Software Tests and Simulations for Realtime Applications Based on Virtual Time

Unit and integration tests are powerful tools to ensure software quality. Writing such tests for realtime applications accessing hardware requires not only replacing the real hardware with avirtual implementation in software. Also time must be controlled precisely. For a number of reasons the time scale in the simulated environment should not be identical to real time: computations needed for a complex plant model might just be too slow for a real time simulation, or somelong-term software behaviour should be tested in a short-running test. Communications with devices often require a specific timing which should be subject of a unit test. These examples demand usinga virtual time scale in software tests.We present the Virtual Lab framework as part of the MTCA4U tool kit. It has been designed to help implementing such tests by introducing the concept of virtual time and combining it with an implementation basis for virtual devices and plant models. The framework is designed modularly so that virtual devices and model components can be reused to test different parts of the controlsystem software

A New Major Release of ChimeraTK ApplicationCore and DeviceAccess

ChimeraTK is a software framework for the development of control applications. Recently, version 02.00 of ChimeraTK's DeviceAccess, ApplicationCore and ControlSystemAdapter libraries have been released. They feature a new exception reporting and handling scheme, which has been introduced to work consistently across all libraries of the framework. It implements automatic recovery from device errors and proper device initialisation after malfunctioning and at application start

Automated Device Error Handling in Control Applications

When integrating devices into a control system, the device applications usually contain a large fraction of error handling code. Many of these errors are run time errors which occur when communicating with the hardware, and usually have similar handling strategies. Therefore we extended ChimeraTK, a software toolkit for the development of control applications in various control system frameworks, such that the repetition of error handling code in each application can be avoided. ChimeraTK now also features automatic error reporting, recovery from device errors, and proper device initialisation after malfunctioning and at application start

ChimeraTK - A Software Tool Kit for Control Applications

The presentation provides an overview of the ChimeraTK framework. The project started from a demand for software libraries that provide convenient access to PCIE bus based cards on the MicroTCA.4 platform. Previously called MTCA4U, ChimeraTK is evolving towards a set of frameworks and tools that enable users to build up control applications, while abstracting away specifics of the underlying system. Initially, the focus of the project was the DeviceAccess C++ library and its bindings for Matlab and Python, along with a Qt based client that used DeviceAccess under the hood. However, ChimeraTK has expanded to include more tools like the ControlSystemAdapter, VirtualLab and ApplicationCore. The ControlSystemAdapter framework focuses on tools that enable application code to be written in a middle ware agnostic manner. VirtualLab focuses on facilitating testing of application code and providing functional mocks. The ApplicationCore library aims at unifying application interfaces to other tools in the toolkit and improving abstraction. We present an update on improvements to the project and discuss motivations and applications for these new set of tools introduced into the toolkit

Installation and First Commissioning of the LLRF System for the European XFEL

The installation of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) is finished, leaving place for its commissioning phase. This contribution summarizes the low-level radiofrequency (LLRF) commissioning with a special emphasis on the development of automation tools to support the commissioning of such a large scale accelerator. First results ofthe LLRF commissioning in the main linac are also given