recommend contacting me or the core-talk mailing list for help if you want, but this might be easier to implement using a periodic record reading your I/O Interrupt record. [04:29 PM] Gang Li asked : EPICS 7 does not VxWorks，that means EPICS will give up vxworks? 0 upvote | 4 answers | 0 reply Heinz Junkes answered - Thats not right EPICS7 supports vxworks, but 7.1 will not support vxworks6(?) and rtems4 any more Andrew Johnson answered - There may need to be some changes to the VxWorks support to get it to work on VxWorks 7 (we don't know), and currently the APS has not installed that version although we do have a license for it. I can't guarantee that APS will do that work, but another site that uses VxWorks could do it if we don't. Steven Hartman answered - EPICS 7 supports VxWorks (version 6). The comment was in reference to supporting VxWorks version 7. Andrew Johnson answered - Oops, thanks Steven, yes EPICS 7.0.x does run fine on VxWorks 6, but EPICS 7.1 will require VxWorks 7 for C++11 support. [04:58 PM] steve terepin asked : Pls confirm, PVXS can be used in a program built with Microsoft Visual Studio ? 0 upvote | 1 answer | 0 reply michael davidsaver answered - Yes. This is verified with MSVC >= 2015 [04:58 PM] Dirk Zimoch asked : ABI compatibility (not only API) would be nice 0 upvote | 1 answer | 0 reply michael davidsaver answered - Agreed. ABI compatibility tracking in PVXS, and Base, is an area where motivated contributors are needed! [05:04 PM] Tim Mooney asked : Are you saying pvAccess or pvXS? 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [05:19 PM] steve terepin asked : Are you able to use PVXS to talk to hardware units via Channel Access ? 0 upvote | 6 answers | 6 replies michael davidsaver answered - No. PVXS is only a PV Access client/server steve terepin replied - Yes, that's what I understood from Michael's talk. So, presumably you use PVXS to talk to high level components which themselves use Channel Access to interact with hardware ? Apologies for newbie question. Ralph answered - Either that, or you use PVXS to talk pvAccess to an EPICS IOC that runs the EPICS process database connecting to the hardware. steve terepin replied - Thanks, that's all very reasonable. michael davidsaver answered - I'm not sure what you mean by "hardware". PVA and CA protocol usually work side-by-side. IOCs can include a PVA server (aka. QSRV), which PVXS can communicate with. steve terepin replied - Sure - I really mean 'an IOC that is interacting with hardware'. As a total newbie I didn't know about QSRV - anyway, this looks really great. steve terepin replied - By the way, is the 'on-the-wire' protocol the exact same one employed in pvAccess ? Andrew Johnson answered - Yes, that's a requirement. michael davidsaver answered - Yes. steve terepin replied - Many thanks - I'm sure we'll be in touch shortly. My particular interest is in Windows-based UI's, and this looks to be a very promising way of talking to our IOC's. michael davidsaver answered - FYI. cs-studio has a PVA client. steve terepin replied - Yeah, the Java one presumably. [05:42 PM] Kay asked : "Move off of X-windows" Does that mean Windows, not Linux? Or Linux but then what instead of X? 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [05:46 PM] jjpon asked : Hi Dennis, Could you please share what is the estimated cost of the migration? How many people are directly involved or are needed? 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [05:48 PM] Andrew Johnson asked : Are you (planning on) asking management for some effort specifically to work on EPICS Core? 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [06:29 PM] Hitesh Dhola asked : Thanks Ralph, I was talking about this report yesterday. But we concluded yesterday. It all depends on the application and instruments which are implementing it. But if we take case of PLC, OPC UA is better then Block transfer for all cases ? 0 upvote | 1 answer | 0 reply Ralph answered - One more aspect: the size of the 1500. The small ones are happily serving a few 100 variables at 200ms, but saturate there pretty much. Block transfer is probably more efficient on those. [06:31 PM] Rod Nussbaumer asked : Is this to replace prior S7 EPICS device support or to add new functionality? 0 upvote | 3 answers | 1 reply Ralph answered - OPC UA is only available on the 1500 series. It does not require coding on the PLC, and the addressing is symbolic, and user-defined structures on the PLC are supported - these are the big advantages over TCP block transfer in terms of accessing variables. Rod Nussbaumer replied - thanks Ralph answered - At ITER, the intention is to make this the standard interface to all 1500s. Ralph answered - And - at the same time - have a tool to integrate all kinds of other things. [07:21 PM] Elaine Chandler asked : Are you security testing pva2pva or the P4P PVA Gateway? 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [07:21 PM] Andrew Johnson asked : I've never used AFL, is it possible/easy share your configuration for that against the EPICS softIoc? I think the Core group would be interested in our being able to run that ourselves. 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply [07:46 PM] Matt Rippa asked : You mentioned RTEMS 6. Is there a roadmap for this release? 0 upvote | 0 answer | 0 reply